Does Lightroom’s backup back up my photos?

NO!  Lightroom’s backup just backs up the catalog, and it doesn’t contain your photos – only references to where to find them and the data about them.  You need to back your photos up separately.

Every time I hear someone say ‘I deleted the photos because I thought Lightroom backed them up’, my heart sinks.

I can’t say this loudly enough – back up your photos as well as letting Lightroom back up its catalog.  Lightroom doesn’t do that for you.

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February 6, 2009 | Victoria Bampton
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  • mac

    Actually LR can backup original files: select category then export it. LR will backup all the changes and original files together.

    [Very true, thanks for adding that! - VB]

    • Dtbain

      Hi

      Can you a little more. What do you mean: select a category? Do you mean folder or catalog or ?

      Sorry I am new to all this!

      d

      • http://www.lightroomqueen.com/ Victoria Bampton

        Hi D, mac meant that you can select a folder or collection, right click, and choose Export as Catalog with originals checked, and that would create a copy of those photos along with the exported catalog. It’s still not a full backup though, so I’d consider setting up proper backup software to make sure you’re protected.

        • Dtbain

          Many thanks, Victoria. That makes sense. I am now using synctoy to back up the pics, and dropbox to back up the catalog. So hopefully at last I’m covered!

          d

          • http://www.lightroomqueen.com/ Victoria Bampton

            I’m very pleased to hear it D

  • Kastjoe

    Do you have any recommendation on what to use to backup photos to say DVD/CD/BluRay disc? I already make a copy to an external drive but I want a 3rd copy on disc that I can easily store off site.

    I like the backup feature within Photoshop Elements which keeps track of new files and only backs up those files but I prefer not having to keep PSE on my machine for the simple task of backing up photos.

    [CD's are too small, IMHO, so DVD or BlueRay. I'm still using DVD, in addition to my external drive backup. If you're using a date-based folder structure, it's quite easy to track which haven't been backed up to DVD. Personally I assign a 'not backed up' keyword in the import dialog, and then remove it when I've backed up. Works well for me! - VB]

  • Stephen Crescenti

    Best way to backup your photos transparently is to use a Windows Home Server. HP makes one and you can get them for less than $500 not with a Terabyte of space on it. It will wake up your machine if it’s off and backup any new files as well as the catalog.

    What I do now is I have WHS backup both my pix and my catalog, but as a second line of defense, I also burn my pix to DVD/CD depending on the size of each collection AND I also synchronize my catalog with Windows Live Mesh. It takes the file and sends it up to cyberspace where you then have another copy and can be synchronized on multiple machines.

    Hope this helped!
    Stephen

  • Chaorlando

    I use Time Machine to create back ups of my whole machine. What do I have to do in order to back up the photos as they have been edited in LR?

    • http://www.lightroomqueen.com/ Victoria Bampton

      Double check that your photos themselves are backed up by Time Machine – they probably are.

      Then also make sure that Lightroom’s own backups are running – you’ll find that under Catalog Settings. And make sure those BACKUPS are being backed up by Time Machine. The catalog contains all the data about your Lightroom edits. The reason I say to make sure TM’s backing up the backups, rather than LR’s catalog itself, is that if TM tries to back up while LR’s using the catalog, the backup is likely to be unusable, whereas the backups are in a static state and should be ok.