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Lightroom backups/catalogs

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phenshaw

New Member
Joined
Jun 25, 2020
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2
Lightroom Version Number
Lr Classic 9.3
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.14 Mojave
I have a lot of disc space taken up by old catalogs/backups. How do I know which ones to delete without getting myself in trouble? See attached files.
 

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  • #2 Screen Shot 2020-07-09 at 8.12.46 AM.png
    #2 Screen Shot 2020-07-09 at 8.12.46 AM.png
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  • #4 Screen Shot 2020-07-09 at 8.12.10 AM.png
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  • #5 Screen Shot 2020-07-09 at 8.48.54 AM.png
    #5 Screen Shot 2020-07-09 at 8.48.54 AM.png
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The backups are in the backups folder. What you selected in your second and third screenshot is not a backup file, but the previews file that Lightroom needs to show you the images. You can delete it, but because Lightroom will rebuild it that will only temporarily help. Look inside that Backup folder. That is where your backup are and there you can delete all but the latest few backups.
 
When you. exit Lightroom Classic, the Backup dialog opens and lists the destination folder of the backup. You should choose a folder that is not in the same volume as your Lightroom catalog. When volume names "MacIntosh HD" fails, it will contain both your master catalog file and all of the backup copies making it impossible to recover. For the same reason you should use TimeMachine or another system backup app to back up all of your critical data including image files to a dedicated disk drive.
The TimeMaching backup is different from the "backup" that Lightroom Classic makes on exit. Lightroom's "backup" is nothing more than a zipped up copy of your catalog file at the date and time the copy was made. Time Machine OTOH is a versioned backup that will permit you to recover the state of any file every 30 minutes/daily/monthly.
TimeMachine will automatically consolidate the last state of every file in the backup to a monthly backup. Lightroom will make a copy of your catalog file only as it was when you exited for the integrity check, optimization and backup copy. It will keep these Lightroom Backup copies indefinitely until you do your own housekeeping. You need to keep any backup that you might need to recover from a hardware failure or what I call "Stupid user mistakes". I have had to reach back as far as 6 months to correct a "Stupid user mistake".
 
Thanks to you all. It's confusing. There is just so much LR "stuff" & I get myself in trouble every time I try to do house keeping. I do "get" the backups now, but all that other stuff must be important, but could the make it any more confusing? Screen shot #4 for instance. Two columns of mostly LR files. I'm sure some of it is because I've screwed up. I've "gotten by" with LR for years now, and this is the one place I get screwed up.
 
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