Before I screw up again....

[mldiggs]

Before I mess up my catalog again, I want to make sure I can do what I think I can do with no loss of processing history.

I have a November Catalog that I exported and tested after I gave up on all my old catalogs in LR1, LR2 beta, etc. that I had totally screwed up. So my November Catalog has been great: I exported it and used it just I am supposed to and had no problems.

I never deleted all the ancient catalogs and bits and pieces because I was worried that they were somehow tied virtually to my November Catalog.

Now I have exported an updated catalog called December Catalog (i was using November, made lots of changes, and thought, heck, I'll create a new catalog and clean up all that dreck from before the November catalog).

Don't worry, I won't do this every month, but this is how I'm figuring out how things work so I can just rename December "Best Catalog" and keep it named that all the time.

Here is my question: If I delete November and all the old bits and pieces now that I have a fully functional December Catalog, there should be no loss of info from that December Catalog (i.e. it is free-standing and self-sufficient). Is that right?

Then I can rename it Best Catalog and use that moniker for whatever is most up to date and recent. Right?

I just want to make sure I'm not doing something dumb when I clean house a bit.

 

[Brad Snyder]

I think you'll be fine, if when you exported to create the December Catalog, you exported everything. (That is all the photos were part of the export).

While you're cleaning, instead of deleting the old bits, move the old catalogs to an archive location, and zip them. They'll be nice and neat, and small, and you'll have them if you miscalculate again, sometime. Maybe burn them to CD/DVD. When you're satisfied everything's working fine, then maybe delete them.

We all screw this up occasionally, the key is having the right backups to fall back on.