# Questions about "Error Writing Metadata" warning



## Replytoken (Nov 9, 2011)

It seems that this warning has cropped up on a very large number of images in my primary catalog.  I am not certain what has suddenly caused these warnings to crop up because I do not write at all to my images (mostly DNG, but a few JPEG as well), but there have been several major changes in my set-up recently, including an update to LR 3.5 and migrating from XP to W7-64.  I searched the forums, but found little useful information with the exception of a stray reference to a possible permissions problem, which may be possible in this case as my images reside on an external drive.  I would rather not have to do a Ctrl-S as a vast majority of my catalog is impacted, and I am not even sure what the difference is that LR thinks exists.  Any words of wisdom on problem solving this issue?

Thanks,

--Ken


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## pgman (Nov 9, 2011)

Replytoken said:


> It seems that this warning has cropped up on a very large number of images in my primary catalog.


This bad news, very bad news indeed. You are "scre..d". I've had to deal with the same problem for the last 6 weeks.

1. Error writing the metadata is the 1st step of the errors.
2. Then comes Error writing to the ... file.

For me, the cause was 2 fold:

1. Upgrade from Windows 7 to 7sp1
2. Upgrade to 3.5 final

Going back to 3.4.1 didn't solve the problem. I had to go back to Windows 7 by reformatting and re-installing ... What a nightmare.

The good new is that you have not lost your data "yet"!

1. Do a full backup of: 

    a: the catalog
    b: the settings
    c: your LR serial number
    d: the photos
    e: the sidecars
    f: may be windows and the rest too, but as a separate backup

2. Go to the 'All Photographs" collection, Ctrl-A (select all) and Ctrl-S. Depending on the size it can take up to a few days (120k photos = 1 day + 17 hrs for me)

Then download the new LR 3.6rc, it may be able to deal with your problem. But do that only after your backup, it may screw it up more for all we know (it just came out yesterday.)

Hopefully you do not have to deal with the nuclear option of rebuilding everything.


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## Replytoken (Nov 9, 2011)

I did a little be more searching, and came accross a post in another forum that thought this behavior could be the sign of a failing hard drive - not the information that I wanted to hear.  My images are backed up, but I may want to mirror the drive and replace it before anything happens.  Any thoughts?  And, any suggestiosn to determine what metadata LR thinks has changed?

--Ken


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 9, 2011)

I'll agree with backing everything up, and personally, yes I like mirrored backups as they're quick to get up and running again.

That said, you could rule out file permissions for the external - considering your upgrade from XP to W7, there's a good chance that's caused it.


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## Replytoken (Nov 9, 2011)

Victoria Bampton said:


> That said, you could rule out file permissions for the external - considering your upgrade from XP to W7, there's a good chance that's caused it.



Thank you for the reply, Victoria. I switched machines around Aug./Sept. and later upgraded to 3.5 from 2.6, so its kind of funny that it took this long to either be noticed or to happen. Regarding ruling it out, what do I need to do? I am still wet around the ears with W7-64, as its very different from XP in many respects. Also, any advice on determining what the "changes" to the metadata might be?

--Ken


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## pgman (Nov 10, 2011)

Replytoken said:


> I did a little be more searching, and came accross a post in another forum that thought this behavior could be the sign of a failing hard drive - not the information that I wanted to hear.



No. There's no connection, anything could be a sign. All modern hard drives support SMART http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T. Going to your manufacturer's website, you will be able to download one for free. There are a few more generic ones, especially with Linux rescue/boot disks.
Notice that you didn't say that it was affecting the catalog itself. Catalog settings > Metadata  and disable automatically write changes into XMP. and see if you have any more problem?
If you know what you are doing, use SQLiteBrowser and compact/vacuum then check the log to see if there is any problem? *Make sure that you do this on a backup copy of your catalog*, then see if you still have problem
If after this you still have any problem go back to LR3.4 and test it again on a backup catalog.


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 10, 2011)

Replytoken said:


> I switched machines around Aug./Sept. and later upgraded to 3.5 from 2.6, so its kind of funny that it took this long to either be noticed or to happen. Regarding ruling it out, what do I need to do? I am still wet around the ears with W7-64, as its very different from XP in many respects.



Hmmmmm, yeah, I didn't realise there was that big a time difference.  Seems more unlikely to me too, in that case.

