# Backup process is frozen



## eschurr (Aug 20, 2012)

It frightens me just to write this email, but here goes...

i recently did a lot of deleting and editing of files in LR 4.1.  I exited LR and backed up the catalog as  i always do upon exiting.  the backup process seemed to freeze when the progress bar was 9/10 of the way through the "Optimizing previews catalog" phase; it was stuck in this position for 24 hours. I just hit the "cancel" button, and now it says it's cancelling, but i don't think it's making any progress; the progress bar hasn't moved.  I'm concerned about what to do next..wait 24 hours and kill the Windows process if it hasn't cancelled?  i'm afraid that will corrupt the catalog and my recent work?


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## eschurr (Aug 20, 2012)

here's an update...the cancel appeared to work, and i got an error message saying LR was unable to complete the backup and maybe it was because of insufficient permissions or disk space (neither should be the case.  this is the same folder i've always used for backups and it's got plenty of space).  It asked me if i wanted to switch to another folder, which i declined, and it's now trying to backup again, but appears to be stuck at the same place it was before.

shaking with fear...:surprised:


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## eschurr (Aug 21, 2012)

...and here's another update:  i'm back where i was before.  the last update attempt froze, so i cancelled it, and now the cancel process is frozen.  I'm deathly afraid that my catalog is toast.

help!  any suggestions?


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 21, 2012)

OK, I understand the "shaking with fear" bit, but that isn't going to help.....so take a deep breath and try to relax.

Obviously the backup process is stuck on something, and if you've waited over 24 hours I think whatever is causing the hang up isn't likely to clear itself. So really, what option do you have other than force-quit Lightroom?

So I suggest you use the Task Manager to end the Lightroom application, wait for it to clear the system, then I suggest you first do a reboot to try to clear whatever was causing the hang-up. When the reboot has finished, press and hold the Ctrl key then start Lightroom as normal. You'll get a dialog box similar to this:



Your 'normal' catalog should be selected (if not, select it), then click on the "Test Integrity" box, then click on Open. Lightroom will, obviously, test the catalog for errors and will open it if the integrity is OK. If it opens OK, you then need to check to make sure the backup process problem has been cleared. Before doing that, though, I personally would close Lightroom first *without invoking the catalog backup*. When it was closed, I'd take a manual (temporary) backup of the catalog first using Explorer, then restart Lightroom again, then close it again but this time letting the Lightroom catalog backup process to run. If it hangs up again, no need to wait 24 hours before getting back to us....


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## gregDT (Aug 21, 2012)

(As I post, a much better explanation beats me to the punch  )

I don't think you're catalogue is broken as this happened to me once before, although it was with LR 3 but on the same OS as you. If you can get yourself out of the back up process I would suggest shutting down LR and then rebooting your PC. Oddly this solves a multitude of sins. It worked for me although I'm not certain exactly what caused the problem. I suspect it was more a windows issue than a Lightroom one?

As far as I am aware the back up process doesn't actually touch your main catalogue file, it simply makes a copy. So your actual data should be fine. You could go find your actual Lightroom catalogue and manually copy and paste it to a safe location, just in case, before you reboot.


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 21, 2012)

No worries, Greg....at least we came up with the same plan!!


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## eschurr (Aug 22, 2012)

OK, first things first: you guys -- and this forum -- are fantastic. Thanks for your help.

I'm so addicted to Lightroom and my 23K+ photos that i did over-panic a bit there.  After I wrote my note and thought about things I realized that the error happened during a _backup operation_ and the main catalog was probably not affected, just as you both suggested.

I followed Jim's suggestions and it all worked fine.  The instructions were perfectly written and easy to follow.

I now suspect what might've caused the issue.  There was a process running while LR was backing up that complained that it couldn't finish while LR was running.  I aborted that process, but it may have somehow interfered with LR's backup operation.

All is good now.  

and thanks again -- so much -- for your help.

Long live Lightroom and it's gurus!


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## Jim Wilde (Aug 22, 2012)

Good to hear, Eric....thanks for letting us know.


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