Corrupt Lightroom Files

[karina_a]

<p>Hi,<br>

I am wondering if anyone else has problems with corrupt files in Lightroom? We have now for the third or fourth time had a file become corrupt in LR. It is nothing to do with uploading from cards etc as it always happens when the files have been in LR for some time. This time it has only happened to one file, but in the past it has happened to several within the same folder at one time. This time I actually watched it happen - one minute the photo was fine, and the next minute it was corrupt. When it is corrupt it doesn't say it is corrupt, but appears corrupt with funny pink lines through it as in the screen shot below. Googling brings up other people with this problem, but no solutions. Anyone found out what this is and if anything can be done to repair it, and how to avoid it? I am editing a wedding, and whilst I have backups it does not inspire confidence to have photos corrupting before my eyes.<br>

We are currently using LR 2.6, but will upgrade soon to 3. <br>

Thanks for the help! Have a great day : )<br>

Karina </p>

[karina_a]

<p>Whoops - the file must have been too large - will try again:</p>

[karina_a]

<p>Sorry - Don't know why the photo is not displaying - the file is small enough and I included a caption - I will try one more time - perhaps the file format is not acceptable.</p><div></div>

[garrison_k.]

<p>Karina, what happens when you open the photo in a different application? I'd perhaps try that before concluding LR is the problem. You might have a hard drive on the way out.</p>

[bob_sunley]

<p>Files get corrupted due to hardware problems in the computer. Bad memory, an error on the internal data bus between peripherals, lots of causes, and no easy way to find them. About the only place they don't get corrupted is writing and reading them to/from a hard disk. The disk controller hardware has error checking in the frimware to make sure it writes and reads data to/from the platter without errors. Unfortunately, the rest of the computer doesn't care about dropped or added in bits in the data streams.</p>

 

[marc_rochkind]

As Bob says, it may be a memory problem. Few computers have error-checking memory. Run memory diagnostics

(very time consuming) and replace the bad module.

 

--Marc

[ellis_vener_photography]

<p>More than likely they photos are on a a hard disk that is going bad. Do you already have your photos backed up on a separate drive? </p>

[digitaldog]

<blockquote>

<p>More than likely they photos are on a a hard disk that is going bad.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That’s what I’d suspect too, that’s been the case for me the very few times I saw this kind of issue. Its a good idea to always verify the data before you erase (format) your cards. When converting to DNG, a verification takes place, or there are utilities that you can run an even more robust test on the original raw files as well (ImageVerifier: http://basepath.com/ImageIngester/ivinfo.php). If after this verification process you end up with such issues, you know its that hard drive, hopefully you have the cards to go back to or a backup you made after ingestion and verification. </p>

[karina_a]

<p>Thanks so much everyone. My husband ran a memory test (Rember) and everything was ok. The file still shows up the same in other programs, but a backup file seems to be normal. There may be something in the suggestion that the hard drive may be going bad - we have terrible luck with hard drives and have had a number of them go on us over the years. We do have backups (we keep three). I will pass on that info re verification to hubby - thanks Andrew.<br>

Thanks again for your help everyone!</p>

[garrison_k.]

<p>I've had a couple external hard drives go bad and give me this aggravation as well. But never an internal. I'm not sure if it was because of the brand (seagate) or because the external just aren't used as much. Regardless, I'm in the camp that does not trust delicate hdd's as my only form of back up and can't sleep until there is a dvd copy as well.</p>

[bruce_anthony_king]

<p>I've started having these pinky corrupt files today. NOT funny! </p>

<p>I run Lightroom 3.3 on a 3 year old Mac Pro running 10.6.5 with 8GB of RAM. Yesterday when I closed Lightroom, the file we last looked at was fine. Today when I opened Lightroom, it was corrupt. At first, the small preview didn't look corrupt. It only looked corrupt when I was looking at the large preview or zoomed in. Then finally the previews caught up and they were corrupt too. At that point, I had hoped it was the sidecar file and duplicated the raw .CR2 file, but that too was corrupt. I opened the file in Photoshop and it showed the same corruption.</p>

<p>As I write this, I now remember a corrupt file from yesterday. I noticed it on import and just wrote it up to something funky during the import process. I deleted the file and imported it again and it was fine that time.</p>

<p>I should also mention, regarding hardware, I have a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ with three 750GB HD's and one 1000GB HD, so it's running a X-RAID configuration. I have .6 out of 1.9TB's free. For those unfamiliar, this is connected via gigabit. When I import, I import directly from the CF/SD card to the Netgear RAID via a usb card reader. Could it still potentially be one of those hard drives? I can't imagine that! How would I know which drive? Maybe....it could be my RAM. I almost hope for that, since that can be tested.</p>

<p>Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.</p>

<p>Jim</p><div></div>

[garrison_k.]

<blockquote>

<p>Could it still potentially be one of those hard drives?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes</p>

[bruce_anthony_king]

<p>Yikes! I can't imagine how to figure out which of the 3 drives it is. I know one of the drives is a parity drive, but my understanding of the X-RAID is that the data is spread between the other 3 hard drives.<br>

Jim</p>