# LR 6.4 and Catalog backup - very, very slow or not working properly?



## WesternGuy (Feb 6, 2016)

Ever since I installed Lightroom 6.4, I have been having problems with the Catalog backup when I exit the program.  Eachtime I exit Lightroom, I have the Catalog backed up, Integrity tested,etc.  Since LR 6.4 installation, for some unknown (to me) reason, the process comes up,displaying the "Backing Up Catalog" message box and indicating that itis "Checking catalog integrity".  This process appears to stop with thecompletion bar showing green about 2 cm into the bar and then the processseems to go no further.  It would not "Cancel", nor could I click on the"X" in the upper right corner of the box.  I had to resort toTask Manager to stop the process and shut down Lightroom.  If I choose toskip the backup, then Lightroom shuts down normally.

Havingshut down LR using the Task Manager, it opens the next time and does not giveany indication that anything is wrong, nor that it was shut down"improperly".  There does not seem to be any "problems", but I am wondering why the backup is stopping at the "Integrity Testing" part of the process.

I have purposely left it alone for a few minutes and it is still showing the same -the bar with only about 2 cm of green showing.  It is as though the"Integrity Checking" process was hung up for some reason.  There was once after waiting about 10 minutes, the backup completed properly, but I really don't want to wait that long every time I want to backup the Catalog.

I am interested to learn whether or not anyone else has this problem, with 6.4, and what they did about it.  Alternatively, any suggestions that anyone would care to share will be greatly appreciated.  My only thought is that maybe I need to rebuild the catalog, but I am not quite sure how to proceed with that process.

WesternGuy


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Feb 6, 2016)

There is no problem. You simply have to wait that long...


----------



## WesternGuy (Feb 7, 2016)

I'm sorry, but that makes no sense to me at all, unless Adobe has done something to the "backup" process.  With any previous versions, 6.3, 6.2, I only had to wait maybe 3 to 5 minutes, or less, for the entire "backup" process to complete.  Now with 6.4 I have to wait much, much longer.  Why should the time for backup increase so significantly from one upgrade to the next.  Its not like I have added hundreds of images or make changes to hundreds of them with each edit.

WesternGuy


----------



## Jimmsp (Feb 7, 2016)

WesternGuy said:


> .....
> I am interested to learn whether or not anyone else has this problem, with 6.4, and what they did about it.  Alternatively, any suggestions that anyone would care to share will be greatly appreciated.
> 
> WesternGuy



My LR Backups and Catalog Optimization have always been slow (ie, ~ 10 min). I let them do this once a week. 10 min is no big deal.
But I back up my active catalog and photos daily to an external HD. If I were to ever have a catalog problem, that is the backup I would use.


----------



## WesternGuy (Feb 7, 2016)

Jimmsp said:


> My LR Backups and Catalog Optimization have always been slow (ie, ~ 10 min). I let them do this once a week. 10 min is no big deal.
> But I back up my active catalog and photos daily to an external HD. If I were to ever have a catalog problem, that is the backup I would use.



Jim,  this is interesting, mine have never been that long, until 6.4, which is why I was doing the Backup and Optimization each time I exited Lightroom.  Thus, I wonder what changed between 6.3 and 6.4?

When you say you backup your active catalog and photos daily, does this mean you do this outside of Lightroom?  

As far as the weekly "Backup and Optimization" that you do, do you think this is sufficient and what is it doing that your daily backup isn't?  I guess I don't really understand what the latter is doing.  Any insight that you can provide will be appreciated.  Thanks.

WesternGuy


----------



## JasonB (Feb 7, 2016)

WesternGuy said:


> I'm sorry, but that makes no sense to me at all, unless Adobe has done something to the "backup" process.  With any previous versions, 6.3, 6.2, I only had to wait maybe 3 to 5 minutes, or less, for the entire "backup" process to complete.  Now with 6.4 I have to wait much, much longer.  Why should the time for backup increase so significantly from one upgrade to the next.  Its not like I have added hundreds of images or make changes to hundreds of them with each edit.
> 
> WesternGuy



I haven't actually timed my catalog backup ...... but I would guess it takes about 1.5 to 2 minutes max......  I have roughly 10,000 photos at this time....  No matter what I do a backup anytime I've spent more than 10 or so minutes editing or importing new photos.

