Yes, another LR Corrupted Catalog (Sigh)! It works though!?

[Jaleel]

I'm tired and I really just don't know what else to do. This is the strangest thing.

My general setup is a Dhell running Win7 x64 and my mobile is a soon to be crushed Macbook running OS X 1'.5.8. I run my catalog from my external USB drive because I go between the systems.
This is my 2nd corruption issue and I learned from the first one. Oddly enough every time I've had an issue with my LR it has been on the Macbook. I just learned about the little know USB random disconnect issue which now make sense and I think is what caused my problem.

Here the thing, I started over from my last backup. No problems seeing that there wasn't much I had done since then. Once I got everything going though, I closed LR in order to restart to have a fresh backup. When I do, I get a corrupt catalog which can't be repaired?

This is where things get strange though. If I move the "corrupted" catalog to a different folder it works!? If, I then try to back it up again I'm back to catalog the error: can't be repaired. I can even re-name the catalog and yet again it will work!? So the catalog is basically corrupt but still works?

I tried importing the catalog into a fresh a one but it got an error. I still have stuff to try but what the hell would cause this!? The catalog working but I can't back it up and it bothers me. I need to have this backed up...lol

Thanks for any help! I'm running LR 2.6 on both systems.

Jaleel

 

[Jaleel]

Update: If I uncheck, test integrity while doing a backup I don't have any errors. I'm still concerned that I can't do a back w/o it being corrupt if I do the integrity test.

 

[Mark Sirota]

I'm slightly confused -- does it tell you that the catalog is corrupt while doing the backup, or before the backup kicks off?

If you copy your (presumably good) backup catalog to your internal disk and then open it in LR (thus forcing a backup), does it still report it as corrupt?

 

[Victoria Bampton]

And if you move it, open it, select all making sure you've got everything, and do Export as Catalog to a clean catalog (which should remove any rubbish hopefully), and then open that exported catalog, can you back that up ok?

 

[Jaleel]

Mark,

It's confusing for me too.

I can open the catalog up no problems. I can work in it without any issues too. If I re-open it and do backup w/ integrity check though I have issues.

It will try to repair but will fail to repair it. However once I do that and try to open the catalog I get a message that the catalog can't be opened because it's corrupt. Now if I re-name the catalog or move it to different location, it opens up just fine so long as I don't do any integrity checks. I can backup without issue as well so long as I un-check the integrity backup.

Victoria,

I'll give that try and report back but when I did the reverse, creating a new catalog and importing the old one, I got an error at the half way point.

I just find it really strange to be acting like this? My Macbook just randomly dropped the USB connection while I was in LR but it's not the first time it's happen with dropping the USB connection. I just thought my cable became loose or something.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Victoria Bampton]

You may find Jaleel, that if it gives you an error part way through, that you can get around it by exporting a few smaller chunks until you find the corrupted chunk. Also, I've just found out that import from catalog is likely to copy over any rubbish in the database, whereas export as catalog is more selective, so it might work better that way round.

Your USB might now be a cable issue - talking to an engineer a while back, he unofficially said that the majority of unexplained corruption cases were on usb drives on Macs, simply because the usb implementation in OS X wasn't as stable. So, FWIW, it might be worth considering copying the catalog to the local drive when you're working with it, or switching to firewire instead.

 

[Jaleel]

Victoria,

Thanks for the suggestion about transferring the catalog onto the system drive from now on. I'm now scared to use ANY USB drive on my Macbook. USB externals are far easier and cheaper to find and with Apple dumping FW4'' for FW8'' it just seems like more work to do to find something reasonable.

I did what you said and tried to export my catalog in smaller chunks still getting an error on export. I believe the issue is some where with my last import as I get an error message when I try to export just my 2'1' folder which has less than 2K images. On my 2''9 folder it starts to do something but then gives an error message before getting close to finish.

I guess I'm annoyed because my original was just trash by OS X and I used a backup I did which shouldn't have had any issues. The backup has become a problem and I don't want to us a backup any further than that as that means I'll have to redo all my collects from after that point.

I also don't want the catalog to become un-usable as time passes because it won't past the integrity check or I can use when LR3 final releases because of the problem.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Yeah, I quite understand your frustration. You could see if Dan Tull can solve the problem. Drop him a friendly email and see! (Either google his name to get his email, or drop me a pm)

 

[Jaleel]

Just wanted to say thanks for all the help! Dan tried to help me with a similar issue last year, which, unfortunately couldn't be fix. This time however, he was able to fix my issue!

I just wanted to say a big thank you to Dan Tull!

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Yippeee! That's great news Jaleel!