Beginner Backup of LR Photos and Catalog to external Drive for laptop reformat

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Negan
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Tim
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Could someone point me at a simple tutorial / video / webpage describing exactly what to do when you want to backup and then restore your lightroom catalog as you need to reformat the machine.
(I don't need to reformat - but it's probably going back to Dell for a new keyboard and Dell have a habit of formatting the machine when they do anything...)
I've googled around and found info on importing catalogs into other catalogs, but that's not exactly what I'm after.
Cheers
 
I Am Not A Lightroom Expert

The catalogue is a database that has a reference of where the images are and what changes you've made to them (Develop edits, keywords, etc). It also contains your collections and other bits.

Additionally (and annoyingly), things like templates and preferences are stored elsewhere.

My current plan for a restore from backup is:

1. Put all the images back in the same place.
Same drive letter, same folder structure. The catalogue uses the drive structure to reference where the photo is, so if you change the drive letter from D: to C: for example, your cat will lose where the images are. You *can* fix this later but it's a pain and just easier to keep the folder structure the same.

2. Reinstall LR + Any Plugins (like Nik, Topaz, Neg Lab Pro etc etc)

3. Put your preferences back
\\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\
In this folder there is likely to be a lot of crap. But things like Develop Presets, Keyword Sets, Metadata presets, Custom label sets, Print Templates, Custom book layouts, ... All that nifty stuff that you set up that you thought was part of the catalogue but isn't, is stored here. Unless you never use that stuff. In which case don't worry.

3a. Put any custom raw profiles back
I have some custom dng profiles I built for working with infra-red, which are stored somewhere else! So I need to back these up too. If you don't know what I'm on about, chances are, you don't need to worry. If you've bought any "Lightroom Presets" that include custom curves or raw files, they're in here too. Best to reinstall the presets if you still have them. If you don't though, then back these folders up and restore them after.
\\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles and/or \\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\Curves

4. Put your catalogue back.
The key thing to look for here is the .lrcat file which is the catalogue itself. ".previews" can be deleted as they'll be rebuilt but the .lrcat is the impotant bit. When you open LR for the first time, tell it to open this .lrcat file and if all your images are in the right place, Bob will be your Auntie's lover.

Before doing any of this, *consider* selecting all your images in Lightroom (CTRL+A) and save the metadata (CTRL+S). This will save all your Develop edits and keywords back to the original jpeg file (or sidecar file to raw). This means that if you lose your catalogue, you'll still have all the develop edits and keywords available. You'll lose things like collections and colour codes, but star ratings, keywords and dev edits will remain which means much less of a hassle getting everything back to how it was.

I'm not sure how you're going about this, but doing a full backup of your machine and then restoring it is probably the safest bet as you can ignore most of the above. It's only if you're trying to do a clean install that the above will be useful. I've just had a look through my catalogue folder and it's alarming how many catalogues LR has decided it needs when I thought I just had one.

Hope this helps!
 
Have a look here https://www.lightroomqueen.com/backup-lightroom-files/ but like Harlequin says you might be better backing up the whole m/c.
If you do not have an external HDD already most will come with backup software.
Alternatively you can get a 30 day trial of Acronis, I use the paid version so I don't know what happens with the trial when the 30 days are up there are doubtless lots of similar software around , just musing , depending on the size of photos and catalogue something like google cloud with 15gb free could be a possibility

Edit
You should be doing regular back ups of the whole m/c anyway-if the HDD goes t***s up you will loose everthing.
 
Last edited:
Thanks @Harlequin565 and @troutfisher I think I have the gist now.

You are correct in thinking I do not do a complete machine backup, I'm not planning to do anything like that, I'm quite happy with restoring applications from (well it's not disk anymore but you know what i mean) disk.

Data is protected - Copied to my NAS (raid1), which then automatically backs up to an external disk (which is rotated with 2 others on a monthly basis (one stored offsite (Covid-19 permitting))) and also all photos and sidecars are automatically backed up from the NAS to the cloud using amazon prime's free photo backup.
So in the event of a true disaster, I believe I have the data stored safely (even if it would take a little work and time to restore it all).

But from reading the post and the article, restore seems to be:
Reinstall LR
Re-install plugins / brushes etc.
Copy the .lrcat back
Copy the files back to exactly where they were before.
Start Lightroom (presumably you have to tell it to look at the restore catalogue?)

I found this bit very interesting:
Harlequin565 said:
Before doing any of this, *consider* selecting all your images in Lightroom (CTRL+A) and save the metadata (CTRL+S). This will save all your Develop edits and keywords back to the original jpeg file (or sidecar file to raw). This means that if you lose your catalogue, you'll still have all the develop edits and keywords available. You'll lose things like collections and colour codes, but star ratings, keywords and dev edits will remain which means much less of a hassle getting everything back to how it was.
Click to expand...
Because I wouldn't be worried about losing the collections and colours (I don't use either), it's the edits, flags and keywords I'm most interested in.

So I did a little test and copied a few (raw + xmp & jpg) files to a new location and then imported them (I had to turn off the "don't import duplicates" bit) and the Edits and Keywords were copied across. Flags were not (I can live without that I guess).
So worst case scenario is that I will have the edits and keywords already backed up (restoring the cat does seem the best option though :) )

Cheers
 
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