LR Mac can't find my catalogs [from Windows]

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merlyn9

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OK... So I've been a full time Lightroom user & tossed out PhaseOne, since the beta days on the PC/Windows platform.

I've been using external USB drives as I travel and take my images & work with me. So I have numerous catalogs on my drive.

I finally got around to getting myself a new Mac Book Pro for my imaging efforts (Lightroom, Photoshop, movies, etc) and was excited to switch over working on a current project effort over on this new system.

I plugged in this USB2 device into my Mac, no issues.
I tell Lightroom to open this existing catalog, and I can't see it.
I plug the drive back into my Windows machine, and it's there, Lightroom (Windows) opens the catalog just fine where I had left off.
Back to the Mac... I still can't see the catalog, or any other catalog on that drive.
I open Finder & try maneuvering manually to the directory where the catalog is... I can see all my image files (RAW, TIF, PDF, and jpg files) and directory structured there, but I Can Not see the catalog directory.
I tried the same with another known catalog path with the same results. I can Not see it on the Mac.

Has anyone seen this one?
Anyone have a clue as to why I can't see my catalogs on the Mac [Leopard]?
Or what I can do to resolve this? I don't want to loose all the work I've done over the past 6-8 months with the 3'-5',''' images I've shot.

thanks;


---michael
 
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merlyn9 said:
I open Finder & try maneuvering manually to the directory where the catalog is... I can see all my image files (RAW, TIF, PDF, and jpg files) and directory structured there, but I Can Not see the catalog directory.
Click to expand...

So you are saying that the catalog is in a sub-directory and you can't even see that sub-directory with the Finder? If that's the case, were you using compressed folders under Windows?
 
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Mick Seymour said:
So you are saying that the catalog is in a sub-directory and you can't even see that sub-directory with the Finder? If that's the case, were you using compressed folders under Windows?
Click to expand...

Never use compression.
Unfortunately, this situation is not limited to just this one catalog, I have tried to get to several different catalogs on this external drive. All with the same results, leading me to think it's more of a Lightroom issue that file?

btw, this is LR 1.3.1 on both Windows and Mac OS X [leopard].


---michael
 
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How is the drive formatted? FAT or NTFS? Lightroom may not allow you to open a drive on a NTFS volume as it can't write back to it.

But did you say Finder can't even see the catalogs?
 
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Victoria Bampton said:
How is the drive formatted? FAT or NTFS? Lightroom may not allow you to open a drive on a NTFS volume as it can't write back to it. But did you say Finder can't even see the catalogs?
Click to expand...

Just checked, as I didn't think of this before. It is NTFS. This was the default when the drive was purchased, as I did not do any formatting.
But that should not keep me from seeing the directory?

Yes, Finder can not see the directories (catalogs), but both Finder & Lightroom DO see the RAW, Tif, & jpg files...


---michael
 
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OK... Victoria's reply made me think of something else... Odd too.
Being a UNIX geek I keep a terminal window opened.
I plugged the LaCie drive back into the MBP & traversed the directory tree and low & behold... I can see the directory:

merlyn9$ ls
CVO-Autocross3'Sep'7 <<------Catalog directory

I can also cd down into this directory & see the contents, etc:

merlyn9$ ls -la
total 4'7552
drwxr-xr-x 1 merlyn9 staff 65536 Jan 8 '2:'9 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 merlyn9 staff 17'3936 Oct 23 23:59 ..
drwxr-xr-x 1 merlyn9 staff 65536 Jan 7 '3:47 Backups
drwxr-xr-x 1 merlyn9 staff 65536 Jan 7 '5:31 CVO-Autocross3'Sep'7 Previews.lrdata
-rw-r--r-- 2 merlyn9 staff 2'6757888 Jan 8 '2:'8 CVO-Autocross3'Sep'7.lrcat

merlyn9$ pwd
/Volumes/LaCieHD_'''B/''_Current/2''7/September'7/3'Sept'7/CVO-Autocross3'Sep'7

So this becomes very odd to me.
How come from the native OS I can see the files & directories... but not from Finder or Lightroom?


---michael
 
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merlyn9 said:
/Volumes/LaCieHD_'''B/''_Current/2''7/September'7/3'Sept'7/CVO-Autocross3'Sep'7
Click to expand...

Where in this path are the photo files kept?
 
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Well, I'll stop at this point, and leave it to the geeks! :D

Only one thought though - you may wish to shift everything off that drive and reformat as FAT so that OS X can write to the files - or more specifically to the catalog. And if you're doing that anyway, it might be worth doing before you fight any more with this, as it may solve the problem anyway.
 
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merlyn9 said:
Photo's are in:
/Volumes/LaCieHD_'''B/''_Current/2''7/September'7/3'Sept'7
Click to expand...

So an ls -l in this directory shows you all the photo files and the catalog directory but the Finder doesn't. What are the type (d?), permissions (rwxr-xr-x?), owner (merlyn9?) and group (staff?) of the catalog directory shown by the ls -l?
 
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