Backup feature is at wrong side of the workflow

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rhubarbandcustard

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When you open up Lightroom, you do so for a reason - to get stuck into looking at photos, importing some or whatever. The last think on your mind is performing a backup ! So you always tend to say - nah - i'll skip the backup test and integrity test because i just want top get stuck in.

INSTEAD - why not have the option when youre closing lightroom down ? Once youre finished with your photo editing, exporting or whatever, you can leave lightroom and tick yes - i want a backup and close please , and let it do it all in the background while you get on with your next job !

makes much more sense and am surprised that a piece of software that is mainly focused on correct and efficient workflow would have it all the right way round.

Cheers
halid

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You can backup anytime just by copying the catalog. Lightroom's backup don't have any special format as it just make a copy after an integrity check.
 
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It's a popular feature request, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it considered in a future version. The logic, as I heard it, was that the computer could end up being shut down midway through the backup if it was at the end, which could ruin the backup. I'm not sure how well that logic holds up!
 
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Also, first thing SQLite does is checking pending transaction in the journal file at startup...
 
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The Backup feature inside LR is probably not the best place to consider backup priorities. If you are really concerned about data loss, you should already have a backup/file integrity package in place to cover all your critical data in the computer not just the LR catalog. The LR Backup only backs up the catalog and does nothing about protecting against the potential for image data loss. If you already have a backup plan implemented and on a regular schedule, you don't need the LR backup. If you consider the LR backup important, you really should reconsider and re-evaluate your existing backup plan and implement something more substantial.
 
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I guess I view backups like I view creating a system restore point before installing software. I want a backup created before I begin any activity in case something happens.

--Ken
 
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Quite logical Nik! And those newbies looking for the save button in Lightroom will wonder why we save before even starting to work!... :D
 
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The only problem I see with backup at the beginning, and IMHO it's a valid one, is that if you do a lot of work in one session, like I do, it is vulnerable for a period of time. I would actually like the option of backing up before and after.
 
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[quote author=Brad Snyder link=topic=7981.msg59975#msg59975 date=126344'456]
That's fixed in V3
[/quote]

I guess part of it is fixed, because it's done upon exit in LR3 Beta. But, afaik, backing up upon startup is no longer implemented, is it?

Beat
 
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[quote author=b_gossweiler link=topic=7981.msg6'''7#msg6'''7 date=1263486745]
[quote author=Brad Snyder link=topic=7981.msg59975#msg59975 date=126344'456]
That's fixed in V3
[/quote]

I guess part of it is fixed, because it's done upon exit in LR3 Beta. But, afaik, backing up upon startup is no longer implemented, is it?

Beat
[/quote]That was my observation. Maybe the functionality to pick when you back up the catalog will be there in the final release. I am one of those (few?) that likes the backup at the beginning of the LR session.
 
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From a technical standpoint it is moot... but for practicality sake it would be nice to have the backup run at the end of your session.
 
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[quote author=sizzlingbadger link=topic=7981.msg61546#msg61546 date=126561'242]
From a technical standpoint it is moot... but for practicality sake it would be nice to have the backup run at the end of your session.
[/quote]For me it is juat as impractical to wait on a backup to finish. My LR induced Backups take a few minutes. When I am ready to shutdown LR, I'm ready to quit for the night. The urgency to begin a LR session is most of the time not as great as the urgency to go to bed. I would prefer having a choice instead of being made to accept some arbitrary decision made by the program development team. In short, backing up the LR catalog at the end does not suit my workflow. Fortunately, I am not dependent upon the LR induced backup as my only catalog backup.
 
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My point exactly Sizzling Badger. For those that argue they prefer to back up at the beginning, I argue that if they had backed up at the end of their last session, they would already have backed up at the beginning of their current one. Of course, however, why not give us the choice? It has been pointed out that it's a simple copy procedure, why can't it be available before during and after. I'm not whining here, I like Lightroom, but I find that all Photoshop products perform in a somewhat bizarre manner when it comes to disk operations. Maybe the new version will make it all moot by implementing backup on request.
 
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LR3 has backup on close rather than open.
 
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[quote author=AJR link=topic=7981.msg62'73#msg62'73 date=1266683'82]For those that argue they prefer to back up at the beginning, I argue that if they had backed up at the end of their last session, they would already have backed up at the beginning of their current one.[/quote]
The point being though that if you only backup at startup, for the period between your last time of using LR and now there's only one version of the database. i.e. if you last run LR last weekend, then your single copy of the database is "at risk" during the week until you run LR this weekend.

Whereas if you backed up on shutdown, you'd have the working and the backup versions during the week should one become corrupted.

The initial poster's point is a good one - I cancel the backup dialog 9 times out of 1' when I launch LR, as naughty as that makes me feel I'm just too keen to see my imports :)

However as clee'1l quite rightly pointed out earlier, you probably don't want to rely on LR's backup anyway - it's better to include the LR database as part of a regular backup of your system/data (I have the database, its backups, and all images backed up to a separate drive on a regular basis - though never as regular as I'd like :)).
 
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It would seem to me that an on-demand backup is a little self-defeating. Why would you want to run a backup while LR is running? If you don't and are willing to LR close to run the backup, you have one option - soon to be two.
LR 2.x can be set to back up the next time you start LR.LR 3B2 can be set to back up the next time you exit LR.
In both those cases you are writing to a non-live database without the burden of LR's system overhead or the risk that you can damage your catalog by making a change to a file that is backing up. If you just want an option to backup at will, the two options listed take a couple of mouse clicks to execute and your catalog backs up on demand. I am not even certain you can backup a file with LR Open.
I struggle to see an advantage to an on-demand backup other than saving a couple of keystrokes or having to dismiss a dialog. Correct me if I am not seeing something.
 
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[quote author=mrgooch link=topic=7981.msg63445#msg63445 date=12694415'2]We should also have the backup feature within the software so that if we choose at any moment we can backup.[/quote]Tle LR catalog is actually a databas file and LR uses SQLite as the database engine to manipulate the data in the database. SQLlite is a single user/single threaded database and the file (*.lrcat) is open for update only while LR is running. Lightroom may be updating this file in the background while you are doing other things in LR. You can not make a copy of this file (back up) while it is open. It would be terribly in efficient to stop all background LR operations to make a copy of this file while LR is open. In the current version backups occur before LR has opened the lrcat file. In the next version, LR will need to finish all LR database operations at the backend of the workflow and close the file before the backup can begin. I don't expect backups at finish in LR3 to be as speedy as backups at the beginning of LR2.
 
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