Software is not perfect. Software on a PC is less than not perfect. I accept this. Not happily, but I accept it.

My only goal here is to help others learn from my mistakes.

LR 1.4 worked very well, although Google tells me this can happen there too.

I upgraded to LR2 and as part of that process "upgraded" my LR catalogs to the LR2 version. I should have backed them up first. Bad me.

LR2 worked well, and I happily ran 1500 images through it last night to cull the keepers from the not for a charity event I shot earlier that day. On like the 1300th image, LR2 died. When I restarted it, I got a LR dialog box "Assertion Error". The whole catalog, some 12000 images, no longer with LR data/edits.

I have tried this, that and the other thing, on both my Mac and PC LR2. No joy. The catalog is corrupt and even importing the old catalog into a new one did not work. All I really want are my crops and ratings back. But it just ain't gonna happen. There does not seem to be a way to fix the database issue at this time, according to the Adobe forums.

The good news is that the actual files, are fine. Not only the working copies on the RAID array, but the ones on the backup drive. So, all I really lost was 3 hours editing and two hours trying to fix it. Maybe some time putting the 12k files back in to separate catalogs again.

These are the lessons I learned and I will now practice. I urge you to do similarly...but most of you are smarter than me, and allready doing this:

When LR asks do you want to back up your catalog...do NOT hit, remind me in a week...every time. Back it up. It could be the last time you see it.

Keep separate catalogs for different types of work, like landscapes, events and RE. Heck, maybe keep separate catalogs for each of the larger jobs.

The good news is, this is the only open gig effected. Everything else that is open (outstanding deliverable) has the final files burned to tiff or jpg as needed. But I did have a lot of files tagged into collections by keyword that I now have to reconstruct.

All that non destructive editing is in the catalog file. When that goes, and apparently it will, your work goes too. Back it up.

Yikes Jeff, sorry to hear that happened to you.

I have been wondering if it makes sense to have a one catalog per year, just to keep the catalogs small, which may help with performance.

No more "remind me next week" for me!

-TM

I know it doesn't harness the full power of catalogs, but I have one catalog per job. I have no interest in a big, bloated catalog with every image ever shot.

Really, all I care about are the xmp files but it's nice to have catalogs too.

Glad to hear it wasn't TOO painful Jeff.

So when you upgraded it didn't create a copy of each catalog and upgrade that? Mine did that automatically... hmmm

Wow, what a bummer man. Have you called Adobe about this to see if there is any fix?

I have been looking on the forums (inc Adobe) and nobody has a fix that worked for me yet. For some, moving the catalog into a different folder on the computer worked. For some, importing the old catalog, into a new catalog worked. For some, like me, nothing worked.

For me, I think it is more of an inconvenience at this point. But I think when I am editing a wedding of 1300 images (gross, not to client) and most of the editing is in LR...Man! If I lost that kind of time, that would hurt. I am almost thinking that at the end of each working session, I should export anything I have finished as a Tiff or DNG, so the changes are locked in. I would then still have my raw file if I ever really needed to go back to that state.

That said, I love the new LR2. With the exception of maybe 20% of my files that receive personal attention in PS (specific actions, skin work, ect.) there is just no reason not to do the whole thing in LR2 and maybe run some specific batch actions on export. And the dual screens work great.