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Lightroom Classic catalog corrupt rendering external SSD unreadable.

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jenifermac

New Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2023
Messages
2
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic 12.1
Operating System
  1. macOS 12 Monterey
Help! I have been successfully running my lightroom catalog and images on external hard drives (a new drive/catalog for each year) for many years with no issues. In the past 2 weeks my I have received a LR catalog corrupt and needs to be fixed error. I attempt to fix and am told it is unreadable. In the finder my external SSD still has the correct name but it appears empty. I tried running disk first aid but that fails telling me the drive is unreadable. I then tried moving the drive to other machines to open and all computers now say the drive is unreadable.

The first time this happened I thought it was a bad drive and replaced it. Now it has happened twice on the new drive. I have backups of the catalog and images but now I'm afraid to do any work or attach any of my old drives for fear of corrupting those as well. I have a lot of editing to do and am getting desperate.

Computer: iMac 27" 2017 running Monterey 12.2.1
Lightroom Classic 12.1
external drive is SanDisk Extreme 4TB portable SSD
 
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I would guess that the issue might be related to a possible interruption of the connection between the ssd and the iMac. This may be a faulty cable, faulty port on the iMac or something pulling on the cable at the wrong time or any combination .

I have seen several examples .... often thru a hub, and power disconnected to the hub, but recently I have seen this scenario because the port at the back of the iMac was unreliable ... probably damaged when a cable was pulled or yanked by mistake.
 
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In two cases I dealt with I was unable to recover the data from the drive. A data recovery agency hinted that they may be able to recover the data but were looking for 1000's of euros... cannot remember exact quote.... with no guarantees. My worry was that they would recover many of the files but the files may not retain their original file or folder name.... therefore rendering a good reconnection to the respective images in the catalog almost impossible.

However, in both of these cases, the catalog was kept on the system drive and was usable and I was able to recover the missing files from a backup.
 
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Gnits said:
I would guess that the issue might be related to a possible interruption of the connection between the ssd and the iMac. This may be a faulty cable, faulty port on the iMac or something pulling on the cable at the wrong time or any combination .

I have seen several examples .... often thru a hub, and power disconnected to the hub, but recently I have seen this scenario because the port at the back of the iMac was unreliable ... probably damaged when a cable was pulled or yanked by mistake.
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Thank you so much for your response. Yes, I'm beginning to suspect that the ports are the issue. It seems to be all of them, not just one, so maybe a communication issue in an aging computer. The first two times this happened the catalog was open. This final time the catalog was closed but Backblaze runs constantly backing up to a cloud so perhaps it was communicating with the catalog during a port "short" or "failure".

Fortunately, I have backups of the catalog and the images. I'm just terrified to plug any drives into the computer at this point fearing corruption of another drive.

I think a new computer is my solution. I hope that eliminates any future occurrences.
 
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It might be worth getting a local repair shop to try an diagnose a specific hardware problem / repair. If it is an internal USB related short then that is very unusual....but maybe too much power required over an extended period of time. Modern USB C / Thunderbolt ports are designed for higher power throughput and modern fast ssd drives were probably not factored into power demands back in 2017 or earlier when these models were designed.

I cannot say for sure that it is a faulty USB port and would love to have a tool which can diagnose usb ports or related cable performance.
 
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