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CAnceling Catalog Backup LR 6

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marinephoto

Active Member
Joined
Dec 4, 2014
Messages
159
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version Number
LR 6.14
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.13 High Sierra
When I exited LR this evening I selected the Backup Option. with 87,000 plus images in my catalog the Backup takes hours to complete. maybe half an hour after the catalog Backup began I learned that there are going to be strong winds and freezing rain during the night. As this might cause a loss of electricity here in rural Maine I decided to cancel the Backup and shut down the computer. So I pressed the cancel button. The message "Cancelling" appeared over the button in the dialogue window but Imhave been sitting here for half an hour and the cancelation process still hasn't completed. HOw long does it usually take for the Backup to cancel? am I going to be up all night?And worse yet I am afraid I might lose power and get a computer crash.

thanks!
 
A catalog with 87,000 images should not take hours to backup. My 185,000 images catalog backs up in just a few minutes. Lightroom 6 made bigger catalogs that took longer to backup than Lightroom Classic does, but IIRC it took maybe ten minutes when I was still using that version. I have no idea how long it would take to cancel the backup because I never had a reason to do so, but probably just a few minutes.
 
A catalog with 87,000 images should not take hours to backup. My 185,000 images catalog backs up in just a few minutes. Lightroom 6 made bigger catalogs that took longer to backup than Lightroom Classic does, but IIRC it took maybe ten minutes when I was still using that version. I have no idea how long it would take to cancel the backup because I never had a reason to do so, but probably just a few minutes.

Johan,

My Catalog backups have always taken a long time, even in LR 2 & LR 3. In LR 6.14 I'm not sure exactly how long they take because I usually start them at the end of my working day and let them run over night. Last night after the backup had run for about half an hour I clicked on the cancel button and "cancelling" appeared on the screen but when I checked 2 hours later nothing had changed. Any idea why my backups would be taking so long? Could it be I have some setting wrong? It seems unlikely it is my computer as the lengthy backup has occurred on two different computers and I am currently using a fairly new iMac with 16 GB of memory and a 1 TB Fushion drive. I've only been using LR 6.14 for a few months and it seems slower and more prone to freezes than earlier versions although I do like improvements in the develope module.
 
Johan,

My Catalog backups have always taken a long time, even in LR 2 & LR 3. In LR 6.14 I'm not sure exactly how long they take because I usually start them at the end of my working day and let them run over night. Last night after the backup had run for about half an hour I clicked on the cancel button and "cancelling" appeared on the screen but when I checked 2 hours later nothing had changed. Any idea why my backups would be taking so long? Could it be I have some setting wrong? It seems unlikely it is my computer as the lengthy backup has occurred on two different computers and I am currently using a fairly new iMac with 16 GB of memory and a 1 TB Fushion drive. I've only been using LR 6.14 for a few months and it seems slower and more prone to freezes than earlier versions although I do like improvements in the develope module.
There are no settings, except for the destination of the backup. You may have a problem with that catalog, so the following option may be an idea to try out: Create a brand new catalog in Lightroom, then use 'Import from Another Catalog' and import your current catalog. For 'File Handling' choose 'Add to catalog without moving'. Check how fast this new catalog will backup. If it is significantly faster, then use this one as your main catalog from now on. Everything you've done should come over, the only thing that will not come across is publishing services. If there is no significant difference, then you can continue to use your existing catalog, and a lot of patience.
 
Johan,

My Catalog backups have always taken a long time, even in LR 2 & LR 3. In LR 6.14 I'm not sure exactly how long they take because I usually start them at the end of my working day and let them run over night. Last night after the backup had run for about half an hour I clicked on the cancel button and "cancelling" appeared on the screen but when I checked 2 hours later nothing had changed. Any idea why my backups would be taking so long? Could it be I have some setting wrong? It seems unlikely it is my computer as the lengthy backup has occurred on two different computers and I am currently using a fairly new iMac with 16 GB of memory and a 1 TB Fushion drive. I've only been using LR 6.14 for a few months and it seems slower and more prone to freezes than earlier versions although I do like improvements in the develope module.
Marinephoto,

What is your backup device? Is it connected via USB? USB 2 or USB 3? If USB 2, you may not know that USB 2 is about 10X slower than USB 3.

