Major OS X catalog corruption!

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Harrzack

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This issue is with LR 1.31 and 4 (which has been working fine otherwise.).
With Tiger 1'.4.11 on a PowerPC G5.

The basic issue: When a collection of Folders are located on an external drive that is dismounted (powered off) when LR starts up, instead of simply marking those folders in red and showing them as "not found", LR proceeds to, on its own, and without me telling it to, REBUILDS the catalog using all sorts of system folders, and randomly assigning images to these folders as thought they were there. It appears to be a rather random association, but in any event is totally useless, incorrect --- the catalog is now TRASHED!

In an attempt to get these files off the external drive and onto a new, internal drive that will always be on, new issues with LR moving files have come up. I'll document those on a second post.

Bottom line: I'd STRONGLY suggest that, on OS X, folders added to Lightroom NOT be on media that can be dismounted, removed or turned off.

=Alan R.
 
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That sucks! I hope you had it backed up.

I keep my images on an external drive. I initially set things up so that each drive would have it's own catalog of the pics on that drive. I then figured that I would rather have one master catalog, so I copied the catalog to my laptop. I set this hoping that I could copy images to multiple drives and that by the time that I fill up my current drive, maybe LR will be better at handling such things. I haven't seen any problems like what you described come up. I have had some problems with Bridge showing the wrong images in one folder(and caching in general) on my external drive. I hope it's not an Adobe-wide problem.
 
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Well - everything was fine IF I remembered to turn on the external. If it was OFF -- disaster ensued. Just be sure you always have that drive on, an d things will be cool. If you forget - BAM - your catalog is hosed!
This SEEMS like a major bug -- LR should NOT be going off on it's own and rebuilding the catalog in ANY case. :cry:

rcannonp said:
That sucks! I hope you had it backed up.

I keep my images on an external drive. I initially set things up so that each drive would have it's own catalog of the pics on that drive.
[snip]
(and caching in general) on my external drive. I hope it's not an Adobe-wide problem.
Click to expand...
 
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Harrzack said:
This SEEMS like a major bug -- LR should NOT be going off on it's own and rebuilding the catalog in ANY case. :cry:
Click to expand...

I often open a catalog without the HD mounted, and have had no problems. I think that I have read that other people often do this to edit photos while they are on the road and whatnot. I'm not sure that this is a reproducible bug, at least not with 1.3. I wonder if it may be related to the capture time bug in 1.4(or other undisclosed ones). Anyway, I back up my computer HD and my external HD, so I usually have 4 up-to-date copies of my catalog. Thankfully, I haven't had to resort to backups yet.
 
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I've been working this way since the very early betas two years ago, with the catalog on an internal drive and photos on external drives that were not always connected, and have never had this problem. And Lightroom is designed to work this way.

So rather than advise people not to work this way, let's try to figure out why it isn't working for you... If you have a working backup copy of the catalog, I'd start by optimizing that version and then see whether you can recreate the problem.
 
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Mark Sirota said:
I've been working this way since the very early betas two years ago, with the catalog on an internal drive and photos on external drives that were not always connected, and have never had this problem. And Lightroom is designed to work this way.

So rather than advise people not to work this way, let's try to figure out why it isn't working for you... If you have a working backup copy of the catalog, I'd start by optimizing that version and then see whether you can recreate the problem.
Click to expand...
I agree. Work this way, too. NEver had this problem.

If you try to 'recreate the problem', though use a second copy and keep lots of back-ups.

Don
 
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Sorry to hear you've had problems Alan!

Another 'no problem' here too, sorry! Definitely sounds like it's one worth trying to recreate though, as you may well have found a bug that none of us have ever run into.

Which system folders was it trying to use though Alan, because I heard a report a while back of LR getting confused when moving between machines, and system folders were involved in that one too. The thread is on this forum somewhere.... I'm sure Melissa G replied at the time.
 
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I've seen a lot of Lightroom problems, but I've never heard a report of that behavior before.

I also run 1'.5.2 with an external drive that is not always connected and have no problems with that setup.
 
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Alan,

I had a similar thing to your happen when I moved my external hard drive file to another drive. When LR started it found that the original was missing and all was ok at this point. I then selected the missing drive in the library and right clicked and selected locate original. I then selected the new drive and POW all extra files started appearing as you describe. If you can repeatedly reproduce the problem file a report to Adobe as I think this has happened to a few people now.
 
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