If you do want to check permissions, I'll have to leave you someone else's capable hands.  W7 was released after I switched to Mac, so you're probably more comfortable with it than I am!  It's on my to do list...


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 10, 2011)

Ken, I'm no expert on permissions but there are lots of blog posts available which might help sort them outif they are messed up, such as this one. From my own personal experience, I found that having an Admin account allowed me to continue to create new folders when importing into the pre-existing folder hierarchy, but I was NOT allowed to mess with the pre-existing files/folders within that hierarchy as they 'belonged' to the previous (XP) user account. Fortunately that was a temporary issue as just after discovering the problem I moved to a new PC and all the folder hierarchy was copied into the new drives using the new Win7 user account. Problem solved indirectly.

One thing you could try....pick a file in your catalog that you *know* was created before your upgrade and try to rename it within Lightroom. If it works, you can rename it back knowing that permissions are probably fine. If it doesn't work (i.e. you get an error message saying the action was not done), then that may be the problem.


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## Replytoken (Nov 10, 2011)

Thanks for the additional information, everybody.  I had hoped to have some time last night to address this issue, but my schedule has been insane these last few weeks to say the least. :disgusted:  I am hoping to find some time tomorrow or Saturday to try out a few things, and I will report back, and most likely ask more questions, as I try and plow ahead.

Thanks for the support,

--Ken


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## Replytoken (Nov 11, 2011)

Well, this "issue" has become somewhat of a time vampire.  An additional search did not turn up any useful information except a reminder as to why I never liked Adobe's forums.  It always amazes me as to the level of hostility that seems to accompany so many posts there.  So, I tried Jim's link above, but it seems that my folders properties do not present the same dialog boxes for permissions as those in the instructions.  I am not sure why, but I am also believing that this may not be the problem as I will discuss in a minute.

I also tried to "repair" LR 3.5, but that had no impact.  Then, I opened up a backup catalog, and that seemed to exhibit the same problem.  I tried to create a new LR3 catalog from a LR2 catalog and the problem was still there.  The only time that the problem was not there was when I opened the older LR2 version of this catalog in LR2.6.  So, I am inclined to believe that there is some kind of "issue" with LR3.5 with this catalog that 2.7 (and possibly 3.4) did not have.  I would like to spend more time problem solving, but I am running out of ideas as well as time.  I owe a number of people images, and I need to get working on them while my schedule permits.  But, I am still open to suggestions.

Thanks,

--Ken


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 12, 2011)

Couple of other thoughts and questions for you.

Did you go straight from 2.7 to 3.5, or did you go via 3.0?  There was a bug in 3.0 that caused unsaved metadata warnings.

And, can you just clarify what exactly you're seeing?  Is it an 'error writing metadata' error message, or just a metadata mismatch icon on the thumbnails?  That may offer clues.  And how long ago did this start?


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## Replytoken (Nov 13, 2011)

Hi Victoria,

Thank you for hanging in there with me on this annoying issue.  I set up the new W7-64 machine with 2.7 in Aug/Sept.  Then, in mid-October I believe that I added 3.4 because I remember that a newer version was released very shortly afterwards, and 3.6 is still an RC.  The problem just started sometime between Nov. 6-8 when I suddenly noticed the mismatch warning icons appearing in the thumbnails.  The last time that I added any images to this catalog was on October 20.  I did add some images to another catalog after October 20 and before Nov. 6, but that catalogs seems fine.

For this catalog, I normally use ImageIngester to create/rename DNG files that I import in place with LR.  The files are stored on an external drive, but my catalogs are on my laptop's internal drive.  My standard practice is not to write to these files.  The only thing that I have done out of my normal work flow was with the other catalog that seems fine.  I had returned from a trip to another time zone and had forgot to re-set my camera's internal clock before a local photo shoot.  I discovered this after importing NEF files to that catalog (again my normal routine for that particular catalog).  To adjust the dates, I went into the Metada tab in the Catalog Settings Menu selection and checked the box that allowed me to change the time settings.  Now, I selected all of the images from the shoot and adjusted their time settings by 3 hours, and while the operation seemed successful in the LR catalog, I did not see any changes when I examined the files outside of LR.  I suspect that this is because I did not write this change to the files with a CTRL-S, but I decided to leave things as they are.  I do not like when programs write to RAW files, and I did not want these files to have side car files.  But, as I said, this was all with the catalog that is not showing any problems.  So, unless there was some type of cross-catalog corruption, I cannot see how the actions of one catalog impacted another.  I would be happy to provide you with any additional information.  In the mean time, I have backed up this catalog, but have been working a few images that need to be completed and sent out for printing.  I hope that my explanation above makes sense, and as always, any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

--Ken


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 13, 2011)

When's daylight saving time change there?  Don't suppose it was that weekend?  I'm taking a long shot!


