I can't restore my catalog from my external hardrive

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spudballoo

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Hello, I'm new...and frantic...

I stupidly have spent months using LR without really thinking or learning about catalogs and, more to the point, back ups. Thus, I have no recent catalog backup on my internal drive. A shame since it is now corrupt, can't be fixed etc.

However, I backed up my entire MacBook a few days ago. So i thought I'd simply use the catalog from that backup. Hoorah. But it won't let me. I keep getting this message:

The Lightroom catalog cannot be used because the parent folder “/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Spudballoo's MacBook/2''9-1'-26-'73354/Spud/Users/Spud/Pictures/Lightroom” does not allow files to be created within it.

I have looked at the permissions on the catalog, and LR and Pictures and I can read & write (and am logged in).

Is there something really obvious that I'm not doing?

Many thanks for any help. Im appalled at the thought of having to rebuild a catalogue of 5,''' photos...most of which are processed. I assume I will lose all the edits if I have to rebuild? Cry.
 
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Just to add that I have 'kind of' resolved this issue. I was attempting to open the catalogue directly from the external drive. It will open if I copy and paste it on to my internal drive. However, all the backups are corrupt. I will post separately about this.
 
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Hey Spud, sorry for the delay in replying. Well done for getting this far.

You were absolutely right about your thought about permissions - only in this case, it was folder permissions for parent folders rather than the file itself, so you did the right thing copying it back.

Sorry to hear your backups are corrupt. Unfortunately Time Machine is not fully compatible - if it backs up while LR is open, the database isn't copied fully. You may find a backup done while LR was closed which would probably be ok. Or if there's a *.lock file next to the backup, you can delete that (once you've copied it to your main drive) and it may open ok.
 
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