How many photos do you currently have, WesternGuy?


----------



## Hal P Anderson (Feb 7, 2016)

It would be interesting to hear what size (in images) the catalogues of Westernguy and Jimmsp have, along with actual timings.

I've got a 4000 image catalogue, and it takes about 17 seconds to go through the entire process. My computer is almost five years old, and has spinning, locally attached hard drives, nothing special. That said, it _feels_ like it takes about a minute.


----------



## Anthony.Ralph (Feb 7, 2016)

Is it anything to do with the backups now being zipped as part of the process?

Anthony.


----------



## Jimmsp (Feb 7, 2016)

WesternGuy said:


> Jim,  this is interesting, mine have never been that long, until 6.4, which is why I was doing the Backup and Optimization each time I exited Lightroom.  Thus, I wonder what changed between 6.3 and 6.4?
> 
> When you say you backup your active catalog and photos daily, does this mean you do this outside of Lightroom?
> 
> ...



I have a catalog of about 100,000 photos. While I have not timed it exactly, the Lightroom backup takes less time than the catalog optimization does. I'm guessing 10 min total, as I tend to walk away from the pc when I do this.
I let LR backup a zipped file in another folder on the internal drive. I view this as "cheap insurance".
My main backup is to an external drive - this is my main insurance policy.

BTW, I have a couple of other smaller catalogs that I occasionally use; one for my photo club that I am webmaster for, and all jpegs, and another for a LR class that I teach. Both are small, and both back up very quickly.


----------



## tspear (Feb 8, 2016)

I have found each release from 5.7 through 6.4 the backup/integrity check has been increasing in time.
If I was to hazard a guess, they have continued to add more verification processes and steps to find problems earlier with each successive release.

Also, there are times Lightroom seems to thrash and then all operations get really slow. It takes the system a while to recover. I used to see this behavior a lot with dBase and Access applications. (am I dating myself?)

Tim


----------



## WesternGuy (Feb 8, 2016)

Hal P Anderson said:


> It would be interesting to hear what size (in images) the catalogues of Westernguy and Jimmsp have, along with actual timings.
> 
> I've got a 4000 image catalogue, and it takes about 17 seconds to go through the entire process. My computer is almost five years old, and has spinning, locally attached hard drives, nothing special. That said, it _feels_ like it takes about a minute.



I have about 50,000 images in my catalog and I am running LR on a fairly new machine - CPU runs at 3.3 MHz overclocked to 4.4 MHz.  I haven't timed the backup/optimization with 6.4, but I will try and do that tomorrow (Monday) and report back.

WesternGuy


----------



## rhynetc (Feb 8, 2016)

I have 53,000 images "in my catalog" and the backup process takes about 2 and a half minutes, with about half of that going to compress the backup.  My catalog is on a PC with an internal SSD and my images are on an external HD.


----------



## WesternGuy (Feb 8, 2016)

rhynetc said:


> I have 53,000 images "in my catalog" and the backup process takes about 2 and a half minutes, with about half of that going to compress the backup.  My catalog is on a PC with an internal SSD and my images are on an external HD.



I am assuming that when you refer to "the backup process", you are referring to the catalog backup that you can get Lightroom to prompt you for at an interval of your choosing.  Your situation seems very similar to mine, no. of images, etc.,  except my images are stored on an internal, 2TB hard drive.

Your experience returns me to my original question as to _why mine takes so long with 6.4 when it took like a few minutes with 6.3_.

WesternGuy


----------



## rhynetc (Feb 8, 2016)

WesternGuy said:


> I am assuming that when you refer to "the backup process", you are referring to the catalog backup...



Yes, I refer to the catalog backup, not backup of the photos.


----------



## WesternGuy (Feb 8, 2016)

rhynetc said:


> Yes, I refer to the catalog backup, not backup of the photos.



Thanks.
-----------------
Here are my stats from a catalog backup this morning to the nearest minute ±:  Checking catalog integrity - 14 minutes, Optimization - 1 minute, Compression - 20 seconds.  Total time 15 minutes and 42 seconds.

So it seems like Integrity checking is taking the biggest slice of time, but it still begs the question as to why this process time takes so much more time than it did under version 6.3.

Is it possible to rebuild the catalog, just in case some of the existing catalog is getting, or is, corrupted, and would this help?

