OneDrive drove Lightroom into a ditch

[Mrdavie]

Lightroom Version

12.1

Operating System

1. Windows 11

By default, the Lightroom Classic catalogue was located in the Pictures folder, which was in the OneDrive folder on my PC. The OneDrive folder was on drive C: which had limited free space. I moved OneDrive to drive G: which had lots of free space. Lightroom will not start; it returns the following notice:

Should I uninstall Lightroom and reinstall specifying the new location of the catalogue? What do you think I should do?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

This is a known problem. Here’s a fix:

• Go to the catalog folder > Open the .lrcat-data folder.
• Delete or move the file named 'Current.'
• Relaunch Lightroom Classic - twice. (The first relaunch returns the error, the following relaunch works)

 

[Mrdavie]

Thanks for the advice. I followed your suggestions, but it didn't work. I was able to restore a very recent catalog backup and was able to launch Lightroom. Still some weird things going on. I credit Microsoft Windows 11 as the primary culprit because it expanded the integration of OneDrive. I am struggling to get back to square one with Lightroom but am moving in the right direction. LR got stuck on syncing - making good progress for most of the files but screeching to a halt before reaching the end of the sync.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

The fix is reported to work by others who have been struck by this problem, but I would indeed suggest to first move your catalog out of OneDrive. OneDrive and Lightroom catalogs do not seem to go well together.

 

[BobT]

In my view LrC and OneDrive is a no-no. It seems to work with small catalogues but becomes unreliable when they get larger. I think it's because OneDrive's constant up and downloading is too slow for LrC. I have LrC on C: but the catalogue and image files on D:. OneDrive controls C: but leaves D: alone. Having said that, my backup software interacts with OneDrive to be able to use it as a backup location. The entire D: backs up to OneDrive at night. So, I still get the backup security of OneDrive but not in the immediately interactive way as was intended with OneDrive.

 

[Gnits]

I installed Lr on a Laptop for travel, approx 1 year ago, not realising initially that the Catalog was in the Pictures Folder within One Drive. My situation was complicated by the fact that I use OneDrive For Business on my main workstation. I had a triangulation of One Drive synching taking place without me realising it between OneDrive on my laptop, OneDrive on my main workstation and OneDrive in the Cloud. I ended up with a massive mess, which took nearly 4 days to untangle, with constant fear when trying to remove folders from OneDrive on my laptop that I was actually deleting files / folders that I wanted to keep. On return home, I removed all files and folders from OneDrive and OneDrive for Business. Now I only copy files to these Sync Services when I want to transfer them to another device, treating anything within these synch folders as temporary and can be deleted at anytime, knowing I still have originals in their original folders. I do not use any synch style cloud service (eg DropBox, iCloud,OneDrive, etc) as a form of backup.

I agree moving the catalog out of OneDrive is a good first step.

 

[Mrdavie]

It’s gratifying to know I wasn’t alone with this issue. After a day of stress, I resolved my issues by reinstalling Lightroom Classic and letting it re-establish the default location for the catalogue (user folder). I imported the last catalogue and resync’d with Lightroom Mobile. The catalogue is off the OneDrive folder and all is well. Back to photography!

 

[Gnits]

I make a personal point of not using any of the default Windows Library Folders (eg My Docs, My Pics, MyMusic,MyDownloads, etc) to store any of my files, because I never know what rules might be buried in the O/S, or added to the o/s with an ’upgrade’. I never made a decision to put MyPics into OneDrive. Microsoft made the decision. The next time I install Lr I will make sure it does not store the catalog in MyPics, but a folder of my choosing. I notice on the recent version of Photoshop the Save or Save As command is defaulting to an Adobe cloud location.
I have made the decision I want to keep (the vast majority of ) my files local and it is becoming hard work to try and keep it that way.

 

[tspear]

Wow, I never had these issues. I ran Classic with all images and catalog on OneDrive for years. Google Drive and Dropbox and my own NetCloud before that.
I olny had issues under two scenarios. Both mostly my fault:
1. When I moved the folders around or switched cloud sync platforms. This always seemed to cause Lr to have problems. My final solution was to always run the LrC validate/compress the database. Exit LrC, making sure all LrC services are stopped (many run in the background and you need to use task manager or system services to kill them). Then move the files/folders. The reason for the multi-step process is Windows does not always force a cleanup of file handles until the all associated processes exit. So, when Lr has opened the files/folders and made calls to a service which stays open, some aspects may not be released....
2. Sync did not finish before I opened LrC on another computer.

Tim

 

[Gnits]

The problem for me is that introducing synchronised or cloud related folders complicates the issue. This is especially true if you have more than one device (eg Desktop and laptop) as related files might be in 1 of 3 locations (laptop, desktop and cloud). My situation has got more complex in that regard in that I have now added a MacAir to my Win Desktop and Win Laptop.

What was killing me is that I found large volumes of files were been sucked, initially unknown to me, onto OneDrive on my new laptop, due to the setup of OneDrive on my main PC, while I was isolated on a remote island with a very thin internet pipe. A recipe for total frustration.