Import Recovering from possible Time Machine Corruption During Lightroom Classic Back-up

[rerussell]

Lightroom Version

Lightroom Classic version: 10.3 [ 202105281559-8dc50eb4 ]

Operating System

1. macOS 11 Big Sur

My thought is that a Time Machine backup on my iMac (Big Sur) while working in Lightroom Classic corrupted the catalog (and photos)? At any rate, I am now trying to recover. About 250 photos, which I had X deleted and removed from disk as always, did not actually delete as always. The "deleted photos" show up as blank slides with no filename or metadata in "All Photographs" under Catalog ..... and then the 250 photos each replaced the next earlier photo (a year or so earlier) of the same filename in "Photos for Lightroom" under Mac HD. Just the photo, but not the metadata or develop history. They were developed to the earlier photo history. So, photo count is 250 higher in All Photographs vs Photos for Lightroom. Craziest thing ever! So, I restored Lightroom folder via Time Machine to a point a few days earlier ... and just prior to this mess. My question .... I now want to re-import the keeper photos over these few days which now only reside on Time Machine. Has anyone ever done this or was there a better way to begin with?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

I doubt that Time Machine had anything to do with it. TM only copies stuff, it does not do anything else that might corrupt a catalog, let alone images. Corruption does happen sometimes, and it is not always clear what caused it. Restore the images to your disk using TM, then import them in Lightroom from there. Do not try to import them directly from the backup drive.

 

[rerussell]

Thanks much for the reply. I only thought about TM as culprit, based on some such warning I once saw on an Adobe sight. Just worrisome that this could even happen. Double back-ups are advised. At any rate, the keeper photos that I would try to restore from TM resided only in "Photos for Lightroom". So, if I restore these photos (and only these keeper photos) from the right point during the delete corruption period, they will restore to Photos for Lightroom. Should I restore only the raw NEF or their sidecar as well? I have not imported photos in this manner previously (always from a card directly to Lightroom). Thanks!

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Restore the sidecars as well. When you import these photos again, the sidecars are read and so your edits and metadata will be recovered too.

 

[rerussell]

Thanks very much John. Your advice was right on. I'll definitely buy you a beer next time I am in the Netherlands.