WesternGuy


----------



## WesternGuy (Feb 8, 2016)

rhynetc said:


> Yes, I refer to the catalog backup, not backup of the photos.



Thanks.
-----------------
Here are my stats from a catalog backup this morning to the nearest minute ±:  Checking catalog integrity - 14 minutes, Optimization - 1 minute, Compression - 20 seconds.  Total time 15 minutes and 42 seconds.

So it seems like Integrity checking is taking the biggest slice of time, but it still begs the question as to why this process time takes so much more time than it did under version 6.3.  Although I never timed it (never had reason to), it is estimated that it never took more than about 5 minutes and more likely in the order of 3 minutes for the whole process.  Is it possible that Adobe change the process from version 6.3 to 6.4?

 Is it possible to rebuild the catalog, just in case some of the existing catalog is getting, or is, corrupted, and would this help?

 WesternGuy


----------



## Jimmsp (Feb 11, 2016)

I just measured my times for a 100,000 photo catalog:
Check Integrity : 2:10
Copy Catalog: 1:50
Optimize Catalog: 2:30
Compress Catalog: 2:20

Total 8 min 50 sec. 

jim


----------



## Steve W (Feb 15, 2016)

After the most recent LRCC upgrade last week, I cannot get the Catalog to Optimize.  It starts and just hangs there forever (12 hours and still nothing). I have to shut down the Mac to get out of LR.


----------



## Victoria Bampton (Feb 15, 2016)

Steve W said:


> After the most recent LRCC upgrade last week, I cannot get the Catalog to Optimize.  It starts and just hangs there forever (12 hours and still nothing). I have to shut down the Mac to get out of LR.



That might suggest a problem with the catalog Steve.  Can you try it as a separate step - File menu > Optimize and see if that works ok.  If it does, we'll test integrity as a separate step too.


----------



## Steve W (Feb 15, 2016)

OK. I did that and it hangs up with this.  Only way out is a hard shutdown.


----------



## Victoria Bampton (Feb 16, 2016)

Ok, that would suggest a problem with the catalog.  Do you use Publish Services or mobile sync?  (And if so, do you use them much?)  Exporting everything to a new catalog (File menu > Export as Catalog) might do the trick.


----------



## Steve W (Feb 16, 2016)

Thanks, Victoria. I use neither. So I'll Export to a new Catalog. Do I need to change any preferences so the new one becomes the default?


----------



## Victoria Bampton (Feb 17, 2016)

Once it's finished exporting, open it in Lightroom, then check the first page of the Preferences dialog to make sure that's set to open by default.


----------



## Steve W (Feb 20, 2016)

OK. New Catalog. Looks like it's going to work.  Had to reinstall all my presets and it took the better part of the first day to fetch the previews. But now it seems to be behaving itself.


----------



## Victoria Bampton (Feb 20, 2016)

Great, thanks for the update.


----------



## WesternGuy (Feb 6, 2016)

Ever since I installed Lightroom 6.4, I have been having problems with the Catalog backup when I exit the program.  Eachtime I exit Lightroom, I have the Catalog backed up, Integrity tested,etc.  Since LR 6.4 installation, for some unknown (to me) reason, the process comes up,displaying the "Backing Up Catalog" message box and indicating that itis "Checking catalog integrity".  This process appears to stop with thecompletion bar showing green about 2 cm into the bar and then the processseems to go no further.  It would not "Cancel", nor could I click on the"X" in the upper right corner of the box.  I had to resort toTask Manager to stop the process and shut down Lightroom.  If I choose toskip the backup, then Lightroom shuts down normally.

Havingshut down LR using the Task Manager, it opens the next time and does not giveany indication that anything is wrong, nor that it was shut down"improperly".  There does not seem to be any "problems", but I am wondering why the backup is stopping at the "Integrity Testing" part of the process.

I have purposely left it alone for a few minutes and it is still showing the same -the bar with only about 2 cm of green showing.  It is as though the"Integrity Checking" process was hung up for some reason.  There was once after waiting about 10 minutes, the backup completed properly, but I really don't want to wait that long every time I want to backup the Catalog.

