Making backups over time allows you to recover from a catalog corruption by allowing you to recover from one that was made before the corruption. I would go into Edit (PC) or Lightroom (Mac) > Catalog Settings, and change the backup frequency to Every Time Lightroom Exits (or Once a Day). Then close LR regularly and back up.
Just to be sure: I have every desire to be able to recover all data and work at any time.
What I've been doing (since a Lightroom crash some time ago) is to
- set Lightroom to write changes to XMP
- back up Catalog on exit
- back up the back-ups to a second spindle.
My personal
pomodoro is about 2½ hours. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . I can accept losing a whole plump tomato worth of work if "tighter" data/work security cuts my tomato into pieces.
You suggested above relying solely on regular back-ups (and not using, and therefore not creating, up-to-date XMP files).
frequent catalog backups are a better approach to protecting against corruption, since writing to XMP leaves out pick/reject flags, virtual copies, presence in collections, and step-by-step edit history (but not the edits)
As long as I can accept:
- doing a full close of Lightroom with attendant back up, at the end of every work session, and
- risking the loss of any work done during the most recent work session
do you recommend the workflow of:
+ Set Catalogs to NOT write changes to XMP
+ Open Catalog
+ Work on Photos
+ Close Catalog and back up
+ On last back-up of day, have Lightroom check Catalog integrity and optimize Catalog?
Is there any reason to have Lightroom "automatically write changes into XMP" (as it is worded at "Catalog Settings ▹ Editing")?
I should note that the XMP issue I brought up in this thread may be resolved when I move this very large Catalog+Previews to a dedicated drive.