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Status Awaiting review
Workspace Feature requests
Categories Capture One Pro
Created by Guest
Created on Jan 30, 2024

Database connection FAILED

What problem do you see this solving?

I have done nothing differently in the last 24 hours with my hard drive or my computer but today I attempted to open capture one and got this prompt "database connection failed." It seems I've lost months of photo edits without a clear path to recovery. Please advise. This is a problem. 850gb of edits gone atm.

When was the last time you were affected by this lack of functionality, or specific tool?

First time.

Current workaround

Are you using any workarounds or other solutions to achieve your goals in Capture One?

No.

  • Guest
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    Feb 12, 2024

    Hello Everyone, sam pb with my catalog, pls someone available fo help me ?

    Best regards

  • Eric Valk
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    Feb 7, 2024

    Cyrus Murdock  

    Glad to hear that your situation is resolved -  that would be an awful lot of work to loose.

    Not to to conflict with anything that Walter may have already recommended, in my 8 years of using Capture One Catalogs I've adopted a strategy which has a few key points:

    1 I set Capture One to backup a catalog every time I close it. Capture One will ask before backing up, and I will reject a backup if I feel its not necessary.

    2. My Capture One Backups are on a different physical drive than the Catalogs

    3. I don't keep image files in a Catalog. Occasionally I make a mistake while importing, but I move the files out of the Catalog as soon as I discover that.

  • Guest
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    Feb 7, 2024

    Many thanks to Walter for taking the time to help me out of this jam. Very kind, and I am very grateful. Thank you all for the support. 

  • Walter Rowe
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    Feb 6, 2024

    369793456837 – I renamed it so it would be ignored.

  • Eric Valk
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    Feb 6, 2024

    Great work Walter.

    I'm new to Journal files, did you rename the journal file so that it wouldn't be used, or did you rename it as something else?

  • Raymond Harrison
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    Feb 6, 2024

    Fantastic news and great sleuthing!

  • Walter Rowe
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    Feb 6, 2024

    FYI .. Over a zoom session I was able to help 16430148796445 recover his catalog. When we looked in the macOS catalog package folder we could see a SQLite database journal file still present. We renamed that file and he was able to open the catalog. We ran a catalog verify and it passed. We then deleted the database journal file.

  • Walter Rowe
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    Feb 4, 2024

    Thanks 369793456837. I missed some of those details above.

    16430148796445 – I help people over Zoom from time to time. If you are interested send me an email to walter @ walterrowe . com

  • Eric Valk
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    Feb 4, 2024

    Hi Walter. I thight that we learned is that his main drive has 170GB of free space, but his external drive has 2.5TB of free space, and that is where his catalog is.

    From his comments I think he has already duplicated it.

    I think what originally happened is that he created a new catalog on his main drive and then tried to import the damaged catalog into it, and of course he would run out of space.

    Of course he's only got room for a few duplicates on his external drive, but if this works he's OK and can eventually delete the original

  • Walter Rowe
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    Feb 4, 2024

    Eric – in the posts above we learned that this is a "stored" catalog of 850GB and they don't have the space to duplicate it.

  • Eric Valk
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    Feb 4, 2024

    Now I have time to do a better folllowup, including mine and Walter's comments and a bit more.

    I think your catalog is named "November - TK 2023.cocatalog"

    I would duplicate it, and call the duplicate something like "November - TK 2023_A.cocatalog"

    We are only going to touch the duplicate catalog and not the original catalog. If things don't go well, we erase the duplicate and make a new one.

    Now right click on "November - TK 2023_A.cocatalog" and you will find a file "November - TK 2023.cocatalogdb" - this is the database file, and seems to be the item causing trouble. I think its been corrupted somehow . Whatever the cause, CaptureOne is saying it can't make sense of it.

    As Walter said, rename "November - TK 2023.cocatalogdb" to "November - TK 2023.cocatalogdb.BAD".

    Then rename  "November - TK 2023.cocatalogdb.backup" to "November - TK 2023.cocatalogdb"

    Notice that first part the name of the ".cocatalogdb" file doesn't match the catalog name anymore. I see that lots of times, it doesn't seem to matter.

    Now start up CaptureOne, and try to open "November - TK 2023_A.cocatalog"

    If it opens, click on  CaptureOne's "File" menu, near the bottom click on "Verify Catalog or Session" and have it verufy (and repair if it asks) "November - TK 2023_A.cocatalog"

    Ask for clarifications if you need and let us know how it goes.

  • Eric Valk
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    Feb 3, 2024

    For what its worth, the idea behind the duplicate catalog is this.
    If the modifications to the duplicate work, and the result is deemed good enough or best possible, this can become the new working catalog and eventually the non functional original will be deleted. I think this will be the case. I have done this in the past when Capture Ones catalog were less robust.

    On the other hand, if the duplicate catalog does not work out, the duplicate is erased and a new duplicate can be created for another try.

  • Walter Rowe
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    Feb 3, 2024

    Quit Capture One

    Rename your.cocatalogdb to your.cocatalogdb.BAD

    COPY your.cocatalogdb.backup to your.cocatalogdb

    Re-open Capture One

  • Guest
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    Feb 3, 2024

    369793456837, sorry, a little confused on these instructions:

    Right click on the duplicate catalog and rename the working database file to anything else, and rename the 1/25 database file by removing "backup", so the name format is exactly  the same as the non-working one.

    I remained the duplicate catalog. Is that the same as renaming the working database? 
    And what is the naming convention I'm looking for in the database files in order to remove "backup"? I'm not seeing that clearly. Sorry for the followups. This is new territory for me. 

  • Raymond Harrison
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    Feb 3, 2024

    Do you have any system backups like Time Machine or others? Backups not done by Capture One? Wondering if there’s an opportunity to pull a catalog file from a system backup when you know it worked? And sorry if this has already been asked and tried 😀.

  • Eric Valk
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    Feb 3, 2024

    OK, so we have one backup from December 20th, and one from January 25th.

    What I would do now is duplicate the "bad" Catalog on your external hard drive (I beleive it has 2.5TB of free space) and rename it of course. Right click on the duplicate catalog and rename the working database file to anything else, and rename the 1/25 database file by removing "backup", so the name format is exactly  the same as the non-working one.

    Now try and open the modifed duplicate with CaptureOne.

  • Eric Valk
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    Feb 3, 2024

    It would be very useful at some point to change your name from First Name Lastname. We don't insist on knowing your real name (I used a psuedonym for many years) but there are 9 others also using "FirstName Lastname" and its difficult to identify your account amongst all the others.

    Even "LastName FirstName" would be helpful.

  • Guest
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    Feb 3, 2024

    Oh thanks! Yeah the backup settings are to backup once a week an the location is says "Volumes/LaCie/November - TK 2023.cocatalog/Originals/2023/12/20/17"

  • Eric Valk
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    Feb 3, 2024

    Those are not ypur regular CApture One backups - from observation those backps inside the catalog are generated when a new version of Capture One opens the Catalog.

    To find your Capture One regular backups, open Capture One settings, selecte the "General" tab, and at the bottom of that window you will find the backup settings and the backup location. 

    It would be very useful to tell us what the settings are, and what folders and files there are at that backup location.

  • Guest
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    Feb 3, 2024

    Actually, I just found the backups in the catalog folder. There are four, the latest from 1/25. Somehow C1 can't see them. 

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