Catalogues

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Amberlith

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Victoria Bampton was kind enough to answer my post "Auto Bkup" and said: "You should have a small lrcat - which is the catalog and should be backed up, and you should have a larger lrdata which is all of the previews, which isn't essential to back up. And LR's backup doesn't back up the photos, so you'll still need to do that."

I've delved into many sources for the answers to my situation without success. Hopefully I'm making a mountain of a molehill and a simple description of how LR catalogues work will do the trick.

The problem is that I apparently have TWO Lrcats and a Lrdata (not just one Lrcat and one Lrdata) one of which (we'll call it "A")is on the system drive, is 138 MBs and another (we'll call this one "B") which is located on a remote drive and is 1.5GBs. Neither of these is the main photo file. If I hide the Apple "Pictures" file where "A" lives, LR can't find a catalogue. If I eject the entire drive where "B" lives, (which is also the file where I've directed LR to back up to), LR still opens with the correct catalgue.

My questions are: Is this normal? Does this mean that the drive one sets as the LR backup HAVE to be on the system drive where the program is loaded? Is the 1.5 GB "B" file expendable? What are the identities of the TWO Lrcats?

My apologies for seeming to go on about this, but, I really need to format the system drive and handle all files correctly.
 Thanks for any help!
 
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Re: Handling Catalogues for HD Refomatting

Amberlith,

OK, you're still not really telling us what we need to know. First thought, 138 MB is, very approx 4k images in Lr. 1.5 GB should be in the neighborhood of 5',''' images. That's a pretty big catalog. Which of these best fits your perception of your correct working catalog?

First let's talk about how Lr opens a catalog file. You can set Lr to ask you each time what file to open. You can set it to open the same specific file every time. You can set it to open the most recently used file. This option is set in Edit > Preferences > General Tab > Default Catalog panel. In addition, you can double-click a *.lrcat file, and Lr will open it.

With Lr open to the catalog which you believe is correct and complete, do Edit > Catalog Settings > General Tab. The top panel should display the location and the name of the currently open catalog. How does this compare to the two catalog files you're concerned with?

If that doesn't help, try double-clicking on each of the catalogs, and see which one opens as the correct version.

I'm not sure this has anything to do with the auto-backup, which should simply make a copy of the currently opening catalog (at start time) in a dated subfolder in a folder named Backup.

I also don't understand what you mean by 'neither of these is the main photo file'. That's not consistent with normal Lr terminology.

Nonetheless, from what you say about hiding the 'Pictures' folder, I believe that the "A" version is the correct version. Try the experiments I suggested to verify that. I have no idea what the huge 1.5 GB file is, double clicking it may yield some info.

Try this stuff, and let us know what you find.
 
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Re: Handling Catalogues for HD Refomatting

On a Mac it's Lightroom>Preferences rather than Edit>Preferences
 
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Re: Handling Catalogues for HD Refomatting

By " neither of these is the main photo file", I only meant to say that they are catalogues and are not the actual photos.

I sacked the rest of my question for the much simpler one below.
 
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Re: Handling Catalogues for HD Refomatting

Another thought; is it necessary to MOVE the catalogue which is automatically set up by Lightroom to the destination one chooses as the backup location? In other words, have I inadvertantly set up parallel catalogues?
 
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Re: Handling Catalogues for HD Refomatting

[quote author=Amberlith link=topic=8242.msg56''6#msg56''6 date=1256918467]
Another thought; is it necessary to MOVE the catalogue which is automatically set up by Lightroom to the destination one chooses as the backup location? In other words, have I inadvertantly set up parallel catalogues?


[/quote]
No, you can have your in use Catalog and it's back ups on separate drives, in fact that is good practice.
With the back ups I only keep two or three and delete the oldest.
It looks like you are fine!
 
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Re: Handling Catalogues for HD Refomatting

Geoff, Thanks for the reply.

Is the purpose of the backup, then, only for restoring the "in use", or original, lrcat and has nothing to do with startup? Or, looked at another way, is the backup only a safety feature that doesn't actively do anything until one needs it for file restoration?
 
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Re: Handling Catalogues for HD Refomatting

Yes the catalog back up function backs up only the catalog itself, no previews, no image files. It's purpose is to provide a copy of the catalog in case of corruption or system failure.
 
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