Catalogs Reintalled LR5-need to find catalog from backup

[NJHeart2Heart]

Operating System: Mac High Sierra
Exact Lightroom Version (Help menu > System Info): LR5.7.1?

I had to erase/reinstall/upgrade my Mac OS. I did a photos backup and a time machine backup, but when I re-installed, I did not ask it to re-assert the newest backup since I wanted to start with a clean slate, re-installing the few programs I currently use.

However, now that I've re-installed a fresh copy of L5 (which is what I had pre-hard drive wipe), I don't know how to re-access the LR catalog. I believe I kept it in the users/../pictures/lightroom folder on my local disk. When I browsed the latest backup, I found a catalog file it it says last modified in 2014... I'm not sure if this is the latest file?

Is there a way to open/check it without completely messing things up with my nice clean LR copy?

I am likely to upgrade to LR CC using the Classic vs. 7, but I wanted to do one step at a time - reinstall my OS first, get my existing LR working ok, then upgrade on the new OS.

 

[Jim Wilde]

What "backup" are you talking about, Time Machine or LR Catalog Backup?

Do you not have other catalog backups than just a Time Machine backup? What about the LR catalog backup process, did you use that? Did you specifically backup the catalog as well as the photos before you did the hard drive wipe?

It won't do any harm to try to open that catalog you found, though with a "last modified" date in 2014 it's unlikely to be the correct one. Worth trying it at least.

 

[NJHeart2Heart]

Hi Jim.
I was referring to a time machine backup.
I believe I did do a catalog backup before I wiped my drive, but stupidly I didn't check where I saved it. I couldn't find it with my photos, so I'm assuming the backup went to the local drive address. I do have the ability to "migrate" info. but I'll have to read up on if I can find that one particular file...

 

[Jim Wilde]

If you have TM backups, are you not able to simply look inside the most up-to-date backup, find the Pictures>Lightroom folder and see if the catalog is in there? But I'm not an expert, especially when using TM to restore from a previous OS version, but hopefully it's not too difficult?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Time Machine is as easy as it gets. Open the Pictures folder, then start Time Machine. You'll see a stack of windows, each of them represent the Pictures folder at some point in time. Step through them to find the catalog folder at the time you want to retrieve. Select the catalog folder, then choose 'Restore'. That's all there is to it.

 

[NJHeart2Heart]

Hi all. Thanks for the responses. I've been trying different tacts for a few days now. Still no luck. At this point, I may have to research the mac side of it, as it seems the backup is causing problems. However, FYI, here is a screen shot of the error I've kept getting:

This error came up even though I had copied the catalog file from the backup disk to my local drive.

 

[clee01l]

Backups.backupdb is your Time Machine Backup database. You need to ope Time Machine and RESTORE the files of folders that you want to use. This will create restored folders at a location that you select. Once your files and folders have been restored, you can open them from the restored location or copy them to where ever you need before opening.

 

[NJHeart2Heart]

Thanks Clee.
I thought it might be that, but now I can't seem to move through my time machine backups to pick out the one from december 31. When the time machine screen comes up- you know that space and stars with stacked images of my desktop - I can see the stack, plus the arrows and to the right, the timeline, but no matter what I try to click on, nothing happens. I can "redlight" out of the top desktop image, but then I can't do anything to bring up a restore menu.

 

[clee01l]

Go to the folder that is supposed to contain the file. Open TM. You should see that folder Time Machine. On the right is a Date slider with tic marks. The bottom should be "Now" Move up the slider until December 31 is highlighted in red. If there is no date for December 31, then move up until there is a valid back up date. Click on the highlighted red bar. The Finder window will shuffle backward until the Finder window showing those file FOR that date is on top of the pile. Select the file or folder and click Restore. IF the file already exists at that point you will get a warning dialog asking if you want to replace, keep both or keep the original. Choose Keep Both and TM will uniquely rename the restored copy.

 

[NJHeart2Heart]

Did that.. got as far as the slider.. I can slide to Dec 31, I can see the colored bar, but no matter what technique I use (return key, right bottom mousepad click, double finger tap for a right click, left bottom click on mousepad), it won't actually CLICK. mousepad works fine otherwise...

