how can I save my work during the work?

[sling]

Lightroom Version Number

6.14

Operating System

1. Windows 10

Hi if I am working with lots of pPictures: How can I save my work without closing Lightroom? I want to be shure that my work is saved if anything happens to the Programm or to my computer. May be there is a seeting like autosave each 30minutes? Many thanks Stefan

 

[Philippe Coudé du Foresto]

There no "save" in Lightroom. It's not the way it works.
LR uses a database (called "Catalog"). Each time you make a modification (either in the metadata, the develop module or a virtual copy, etc) the modification is written in the database record immediatly. The database (catalog) is always up to date, hence no need for a "Save".

 

[PhilBurton]

There no "save" in Lightroom. It's not the way it works.
LR uses a database (called "Catalog"). Each time you make a modification (either in the metadata, the develop module or a virtual copy, etc) the modification is written in the database record immediatly. The database (catalog) is always up to date, hence no need for a "Save".

However,

IF you want to do a catalog backup, you will need to quit Lightroom. If am doing an all-day session with Lightroom, then I quit every few hours precisely to get this backup.

Phil

 

[sling]

thanks for your fast answering. Once I have had an crash of LR and all my work was away. I was wondering because otherwise I made the experience as you said that LR save the catalog during the work without any users need to do. Thanks again, Stefan - Greetings from Germany

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

thanks for your fast answering. Once I have had an crash of LR and all my work was away. I was wondering because otherwise I made the experience as you said that LR save the catalog during the work without any users need to do. Thanks again, Stefan - Greetings from Germany

There is a bit more to the "save" issue, in terms of how your computer is configured. LR commits changes to "disk" frequently, but whether your computer actually writes them immediately depends on how caching is set up in numerous places, from the volume in Windows (cached to main memory) to the actual cache on disk. Here are two check boxes that have some impact (they explain themselves):

Historically windows would take a safe option unless you change it, I do not know what the default is today. Also, vendors that put accelerators in (Intel is one) that use hierarchical storage (e.g. SSD + HDD, Optane, etc.) may not chose wisely (or more precisely may choose unwisely from a reliability standpoint to get faster performance). Finally if using external drives especially NAS you get whole separate caching rules.

So while LR may save its work continually, your computer may or may not. It pays to go through all such places and at least know what options you are using. The above is the most straightforward, drill down from drive properties to volumes, etc. NAS, etc. are much harder and device specific.

 

[Philippe Coudé du Foresto]

Good point, too often forgotten. The fact the data are written by an application doesn't necessarily means the data are physically written to disk, they can be be somewhere in a buffer.
That's exactly why one must always "eject" (via the OS command) an external storage (disk or usb key) before removing it. This command forces the OS to flush all the buffers used to write to the media, so all the data are physically written, avoiding risk of corruption.