Lightroom catalogue on external hard disk

[dansumption]

I use an external hard disk to store my Lightroom catalogue, so that I can move it between computers. However, this causes problems when my computer goes into standby mode. I've pasted below my bug report, as filed with Adobe. Any comments and workarounds very welcome:

Steps to reproduce bug:

1. Lightroom database is on external hard disk.
2. Put computer in standby mode
3. Come out of standby mode

Results:

1. Lightroom quits with message "Lightroom encountered an error when reading a catalog file and needs to quit. Lightroom will attempt to diagnose the problem next time it launches."
2. Next time Lightroom is launched, it either:
   1. If launching from the programme icon, Lightroom will not launch, and instead shows the error message "The Lightroom catalog named xxxxx cannot be opened because another application already has it open. Quit the other copy of Lightroom before trying to launch"
   2. If launching from the catalogue file, shows the message "The last time Lightroom ran, it shut down prematurely due to a problem reading the catalog. Lightroom must now check the catalog before proceeding" - and then spends approximately 3' minutes checking the catalogue before opening Lightroom.

Expected results:
Either:

1. Lightroom should wait the 2 seconds or so, when resuming from standby, for the external hard disk to become available again.
2. It should be possible to skip the catalogue checking.

 

[Kiwigeoff]

Welcome Dan and well done for filing a bug report. You may like to fill in your signature and maybe we can help you out. Cheers.....

 

[dansumption]

Thanks Geoff, already done the .sig
(spotted the instructions in the welcome message just after my initial post)

 

[Kiwigeoff]

Thanks Dan, you will need to hang on until a Windows guru hits the road.
Suggest you search the forum as there have been a few issues like yours recently.
I'm off and out for the evening, cheers.........

 

[Brad Snyder]

Dan, just thinking out loud, have you looked for / deleted the catalog database lock file before attempting to restart Lr after the unexpected quit?

Look for a file named 'yourcatalogname.lrcat.lock' in the folder where the catalog resides. If Lr is not currently open, you can safely delete it. A similar looking file with the suffix .journal should be left alone, if present.

 

[klarsen]

I also use an external hard disk to store my Lightroom catalogue (HP Media Center, Personal Media Drive). After a lengthy pause in workflow I also get a popup box that Lightroom quits with message "Lightroom encountered an error when reading a catalog file and needs to quit. Lightroom will attempt to diagnose the problem next time it launches."

[COLOR=#'''''']I took Brad's suggestion and deleted "yourcatalogname.Ircat.lock" and it did not solve the problem. Any other suggestions? Could it be something with a "Time-out" function with Vista?[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#'''''']First time user of this forum. Sorry I was unable to figue out how to eliminate the "bold" type. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=#'''''']Ken Larsen [/COLOR]

 

[Kiwigeoff]

Ken, I would try making a copy of you .lrcat file and moving that and the previews file to your internal drive and try that.

 

[klarsen]

Geoff: not an option for me to move catalogue to internal drive since the size of my catalogue sits on a 1T integrated external drive and exceeds space on the internal drive. What I have been doing to avoid the error message is exiting LR when I anticipate a long pause (dinner, etc) in order to avoid the extended time it takes to verify the status of LR before opening again. Thanks for your thoughts. Ken

 

[Kiwigeoff]

How big is the .lrcat file a. the previews.lrdata file? I wasn't meaning move the image files just the LR files.

 

[Denis Pagé]

Ken, as an example, I have a 3''MB catalog for 2'''' images. But if I count the previews, it then make 5.5GB. If your Lightroom backups are kept with (near) the catalog, do you clean the older ones from time to time?...