I am interested to learn whether or not anyone else has this problem, with 6.4, and what they did about it.  Alternatively, any suggestions that anyone would care to share will be greatly appreciated.  My only thought is that maybe I need to rebuild the catalog, but I am not quite sure how to proceed with that process.

WesternGuy


----------



## Dachstein (Mar 17, 2016)

WesternGuy said:


> Ever since I installed Lightroom 6.4, I have been having problems with the Catalog backup when I exit the program.  Eachtime I exit Lightroom, I have the Catalog backed up, Integrity tested,etc.  Since LR 6.4 installation, for some unknown (to me) reason, the process comes up,displaying the "Backing Up Catalog" message box and indicating that itis "Checking catalog integrity".  This process appears to stop with thecompletion bar showing green about 2 cm into the bar and then the processseems to go no further.  It would not "Cancel", nor could I click on the"X" in the upper right corner of the box.  I had to resort toTask Manager to stop the process and shut down Lightroom.  If I choose toskip the backup, then Lightroom shuts down normally.
> 
> Havingshut down LR using the Task Manager, it opens the next time and does not giveany indication that anything is wrong, nor that it was shut down"improperly".  There does not seem to be any "problems", but I am wondering why the backup is stopping at the "Integrity Testing" part of the process.
> 
> I have purposely left it alone for a few minutes and it is still showing the same -the bar with only about 2 cm of green showing.  It is as though the"Integrity Checking" process was hung up for some reason.  There was once after waiting about 10 minutes, the backup completed properly, but I really don't want to wait that long every time I want to backup the Catalog.



Hello WesternGuy,

since LR 6.4 I´m facing exactly the same problem. Until LR 6.3 the catalog backup took about 5 minutes, now it takes 35 minutes.
Same problem for Lightroom 6.5

When I switch back to LR 6.3 the catalog backup works fine again.

Any suggestions ?

Best regards

Dachstein


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Mar 17, 2016)

In the dialog that comes up when you quit Lightroom, you can uncheck the options to verify integrity and optimize the catalog, so Lightroom really only makes a backup. That should not take very long.


----------



## Dachstein (Mar 17, 2016)

JohanElzenga said:


> In the dialog that comes up when you quit Lightroom, you can uncheck the options to verify integrity and optimize the catalog, so Lightroom really only makes a backup. That should not take very long.



Yes, I know. But the question is : Why does this integrity check take such long ? In version 6.3 this integrity check took about 2 minutes.
Now it takes about 30 minutes.

There must be a change within Lightroom between 6.3 and 6.4.


----------



## clee01l (Mar 17, 2016)

Dachstein said:


> Yes, I know. But the question is : Why does this integrity check take such long ? In version 6.3 this integrity check took about 2 minutes.
> Now it takes about 30 minutes.
> 
> There must be a change within Lightroom between 6.3 and 6.4.


Likely because the integrity check is producing failures and need to be repaired. It might be a good time to export your whole catalog as a new catalog so that the new catalog has only validated data.


----------



## Dachstein (Mar 17, 2016)

clee01l said:


> It might be a good time to export your whole catalog as a new catalog so that the new catalog has only validated data.



Unfortunately the same problem with the new catalog.
Please notice that LR 6.3 (using the same catalog) does not show this behaviour.


----------



## zoladd (Mar 18, 2016)

I am running Lr 6.4 with about 180,000 photos in my catalog which is now around 4.8GB.  

On my old mid 2010  iMac with 3.06Ghz and 12 GB memory and a std 500GB HDD my total backup/optimise/etc process used to take around 25-30 mins. 

On a new i7 iMac with SSD and thunderbolt for the backup catalogs I just timed it at a bit over 4 mins.  The breakdown was check 2:25, copy ~0:20, optimise ~1:20.  I note however that this test did not follow a long period of photo editing etc, which I am sure would make some difference to the time taken.


----------



## Jerry Fenner (Mar 30, 2016)

Interesting reading....as ever happy to discover others are having these issues too  OK, I can optimise my catalogue but when closing down and running the backup which I like to do every day, it's hanging at the checking integrity stage.... and seriously hanging, never getting past that even when left running overnight. Any suggestions apart from Victoria's re exporting to a new catalogue?


----------



## Victoria Bampton (Mar 30, 2016)

Jerry Fenner said:


> Any suggestions apart from Victoria's re exporting to a new catalogue?



