trouble copying catalog from one desktop computer to laptop

[chiv]

I travel quite often from east coast to west and stay at each location for some time. When leaving the east a week ago, I copied the .lrcat back-up file to a DVD thinking I would be able to paste into the corresponding location on my west coast computer (under lightroom2/backups) and have an updated catalog in both computers. The catalog on the dvd seemed to copy okay is approx. 114 mgs long. However when I try pasting the backup file on my other computer I get a message "cannot read from source file or disk". The properties dropdown show the data to on the dvd contains 116 megs, which is what I expected, so I think the info is there. Since it is a long walk back to Virginia, is there anyway to get this data into an old catalog, or create a new catalog that could be opened? Thanks. Chiv.
ps; I just upgraded to LR2.5, home computer has LR2.1 version, could this be part of the problem?

 

[sizzlingbadger]

It sounds like the file cannot be read from the DVD which is not a LR issue. You should be able to open the catalog file without an issue (even with v2.5) once it has been copied across to the computers disk.

 

[Brad Snyder]

Chiv, welcome to the forums.
The Windows properties dialog can be mistaken. It reports how many bytes the OS thinks are contained in the file from its directory entry. It doesn't verify that in any way. The directory entry can be correct, while the file itself is corrupt. Which sounds like the case, here, to me. As Nik says, that error message is from Windows, not Lr. And as Nik says Lr 2.5 can read Lr 2.1 files, I'm not positive the reverse is true, but I believe so.