 

[NJHeart2Heart]

Hmm.. I think I might have made an important observation.. on the slider, the dates are in PURPLE. The two backups that have been run since I connected the machine used for my backups show up as WHITE bars, and I CAN click on them, but not the purple bars.
I'm theorizing here, but are the backups only able to be restored to the OS VERSION they were created on?? That would explain the non-working dates, as I UPGRADED the OS since re-installing. If I'm correct, I'm guessing in order to restore that ONE FILE, I may need to REVERT to the version I had before I wiped the disk, only, I'm not SURE which one that is!! I think when I wiped the machine, and signed in with Apple, it restored my machine to the ORIGINAL OS that came with the machine,... which was back in 2014.. at least two? OS versions ago...

 

[clee01l]

it won't actually CLICK. mousepad works fine otherwise...

That suggests that the backup for that folder is older than 12/31 Go ask further to find one that will click.
FWIW, My bars are red not white or purple

 

[NJHeart2Heart]

Clee,
NONE of the other backups are clickable. I have many on the external disk, and they're all listed but only today's backups are clickable.
Working off my theory about different OS versions, I decided to try the migration assistant (which restores a backup onto a NEW machine, which, presumably would have a more recent OS on it to start with.) Then I ran into other additional issues, specific to Apple, and which might be coming from the source of my original troubles that caused me to wipe/re-install the hard drive (Between myself at a stupid moment and apple, we managed, to delete one of TWO of my apple accounts, which wound up being the one associated with this computer - that account connection can't be changed without wiping the whole hard drive.)

 

[Johan Elzenga]

AFAIK, purple means that this backup is no longer available. Maybe because the disk isn't mounted, maybe because of another reason. You can try to get to your backups manually. Open the backup disk in the Finder. You'll see one single folder called 'Backups.backupdb'. Open that folder. That should give you a single folder with the computer name. Open that too. Now you should see folders for each backup, with names like '2018-01-04-222239'. Set the view to list view and sort by name, that will sort them by date with the latest backup at the top. Each folder contains a full backup in Finder format, so just open a recent one an navigate to the catalog folder you want to retrieve.

 

[NJHeart2Heart]

Thanks Johan.
This is precisely what I tried to do the other day. I thought I had succeeded when I seemed to have successfully copied that catalog file into the location on my hard drive where I've kept it previous to the re-install. (users\pictures\lightroom). I had moved the catalog created by LR created upon re-installing the program, to an "OLD" folder to get it out of the way, but I couldn't open the backed up catalog file either directly via finder, or by opening it from Lightroom. Each time I got the above error.

As I'm thinking about this, as a somewhat different issues, I'm wondering if I'm actually wrong about where my catalog file has been residing recently. The catalog file I keep trying to retrieve says "last modified ...2014", which in theory is incorrect as I'd accessed the catalog on December 31st. Now I'm wondering if that was an old location, and that my newer catalog file might have been stored elsewhere. Given the fact that the catalog newly created by LR, without me having done any personal changes, was in that pictures\ligthtroom folder, I'm assuming that's the default. I might have requested it be stored elsewhere, but the first thing I did when I tried to open the existing catalog is go to my external drive next to my photos folder. The catalog file is not there (and now I see the wisdom in keeping it there...)

I'll have to do some browsing on the backup disk via finder to see if it's in another location, maybe under the "library" folder or something else.... I don't know if it will solve the problem, since that doesn't explain why none of the backups are available, but it will at least show me where the most recent file is..

I feel so defeated. It took me months to get up enough courage and ambition pull the trigger, and I thought I did everything correctly right before doing this re-install, yet here I am, days after, with a horrible sinking feeling that so much of my work just went "poof"

I'm not as upset about photo edits, though I've done my share of them over the years and that would be a loss - I'm a lot more deeply concerned about my metadata. I do a lot more of my work in metadata - dates, tagging names, creating collections and smart collections. My last big project I do know I had set the program to write metadata to the files themselves, but I don't know if I disabled that later... <deep breath> one step at a time...