Have you tried it Jerry?  You don't have to keep the exported catalog if it's missing data you need, but it's worth a test.


----------



## Jerry Fenner (Mar 31, 2016)

About to try it this morning....


----------



## Jerry Fenner (Mar 31, 2016)

.... hmmmm .... that option, Export as catalogue is greyed out....


----------



## Victoria Bampton (Mar 31, 2016)

Odd.  Do you have all of the photos selected?


----------



## Jerry Fenner (Mar 31, 2016)

Hi Victoria Eventually got it start.... and it took the best of the day, and have now tried to back up the new catalogue.... and it seems to be still stuck on the integrity checking stage, and that progress bar has not moved for .... 15 minutes or so.... will keep watching.... a great evenings entertainment ahead of me.... At least I have sorted out the Outlook 2013 issue on my shiny new laptop


----------



## Victoria Bampton (Apr 1, 2016)

How big's the catalog Jerry?


----------



## Gil (Apr 1, 2016)

WesternGuy said:


> Ever since I installed Lightroom 6.4, I have been having problems with the Catalog backup when I exit the program.  Eachtime I exit Lightroom, I have the Catalog backed up, Integrity tested,etc.  Since LR 6.4 installation, for some unknown (to me) reason, the process comes up,displaying the "Backing Up Catalog" message box and indicating that itis "Checking catalog integrity".  This process appears to stop with thecompletion bar showing green about 2 cm into the bar and then the processseems to go no further.  It would not "Cancel", nor could I click on the"X" in the upper right corner of the box.  I had to resort toTask Manager to stop the process and shut down Lightroom.  If I choose toskip the backup, then Lightroom shuts down normally.
> 
> Havingshut down LR using the Task Manager, it opens the next time and does not giveany indication that anything is wrong, nor that it was shut down"improperly".  There does not seem to be any "problems", but I am wondering why the backup is stopping at the "Integrity Testing" part of the process.
> 
> ...



I experience the same thing since 6.4. It does finish backing up but it takes about 10 minutes to complete the integrity check. This is a bug. I couldn't find how to fix it myself.
Adobe screwed up.


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Apr 1, 2016)

It's not necessarily a bug. Maybe that check is much more thorough now.


----------



## Jerry Fenner (Apr 3, 2016)

It's about 400K Victoria - I only use one. But this has only just started happening, possibly since the 6.4 update or installing Windows 10, not sure which


----------



## Dachstein (Apr 17, 2016)

Dachstein said:


> Hello WesternGuy,
> 
> since LR 6.4 I´m facing exactly the same problem. Until LR 6.3 the catalog backup took about 5 minutes, now it takes 35 minutes.
> Same problem for Lightroom 6.5
> ...



Hello all, 

for me the problem is solved. Since a few days I have a new notebook. Of course I have installed and configured everything from scratch, took over the old catalog and
my pictures. Now the catalog backup is working fine again and takes about 3 minutes.

Best regards

Dachstein


----------



## Victoria Bampton (Apr 18, 2016)

Thanks for the update Dachstein.


----------



## Dachstein (Apr 18, 2016)

So the problem some of us are fighting with doesn´t have anything to do with Lightroom 6.4/6.5 itself, or the catalog.
Looks like the problem is caused by something else. My old notekook had a long history, I was using it for about 6 years and never
had to reinstall windows from scratch. So a lot of programs have been installed and uninstalled during that time, and a lot of
patches and updates as well. The first lightroom version on that notebook must have been LR 3.x.
Looks like something which happend in the past is disturbing Lightroom 6.4/6.5

I have no other idea why everything is working fine again after a clean installation from scratch.


----------



## Jerry Fenner (Apr 23, 2016)

Still can't get past the integrity checking stage - if I skip that, I'm successfully creating backups but there's still something amiss. My plan is to completely reformat my PC at some point, as it does feel a bit flakey, once I have set up a new workflow that will let me switch between my new laptop and PC at will with files and current year catalogue on an external SSD


----------



## Jerry Fenner (Apr 27, 2016)

OK, so recently I have been unchecking the integrity check box so that i can at least create backups but this morning I left it checked when closing LR (LR is set to backup everyday when closed) and left it to do whatever while I was out.... and it seems to have worked because when I returned LR was closed


----------

