Would you delete your Lightroom back-up files?

jerry12953

jerry12953

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Jeremy Moore
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I've got a huge number of Lightroom backup files (x.lrcat) on my hard-drive and I'm tempted to delete them - or most of them.

While I've been grateful for not deleting them in the past, at 237 MB each (and growing - you now get a back-up each time you close LR down) they're filling up my hard drive like mad.

Any thoughts out there?
 
Why would you need any but the last one or two? The others are likely to be too out-of date, I would think. I regularly delete mine (i.e. when I get around to remembering). If they're getting too large then maybe the catalog is getting too large. You could restart Lightroom and optimize the catalog. Go to Edit (on the PC, the Lightroom menu on the Mac), click on Catalog Settings, then on "Relaunch and Optimize".
 
I normally keep about a weeks worth. Its also worth purging your cache in LR as well.

Steve
 
I take a daily back up - you don't need to back up everytime you exit - you just get that option - and keep about a weeks worth. Older than that and they are too far out of date. Make sure you backup to a different drive from the original catalogue. Better to have your cache on a different drive too. Catalogue should be optimised automatically at each backup.
 
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awp said:
I take a daily back up - you don't need to back up everytime you exit - you just get that option - and keep about a weeks worth. Older than that and they are too far out of date. Make sure you backup to a different drive from the original catalogue. Better to have your cache on a different drive too. Catalogue should be optimised automatically at each backup.
Click to expand...

+1 I delete all but a weeks worth :)
 
Well that's interesting......I'll definitely go ahead.

But I've not come across this as a topic before and can't say I've read anything about it anywhere.

Thanks for backing-up my suggestion, folks.....:shake:

Edit....but as mentioned I somehow managed to make a major cock-up with my LR catalogue about 18 months ago and I was glad that I hadn't deleted my back-ups then. If I had only kept my last few I wouldn't have been able to go back to the point where the problem had happened and re-start.

Edit .... thanks for the other interesting suggestions here, but ...

1 Why would relaunching and optimising help though?

and 2 Why and how would purging the cache make a difference?
 
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The cache is used for RAW files as you work on them. I done alot of archiving recently and purged the cache only as a logical step after doing this. If you have deleted alot of images and need disk space, this will free some up. The cache is rebuilt when you work on the image again.

Steve
 
I had a go at optimising the catalogue and yes, it had been optimised automatically at the last back-up. Thanks awp.

As for the cache, I'm still at a bit of a loss, but I've noticed that if I do a LOT of cloning (for example) in a short time, LR slows down and then stops......... presumably the cache would be full at this point?

Would I be correct in thinking that if you purge the cache it will just fill up until it reaches the 20GB anyway? (or whatever limit you have set for it?)
 
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jerry12953 said:
I had a go at optimising the catalogue and yes, it had been optimised automatically at the last back-up. Thanks awp.

As for the cache, I'm still at a bit of a loss, but I've noticed that if I do a LOT of cloning (for example) in a short time, LR slows down and then stops......... presumably the cache would be full at this point?

Would I be correct in thinking that if you purge the cache it will just fill up until it reaches the 20GB anyway? (or whatever limit you have set for it?)
Click to expand...

When the cache fills up, Lightroom removes the oldest images from the cache to make way for new ones.
Are you working on RAW files when you are cloning?

Steve
 
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vv cephei said:
When the cache fills up, Lightroom removes the oldest images from the cache to make way for new ones.
Are you working on RAW files when you are cloning?

Steve
Click to expand...

Yes, always leave them as RAW's until I need to export them for some reason.

I've read up on the cache since posting and there seems to be pro's and con's to purging it.

I'm surprised that it's not more widely known that you can - or perhaps should - delete large numbers of LR back-up files to save hard disc space. Or perhaps I've been reading the wrong things?
 
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