Disaster recovery plan

[Franke]

Hi all,

i have been reading a few threads on backup, but i still have to pop a Q.

My setup is that i have LR 2.3 and i back up my pics and the .ircat (9' mb+) at a NAS and an external HD.

The pics are pretty much straight forvard, and a guess that if they are lost, all i have to do is to put them back whit the same hierarcy as before. Like c:\pics and all the subfolders?


When it comes to the db im not so sure. Say for example that i have a total breakdown of my rigg and i have to reinstall everything. I do a OS install and get LR.

Is it so that the only thing i have to do is to put the pics back and load the .ircat db? No other files nessecary?

It would be of great help if my recovery plan was in place BEFORE disaster strikes. Thanx in advance.

Important:

Path to LR installation
Path to Pics
path to LD_db_.ircat

Thats it?

 

[Kiwigeoff]

That looks pretty good, the only thing you would need to do is regenerate previews.You would also loose your custom presets, etc.If you can do it you can copy all of those to your back up drive for safe keeping as well.

 

[Franke]

Cool, thanx. The presets, are they stored in a specific file, and in that case, do you know what file?

 

[Denis Pagé]

Depending on language and preferences settings, they can be at different places.

But you can go to Menu -> Preferences -> "Presets" tab. Click the button "Show Lightroom Presets Folder...".

 

[Franke]

Right. So if i back up this folder and copy it right back i should be ready to go?

Are these the presets for all the modifications that´s been executed to the pics, or are they stored in the .lrcat?

 

[Denis Pagé]

If you read from the link I gave above, you will see that you can optionnally store them with the Catalog. Mostly useful for those frequently transfering their Catalog form Desktop to Laptop and vice versa. Modifications for the images are all stored within the Catalog.

By the way, the Catalog is an .LRCAT file type and not .IRCAT. The .LRDATA is the container for all previews and if it is not recovered from a backup, it will simply be regenerated on demand or as needed. Other things you may want to backup are the different plugins and webengines you may have downloaded. Just take them from where you placed them.

 

[Brad Snyder]

Photo adjustments are always maintained in the *.lrcat file. They can optionally be stored in an additional location as well, if you're interested, ask.

Presets and templates are basically used only when you apply them to a photo or Lr's setup. Once that's done, you could delete the preset from the system, and your photo wouldn't be affected. (Although, clearly that lessens it's value as a preset ).

Just to clarify Denis' post above, generally on Windows, presets, templates and preferences are maintained in the 'Application Data' folder tree. Which takes different names on different Windows versions, and is usually set to 'hidden' by default, so it can be hard to find if you're not aware of that gotcha'. You can optionally elect to store the presets with a given catalog, the details of which Denis explains in the link he gave. You don't say whether Windows or Mac, so let us know the exact OS, and we can tell you the exact place to look.