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BACK UPS

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ramgcano

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Location
playa del carmen , mexico
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Intermediate
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Classic
Lightroom Version Number
LIGHTROOM CLASSIC V9.3
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  2. macOS 10.13 High Sierra
I HAVE NEVER BACKED UP MY CATALOG. HOW DO I GO ABOUT THIS? CAN I BACK UP THE WHOLE THING AT ONE TIME? HOW? WHERE DO YOU RECOMMEND STORING IT?
 
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Welcome to the forum. You can create a backup by going to the Edit menu and selecting Catalog Settings. At the bottom of the window are the backup settings. When you exit LR, the window will appear and you can create a backup. Here are more detailed instructions: How to back up catalogs in Lightroom Classic . Remember, this only backs up your catalog files. It does not back up your image files. These need to be backed up separately. I recommend no less than two backups at a minimum. You can buy a couple of external drives and use them. And since you are on a Mac, you can also use Time Machine.

Good luck,

--Ken
 
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Yes, the backup function backs up all the catalog file, but not previews (which can be created again in LR). So, once you create the backup, which resides in a folder named by the date and time, you will want to copy it to one of the external drives. You can do this manually, with sync software or with backup software like Time Machine. I would store one of the external drives offline, the other would ideally be stored off premises, like in an office or a friend's house. And, if you have cloud storage, you could put a copy there as well.

--Ken
 
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Hello Ken, a year and a half later. I just connected aan external drive and ran Time Machine. So that backed up everything on my Mac, right? Now , my doubts are: Should I leave the drive plugged in always? When i quit LR and back up internally from LR should I choose the external device as location or put in the same location (my internal drive) and Time Machine will then bac up the catalog backup each time?
 
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There is no one right answer to this question. I do not use Time Machine as I work on a Win10 machine so it is hard for me to say if it should be plugged in and running in real time all the time. I tend to leave drives not in use offline in case something happens to my machine. I do not want them to also be impacted. But, if you are having software back up a drive, then it does make sense to have it on and plugged into your computer. What might help answer your questions are determining how valuable this information is to you and how often it changes. If it is valuable and changes often, then you need to be running something with a lot of frequency. If it changes little, then you do not need a real-time solution unless the information is valuable and cannot be replaced or recreated. I suspect that there may be some Time Machine users that can give you a more in depth answer about that software.

Good luck,

--Ken
 
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ramgcano said:
Hello Ken, a year and a half later. I just connected aan external drive and ran Time Machine. So that backed up everything on my Mac, right? Now , my doubts are: Should I leave the drive plugged in always? When i quit LR and back up internally from LR should I choose the external device as location or put in the same location (my internal drive) and Time Machine will then bac up the catalog backup each time?
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TimeMachine is designed to run constantly as a background task 7X24. It will catch any changes made to any of the files designated to be protected with a backup. You should run it constantly and every 30 min. It will update any files that have changed. The Lightroom Catalog backup is just a copy of the active file when you exit the App. While TimeMachine will backup the catalog file when Lightroom is running, there is no guarantee that the file is in a stable state and that the data is going to be recoverable if you restore from the “live” file. For that reason I always recommend backing up the Catalog backup copy with TimeMachine. The Lightroom Backup should be on another disk separate from the active catalog because it will be required when your primary drive fails. TimeMachine will not backup file on the same volume as the TimeMachine sparsebundle. So you will need a third EHD to store the Catalog backup and any thing else you don’t want stored on the primary disk. Since my recommendation is to use TimeMachine to backup two separate volumes, the disk user as the TimeMachine volume will need to be large enough to accommodate all of the critical user data on all of the other disks being backed up.


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