Lightroom catalogue Back up questions

C

Clonetrooper

Suspended / Banned
Messages
382
Edit My Images
No
I currently have my LR3 on my C drive and do my editing and after finishing my catalogue is backed upto a folder on my c drive. I then manually back up that folder and copy it to another hard drive for safety. Is there a way to automatically back up the catalogue files to two locations?

Also do you go over these back up files and delete the old ones and just leave the latest few? I've noticed the file is getting rather large.
 
If you are just using one catalogue the question should be what happens if it corrupts and your backup gets copied as a corrupt file ?

You will loose edits for everything.

A better way is to create a new catalogue for each job / session / import and keep that with the raw files - if that corrupts you have only lost the edits for one session.

Also the larger a single catalogue gets the slower LR performs
 
LR backups are just awful. They save them by date which pretty much stops you doing anything automated on them (e.g. to save the last 3 backups of a specific catalogue....).

Easiest way to do what you ask is run a 3rd party sync app. On a Mac I'd use Chronosync. I bet PCs have loads of those.

Better solution might just be to change the backup location to a different drive. You'd only have one copy but it would be in a safer place. The backup location is saved per catalogue too so it's a hassle every time you create a new one.

Adobe need to look at this. ATM far from a robust system.
 
JonathanRyan said:
LR backups are just awful. They save them by date which pretty much stops you doing anything automated on them (e.g. to save the last 3 backups of a specific catalogue....).

Easiest way to do what you ask is run a 3rd party sync app. On a Mac I'd use Chronosync. I bet PCs have loads of those.

Better solution might just be to change the backup location to a different drive. You'd only have one copy but it would be in a safer place. The backup location is saved per catalogue too so it's a hassle every time you create a new one.

Adobe need to look at this. ATM far from a robust system.
Click to expand...

I don't get what you're complaining about to be honest? But I only run catalogue so maybe I'm not understanding what you mean.

Personally on my single cat LR i just have the backup set to run on close (can always skip it if you haven't actually done any new work) with the location set to a separate drive.

That then gets backed up to another drive using allway sync and archived to bluray with any new RAW files.
 
Last edited:
neil_g said:
I don't get what you're complaining about to be honest? But I only run catalogue so maybe I'm not understanding what you mean.
Click to expand...

Yep.

Imagine you have 2 catalogues, A and B.

Anybody sensible would back those up to ../backups/A/date and ../backups/B/date. So backing up catalogue A has no effect on catalogue B. Deleting backups of A has no effect on the backups of B. I can run a script that makes sure the latest 3 backups stay in each folder - so I have 3 for A and 3 for B no matter how frequently I use them.

But Adobe back up to ../backups/date/A and ../backups/date/B

It's essentially impossible to manage backups. In fact there are a few programs to manage backups but they are all crippled by this flaw.

Now imagine you have about 50 catalogues. Either you have gigabytes of backups or you end up with some catalogues backed up and not others.

It's a backup system written by people who don't understand backups. For people who only use one catalogue. It's not professional grade.
 
Thanks guys for the tips, seems everyone is in the same boat and the back up system just isn't that good. Can I though delete the older dated folders from the back up or do they all have to stay to keep a record of my changes to photo's?

I looked each time I shut down and it creates a folder in the back up catalogue it's about 80mb per back up. Ideally I'd like to be able to delete that and keep only the latest 10 for instance?
 
dannyjo22 said:
Thanks guys for the tips, seems everyone is in the same boat and the back up system just isn't that good. Can I though delete the older dated folders from the back up or do they all have to stay to keep a record of my changes to photo's?

I looked each time I shut down and it creates a folder in the back up catalogue it's about 80mb per back up. Ideally I'd like to be able to delete that and keep only the latest 10 for instance?
Click to expand...

Yes you can. 10 is probably too many - most people seem to think 3 copies is enough.

That will work fine if you only have one catalogue. If you have more then it gets messy. See my rant above ;)
 
Thanks guys, yeah I only have one catalogue :) I will delete it down to 3. I'm har drive backing up using acronis regularly so hopefully that's enough :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top