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## Hal P Anderson (Nov 13, 2011)

Victoria,

Daylight saving time changed in North America at 2:00 AM on 6 November. 

Sounds suspicious. And scary. 

Hal


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## Replytoken (Nov 14, 2011)

Victoria Bampton said:


> When's daylight saving time change there?  Don't suppose it was that weekend?  I'm taking a long shot!



Hi Victoria,

But how would this account for the random nature of some files being flagged and others not?  There does not seem to be any identifiable pattern as to which files were flagged.  Most of the impacted ones tended to be in the last few years, but I cannot see any pattern.

--Ken


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 14, 2011)

Not a clue, just seems a real coincidence.  I'm really short on ideas.  If it were me, I'd check I was happy with what was in LR, and write out to xmp and see if it happens again.


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## Replytoken (Nov 14, 2011)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Not a clue, just seems a real coincidence. I'm really short on ideas. If it were me, I'd check I was happy with what was in LR, and write out to xmp and see if it happens again.



Hi Victoria,

This is one time that I wished I had not stumped somebody!  Reading this thread, http://www.lightroomqueen.com/commu...m-changes-dng-file-properties-upon-import-why , I am wondering if there are some common issues.  I wish that I could "diff" a file with a modified version as Brad suggested in that thread to see what LR thinks has changed.  I would then feel better about writing out the XMP data, knowing what were the changes, but then I would probably have to select the entire catalog, because these modified files are all over the place.  Not something I am looking forward to. 

--Ken


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 15, 2011)

Well, you could do something like that Ken.  Maybe take a sample of the images, copy them to a new location, and import them into LR.  And then compare anything you can find - metadata, Dev settings, etc.


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## Replytoken (Nov 16, 2011)

Hi Victoria,

I am hoping to have some time next week, so I will try to investigate a bit further.  In the mean time, I am assuming that the rest of the catalog is fine for use.  I'll try to report back what I find out.

Thanks for hanging in there with me on this,

--Ken


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## wianb (Nov 16, 2011)

I have the same problem - Error Writing Metadata - but only with random JPEG files. This has been the case ever since LR Ver 1. The only way I have found to overcome this is to read the offending files into Photoshop, make a small un-noticable adjustment and save it. Never had the same problem with NEFs or DNGs, it's annoying but I can live with it.


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## Replytoken (Nov 16, 2011)

I am slowly learning to live with it, and probably do so once I know that there is no underlying problem other than this being a minor bug in LR.

--Ken


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## Hal P Anderson (Jan 29, 2019)

Juliet,
Did you copy wianb's post verbatim on purpose? Does that match your situation exactly?


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 29, 2019)

Hal P Anderson said:


> Juliet,
> Did you copy wianb's post verbatim on purpose? Does that match your situation exactly?


Cheeky spammer had inserted a link into the quote.


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 3, 2019)

It's a possibility, so backups are good. What symptoms are you seeing asphalt8cs?


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## Hal P Anderson (Apr 3, 2019)

Victoria,
Asphalt8cs's post is a direct copy of post #3 in this thread. The saga continues.


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## Replytoken (Nov 9, 2011)

It seems that this warning has cropped up on a very large number of images in my primary catalog.  I am not certain what has suddenly caused these warnings to crop up because I do not write at all to my images (mostly DNG, but a few JPEG as well), but there have been several major changes in my set-up recently, including an update to LR 3.5 and migrating from XP to W7-64.  I searched the forums, but found little useful information with the exception of a stray reference to a possible permissions problem, which may be possible in this case as my images reside on an external drive.  I would rather not have to do a Ctrl-S as a vast majority of my catalog is impacted, and I am not even sure what the difference is that LR thinks exists.  Any words of wisdom on problem solving this issue?

Thanks,

--Ken


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 3, 2019)

Hal P Anderson said:


> Victoria,
> Asphalt8cs's post is a direct copy of post #3 in this thread. The saga continues.


Doh.


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