Lightroom Backups Versus Time Machine

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Ian Farlow

Ian Farlow

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So, for those using Leopard, and considering Time Machine's hourly backup, is there a need to have Lightroom backup itself when Time Machine will do this as well? I'm thinking that at this point, I'll just have Time Machine handle all of my backup needs and stop Lightroom from backing itself up.

Thoughts?
 
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I'm interested to know how much Time Machine will slow things down - I'm aware that my nightly incremental backup slows my machine up for the 1' minutes or so that it's running... do I really want that to happen every hour?

If it works well though, Time Machine could look like a very promising backup strategy, and I'd agree, it could well render LR's own backup unnecessary.
 
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Victoria Bampton said:
I'm interested to know how much Time Machine will slow things down - I'm aware that my nightly incremental backup slows my machine up for the 1' minutes or so that it's running... do I really want that to happen every hour?
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I was wondering about that myself. I'm guessing that you can't change the schedule. I suppose that if your backup hard drive isn't plugged in then it won't be making the hourly backup.
 
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So far, Time Machine has run two times and I wouldn't have noticed it except that I could hear the hard drive spin up from sleeping. The initial backup took some time, but now it's just doing changed files backups so it's not so intensive.
 
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Ian Farlow said:
So far, Time Machine has run two times and I wouldn't have noticed it except that I could hear the hard drive spin up from sleeping. The initial backup took some time, but now it's just doing changed files backups so it's not so intensive.
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Time Machine is running its third backup as I type this, and I'm not noticing any system slowdown so far. Definitely something to keep an eye on.
 
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Yep. I'm impressed with Time Machine so far.
 
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I guess Time Machine has the advantage that it can keep track of files that have changed as it goes along, whereas any other sync software has to check everything to see what's changed.
 
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I just wonder how things would work if you were working on a shoot and had 12GBs of pictures that you had taken since the last backup and Time Machine kicked in while you were still shooting. There are various ways to get around that scenario, but I would like to see how it would work out(not on a real shoot though).
 
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rcannonp said:
I just saw this, and I bet that the situation with LR is similar.

Aperture: Avoid doing Time Machine backups or restores during Aperture sessions
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This, I think would make sense. If Time Machine would be backing up the LR catalog and data base at the same exact time LR is writing or updating info to these files, couldn't it cause a problem if it were to copy incomplete data?

Just a thought. Not sure how Time Machine is set up to compare files, could be a whole different animal. This is why in my current backup system, I shut everything but the system down for this reason. Which is fine because my scheduled backup is for 3:'' AM :lol:
 
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Interesting article (although short) on Aperture and Time Machine. I had not considered something like that.
 
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For Lightroom it is best to back-up LR using LR to another folder than a subfolder of where your Lrcat Catalog is and then let Time Machine back that up!

The problem is TIme MAchine trying to back-up an open working Catalog, and already archived copy should be fine to back-up!

Don
 
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