Recovering LR Classic folders and collections from Carbon Copy Cloner backup

[fbx33]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom Classic version: 8.3.1 [ 201905241238-dcd7e2de ]

Operating System

1. macOS 10.14 Mojave

For reasons to dumb to list, I deleted my LR entirely, including the Mac folder with all 28K pix.

Fortunately, I have a coupe of recent backups, most recent done with CCC on the Mac to an external SSD.

I have subsequently reinstalled Adobe Creative Cloud, and from there my copy of LR Classic.

Now, how do I import the backup of all folders and collections from the backup copy of my HD?

I tried just importing all pictures, but that only brought the pictures back, not the folders they were in, nor the Collections they were in.

Any ideas how to get this done bring the whole setup back to what it was before I deleted it?

Thx

 

[LouieSherwin]

Hi,

Besides restoring your image files as you have done you also need to restore the Lightroom catalog file. This is where all your collection information is stored as well as develop settings and any other metadata applied to your images.

By default this is stored in folder, "Lightroom Catalog" in your user Pictures Folder and the name of the catalog file is Lightroom Catalog.lrcat.

There are also several other files in that folder that are highly useful but not mandatory to get running again

Lightroom Catalog Previews.lrdata
Lightroom Catalog Smart Previews.lrdata
Lightroom Catalog Helper.lrdata
Lightroom Catalog Smart Previews.lrdata (only if you have created smart previewsl)

Restore these files and you should get all your data back up to the time when the backup was created. If you restored your image files in exactly the same location as they orginally were stored it is likely that you can simply double click the catalog file to launch Lightroom. If the path is not exactly the same then you may have to point your catalog to the modified location.

As an ever better way to protect yourself from accidental problems in the future I highly suggest that you invest in an additional hard drive and turn on Time Machine backups.

-louie

 

[fbx33]

Hi,

Besides restoring your image files as you have done you also need to restore the Lightroom catalog file. This is where all your collection information is stored as well as develop settings and any other metadata applied to your images.

By default this is stored in folder, "Lightroom Catalog" in your user Pictures Folder and the name of the catalog file is Lightroom Catalog.lrcat.

There are also several other files in that folder that are highly useful but not mandatory to get running again

Lightroom Catalog Previews.lrdata
Lightroom Catalog Smart Previews.lrdata
Lightroom Catalog Helper.lrdata
Lightroom Catalog Smart Previews.lrdata (only if you have created smart previewsl)

Restore these files and you should get all your data back up to the time when the backup was created. If you restored your image files in exactly the same location as they orginally were stored it is likely that you can simply double click the catalog file to launch Lightroom. If the path is not exactly the same then you may have to point your catalog to the modified location.

As an ever better way to protect yourself from accidental problems in the future I highly suggest that you invest in an additional hard drive and turn on Time Machine backups.

-louie

Thanks. In the end I just covered my whole drive from a CCC backup & that worked fine. But I appreciate the reply.

 

[LouieSherwin]

That is good news.

Is there any reason why you are not using Time Machine? For system wide backups I find it is the most convenient. I also use CCC but it is mostly use to make backup boot drives.

Using this combination I was once able to restore my system from a complete meltdown of my system SSD in about 30 minutes. I simply booted from my latest CCC clone and then restored from TimeMachine. This updated the clone to the last TM backup which happened to be only 10 minutes before the SSD died. I could of course restored the entire drive from TM but that would have taken several hours.

-louie