# "The file could not be read." error message



## Harv Sawatzky (Sep 22, 2017)

I recently set up a catalog on my desktop for a small set of photos from my larger catalog that I have on an external mirrored RAID set up with two 2TB drives. This allowed me to work on a small set while I was travelling. Yesterday when I switched back to my main catalog I started getting this error message "The file could not be read." in the develop module. Yesterday I was able to view files in the Library Module, but now I am getting the message that "There was an error working with the photo." and there is an exclamation mark in a black circle in the images in the library and in the filmstrip in the develop module. I have tried deleting my preferences file. I have also updated to the latest version of Lightroom 6.12. Any help with this would be welcome. I am on a MacBook Pro 2012 with 16 GB of ram and run OS 10.12.6.


----------



## happycranker (Sep 22, 2017)

Welcome to the forum, Harv. When this message occurs it means that the pictures have been moved since the catalog was created. Did you move them within LR or did you use the file manager?


----------



## Jim Wilde (Sep 22, 2017)

I don't think it does mean that, happycranker. An exclamation mark, but not in a dark circle, does indeed mean the file is missing, but the exclamation mark in a dark circle means exactly what the message says, i.e. Lightroom is finding the file OK, but it's having trouble reading it.

Harv, is this error message appearing on every image, or just a few? Is there any connection with the images that you were using in that small catalog that you created? Have you rebooted the MBP since this all started? Can you access the drive and the images OK using Finder?

Just a few questions to start with, but the answers might help us figure out what might be happening.


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Sep 22, 2017)

happycranker said:


> Welcome to the forum, Harv. When this message occurs it means that the pictures have been moved since the catalog was created. Did you move them within LR or did you use the file manager?



No, that is not correct. When the file has been moved, the error says the file can't be *found*. If the error says that the file can't be *read*, then there is a problem accessing the file. In both cases you see an exclamation mark on the slide mount, but they are not the same. A missing file has a 'normal' exclamation mark, a file with a reading problem has an exclamation mark in a black circle, like the OP describes.


----------



## Harv Sawatzky (Sep 22, 2017)

happycranker said:


> Welcome to the forum, Harv. When this message occurs it means that the pictures have been moved since the catalog was created. Did you move them within LR or did you use the file manager?


I didn't move the files. When I created the smaller catalog I exported the photos with that catalog. Going back to my main catalog it appears to know where the files are located. I can ask it to find a file in the finder and it goes to that file in the correct location.


----------



## Harv Sawatzky (Sep 22, 2017)

Jim Wilde said:


> I don't think it does mean that, happycranker. An exclamation mark, but not in a dark circle, does indeed mean the file is missing, but the exclamation mark in a dark circle means exactly what the message says, i.e. Lightroom is finding the file OK, but it's having trouble reading it.
> 
> Harv, is this error message appearing on every image, or just a few? Is there any connection with the images that you were using in that small catalog that you created? Have you rebooted the MBP since this all started? Can you access the drive and the images OK using Finder?
> 
> Just a few questions to start with, but the answers might help us figure out what might be happening.


At first the error message was only on some images. Yesterday it started appearing on all of the images when I selected them. No connection to that small catalog, it was a stand alone catalog and the original images were copied. I did reboot the MBP and nothing changed. I can access the images using the finder. Here is an odd thing though, I can access the images and they open fine in Photomatix Pro but appear to be corrupted if I open then in Photoshop CS. They also appear to be fine if I open them in Preview. This seems to be the case with NEF, TIFF and JPEG files.


----------



## Jim Wilde (Sep 22, 2017)

Preview will only show you the embedded jpeg preview, it can't look at the raw data in your NEFs. The fact that Photoshop is having trouble as well would make me suspicious that there's a hardware gremlin in your system, with your RAID system being the primary culprit. Do you have another backup of the images that you could inspect using Photoshop, i.e. can it open backup copies OK?


----------



## Harv Sawatzky (Sep 22, 2017)

I am completely baffled as to what happened. I disconnected my drive from the computer, turned it off and disconnected it from the computer. I looked at my backup on another hard drive then ejected that drive and reconnected my drive and tried opening photos in my library in Photoshop. everything worked just fine. So I started Lightroom and it looks like everything is now working as it should. I will do a back up of my library as it is right now and will have a current backup in case this issue reappears.

Jim, thanks for your help in trying to solve this problem that appears to have solved itself. Any idea what might have happened?


----------



## LouieSherwin (Sep 24, 2017)

Harv,

This is starting to sound like maybe the hard drive is having problems. It might be the actual disk or the interface including the RAID controller. I would be very careful to make sure that your backup is consistent and frequent. 

One of the problems with RAID systems is that the RAID controller itself is a single point of failure. And the data stored on the disks in a proprietary format and cannot be accessed without the same RAID controller.   If your external disk is truly RAID 1 (mirrored) then you should be able to physically remove either of the drives, connect them to a SATA-USB interface and mount them on your computer. But you cannot tell for sure without actually tearing apart the external RAID system probably something you do not want to do. 

Because of these issues I think that the pre-packaged "mirrored" (RAID 1) external drives do not really provide that much value over a frequent and reliable backup regime like Time Machine. They appear to me to be mostly a marketing gimmick to get you to purchase an more hardware than you really need. You needed a 2TB drive not a 4TB drive.

I think that there are two valid reasons to use a RAID system. 1) you need a single volume that is larger than the largest hard drive available. 2) Your have very high disk I/O requirements (i.e. big database application). Neither of these apply to our desktop Lightroom use model. 

-louie


----------



## Umberto Cocca (Oct 6, 2017)

LouieSherwin said:


> I think that there are two valid reasons to use a RAID system. 1) you need a single volume that is larger than the largest hard drive available. 2) Your have very high disk I/O requirements (i.e. big database application). Neither of these apply to our desktop Lightroom use model.


Louie, This is the definition of Raid 0, not of Raid 1.


----------