By the way, if you back up to the same drive that contains your catalog, you are running a real risk. If that drive should fail, you could lose both your catalog and your backups. I'm not a Mac person so I could not advise on backup drive choices, and I can't describe how you should set up Time Machine on an external drive.

Phil Burton
 
There are no settings, except for the destination of the backup. You may have a problem with that catalog, so the following option may be an idea to try out: Create a brand new catalog in Lightroom, then use 'Import from Another Catalog' and import your current catalog. For 'File Handling' choose 'Add to catalog without moving'. Check how fast this new catalog will backup. If it is significantly faster, then use this one as your main catalog from now on. Everything you've done should come over, the only thing that will not come across is publishing services. If there is no significant difference, then you can continue to use your existing catalog, and a lot of patience.

Johan,

I did some more digging on LR Catalog problems and found a thread where you mentioned Develop Module history panels growing very large. I have never purged my develop history and don't doubt it contains a lot of data. I just checked the size of the catalog on my internal drive and it is 13.5 GB. As with most things related to LR I have no idea whether that is an appropriate sized catalog for a collection of 87,000 images some of which have never been edited? To clarify another point when I exit LR with the integrity /optimize options checked it backs up to a folder on my internal drive. I then drag and drop a copy of that catalog backup to 2 different external drives. While the original backup to the internal drive takes hours the drag and drop operation completes in just a few minutes. Do you think deleting the develop history would significantly cut down on backup time?
 
Johan,

I did some more digging on LR Catalog problems and found a thread where you mentioned Develop Module history panels growing very large. I have never purged my develop history and don't doubt it contains a lot of data. I just checked the size of the catalog on my internal drive and it is 13.5 GB. As with most things related to LR I have no idea whether that is an appropriate sized catalog for a collection of 87,000 images some of which have never been edited? To clarify another point when I exit LR with the integrity /optimize options checked it backs up to a folder on my internal drive. I then drag and drop a copy of that catalog backup to 2 different external drives. While the original backup to the internal drive takes hours the drag and drop operation completes in just a few minutes. Do you think deleting the develop history would significantly cut down on backup time?
13.5 GB for 87,000 images is a very large catalog. My catalog contains about 185,000 images now, so probably about 150,000 images when I was still using Lightroom 6. I don’t think it has ever been bigger than about 4 GB.
 
13.5 GB for 87,000 images is a very large catalog. My catalog contains about 185,000 images now, so probably about 150,000 images when I was still using Lightroom 6. I don’t think it has ever been bigger than about 4 GB.

Johan,

Could the Develop Module history account for the large catalog size and would deleting it reduce the catalog size. If the answer to this is no, what else could account for such a large catalog.

Thanks!
 
Could the Develop Module history account for the large catalog size and would deleting it reduce the catalog size.
"Yes" to the first question, and "almost certainly" to the second.
 
"Yes" to the first question, and "almost certainly" to the second.
Jim thanks for the heads up on catalog size. I had never been aware of the effect that Develop Historys could have on catalog size and backup times. I'll delete the histories on most of my old images and see if that helps.

Thanks!
 
Do a backup copy of your catalog (so you can reverse back) and delete all the history and all your photos. Compare the size of the bakup catalog and the "purge" catalog, ther should a big difference.
Tne you, you can go back to to "non purge" and decide for which photos you want to delete the history.
 
Philleppe, good suggestion. I am working on a client job right now but as soon as I get the time I will strip the develop history from a catalog and see how much it reduces the size of the catalog. If it really cuts down the size I plan on doing a search of the catalog for images rated less than 3 stars and then strip the develop history from them. I would hate to lose the history for 4-5 star images.
 
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