 

[Johan Elzenga]

This is precisely what I tried to do the other day. I thought I had succeeded when I seemed to have successfully copied that catalog file into the location on my hard drive where I've kept it previous to the re-install. (users\pictures\lightroom). I had moved the catalog created by LR created upon re-installing the program, to an "OLD" folder to get it out of the way, but I couldn't open the backed up catalog file either directly via finder, or by opening it from Lightroom. Each time I got the above error.

You have to copy the catalog folder from the backup disk to your main disk first, and then open the catalog from there. You got the error because you try to open the catalog file directly from the backup disk, but Lightroom has no permission to read or write to that disk.

 

[NJHeart2Heart]

Although that seems obvious based on the error message it's incorrect. I specifically copied the catalog file to my LOCAL drive - as mentioned - to the same location ON MY HARD DRIVE where it had been stored previously. In addition, when I went to "open an existing catalog" in LR, I SPECIFICALLY navigated to the file ON MY HARD DRIVE - not my external disk. For some reason Lightroom still thinks that the file I'm trying to open is on that backup disk, even though I've copied it elsewhere... very confusing..

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Although that seems obvious based on the error message it's incorrect. I specifically copied the catalog file to my LOCAL drive - as mentioned - to the same location ON MY HARD DRIVE where it had been stored previously. In addition, when I went to "open an existing catalog" in LR, I SPECIFICALLY navigated to the file ON MY HARD DRIVE - not my external disk. For some reason Lightroom still thinks that the file I'm trying to open is on that backup disk, even though I've copied it elsewhere... very confusing..

I'm sorry, but the error is clear. What may have happened is that the copying process didn't go as it should. Time Machine works with so-called 'hard links'. They are a bit like aliases, so when you see a full backup in each folder, it's not really a full backup but a lot of aliases and only a few real files. If you copy a hard link to another disk, then the OS should take care of that and copy te real file. If that didn't happen for some reason, the link still points at the original file on the backup disk.

 

[NJHeart2Heart]

Johan,
Thanks for continuing to hang in here with me as I struggle through this..
What you say makes sense. Tonight when I get home I'll first search through the backup drive to see if I can find the catalog file anywhere else.
Once I've identified the catalog file, how do I copy it in a way that is most likely to be successful? I'm starting to panic about losing my catalog now...

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Johan,
Thanks for continuing to hang in here with me as I struggle through this..
What you say makes sense. Tonight when I get home I'll first search through the backup drive to see if I can find the catalog file anywhere else.
Once I've identified the catalog file, how do I copy it in a way that is most likely to be successful? I'm starting to panic about losing my catalog now...

Copy the entire catalog folder. The fact that Time Machine doesn't find the backups is a clear sign that something may not be complete however, and if that is the case, there is little else you can do.

 

[NJHeart2Heart]

Hmm.. that may be a problem. I don't know that I've ever had a catalog FOLDER. I have two files -lrcat and lrpreviews that are always together, but I don't ever remember them being in their own folder.... Is that normal?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Hmm.. that may be a problem. I don't know that I've ever had a catalog FOLDER. I have two files -lrcat and lrpreviews that are always together, but I don't ever remember them being in their own folder.... Is that normal?

No, not really, but Lightroom will work fine without a special catalog folder. When you create a new catalog in Lightroom, it is normally created inside a folder because the catalog has support files like the previews.

 

[NJHeart2Heart]

Well this situations seems to be getting worse... I looked in my most recent backup drive, and couldnt' find a catalog file anywhere else within it.
In addition I plugged in a second external drive that I have used before, none of the backups on THAT one work either.. This is could become really traumatic here. I don't understand WHY none of these backups before my re-install work at all...

 

[NJHeart2Heart]

Worked with Apple via chat for over 2 hours. Was able to copy the .lrcat file to my desktop, but now when I try to open it, either by directly double clicking, or by going into LR first and going to "open catalog", nothing happens. Nothing. It just blinks. Am I missing something here? Shouldn't it actually look different? Shouldn't my collections fill in, and my folders?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Maybe that recovered .lrcat file is corrupt.