Lightroom, Time Machine, and archival strategy...share advice for beginners

[rhone]

I am eminently more confused every time I try to research the interplay among time machine, lightroom, and archiving strategy. It's mostly because I'm new to Mac, I'm new to Lightroom, and I've had primitive archival strategies, at best, in the past (the occasional copy to a portable external HDD or burned to DVD, if that ). There's so much posted about these topics, but much of it is from up to 2 years ago, or concerns older OS, not snow leopard, or just creates more questions and doubts at every turn. Furthermore, I continually read where someone has a seemingly robust strategy, but when there's actually an issue, he/she has real issues getting things "right" again in LR.

So I'm hoping to begin a new dialog that can help newer folks understand the current landscape as we enter 2'1', LR 2.5 and beyond (v. 3), and one that is geared toward simple backup strategies, not dependent on multiple layers of third party applications and devices (which I have no doubt is necessary, but consider someone beginning...they search and post about this repeatedly, and I know that I am a case in point).

So, to keep it simple as I begin, here's my plan: I got my mac (running 1'.6, with 5''GB HDD) up and running, I got LR 2.5 installed, and I just got a 1TB external drive. I haven't even connected it yet or begun running time machine. As I start, I envision connecting the external and configuring time machine to back up to that, excluding the LR catalog. But I would not exclude the LR catalog backups.
-Or, is this better: I could exclude the backed up catalogs as well, and back up the catalogs directly to the external drive (I assume I can use the drive for storage, too, and that it doesn't have to be used exclusively for time machine).

My assumption, then, is that if my computer has a catastrophic failure, I can connect my external drive to a new machine or new drive and get everything working again? And vice versa, if the external HDD fails, I can connect a new one and back up my Mac freshly to that (losing past copies, of course).


Other strategies for someone starting out? Please weigh in with your opinion of overall strategy or suitability of my plan? I envision adding a 2nd external drive to the mix in the future, but as I learn Mac and LR, I want to keep things simpler, yet ensure that at the end of the day, I do have my photos if needed (even if it will take longer than a few minutes to get them back). And, of course, I hope this can be a helpful topic for searching newbies in the future.

 

[wilderw]

As I understand it, the reason to exclude your Lightroom catalog from Time Machine would be (a) the size of the file and (b) the fact that the database might end up in an inconsistent state if Time Machine backs up the catalog when open.

Knowing that, I do not exclude my catalog. Time Machine (with default settings) makes a backup each hour and for me the Lightroom catalog would be safely closed for the majority of those instances. With this policy I do need to be cognizant that a Lightroom catalog restored from Time Machine might be iffy but that many other copies might well be good and recent enough.

On top of that - I let Lightroom make it's backups also - and those as well as the underlying Photo folders are also copied to Time Machine.

What I lack is routine and current offsite backups of my backups but I will address that issue when I see a cloud based service that meets my needs.

 

[rhone]

[quote author=wilderw link=topic=86''.msg58136#msg58136 date=126'38'223]
As I understand it, the reason to exclude your Lightroom catalog from Time Machine would be (a) the size of the file and (b) the fact that the database might end up in an inconsistent state if Time Machine backs up the catalog when open.

[/quote]

Well, my concern stems from (b) based on what I've read when searching, but a lot of it is dated information (still accurate perhaps, but can't tell). But if LR backs up its catalog, and then time machine backs those up, wouldn't a worst case scenario in excluding the catalog itself from time machine be a case where the restored version of the catalog is just barely older than what you're currently using (assuming you have LR set up to back up the catalog upon starting lightroom)? True, anything that I've just done would be lost, but assuming the data files themselves are backed up, I can live with that, compared to losing everything. My problem, though, is I don't know if that's accurate...that's just how my tiny little head sees it right now?

What I don't understand, despite trying to read about it, is how time machine is not meant to be archival back up, or something like that.

 

[wilderw]

If you backup your catalog on each start of Lightroom and Time Machine is capturing your backup copies then you are quite correct - your risk profile is low.

Where I differ - is I backup my catalog (from Lightroom) just once a day due to the time the backup takes. So if I launch Lightroom at 8:''am and do a Lightroom backup, later launch at 1:''pm without a Lightroom backup and finish with Lightroom at 2:3'pm then the next Time Machine backup past 2:3' should include my current (and safely closed) Lightroom catalog.

In terms of considering Time Machine as an archive - eventually your Time Machine will fill and Time Machine will begin discarding old backups in order to write new backups. I look at Time Machine as a disaster recovery option going back a certain period in time (that period depending on my level of file activity and the size of my Time Machine partition). Time Machine does not provide the option to recover any file from any point in time.

 

[rhone]

[quote author=wilderw link=topic=86''.msg58142#msg58142 date=126'384542]
Time Machine does not provide the option to recover any file from any point in time.
[/quote]

I suppose that makes sense, but my main concern is protecting the files, period. So for my purposes, the fact that time machine begins erasing very old backups to write new ones shouldn't matter because if I want to keep a photo, I keep it. It will be on Time Machine whether its 1 hour ago or 1' months ago. That's also why I bought 1TB to backup a 5'' GB drive, though, so I would have somewhat of a window. And when the 5''GB HDD fills with data, I'll buy a 2TB drive for time machine and use the 1TB for additional storage of older stuff that I'll also have backed up on DVD.

So, while not an archival device in the sense of preserving forever that snapshot in time, time machine allows the user to recover files in the event of a catastrophe if the files were recently on the drive (assuming the catastrophe isn't on the external drive with time machine)? If I'm correct, as long as I haven't deleted my archives or messed with them, they'll be there. Worst case I'm not protected in the event of a simultaneous device failure (my Mac HDD and my external) unless I've done periodic, bona-fide backups to DVD or other media?

Thanks much for humoring me wilderw, and helping me more firmly understand some topics that were really ambiguous to me (they still are, but less so thanks to your input ).

(and my apologies in advance to anyone who might care for harping on this topic in this forum; I know this is a Lightroom forum, but considering that my photos are about the only things I have that I absolutely care about protecting, that I manage them in LR, and Lightroom's potentially peculiar interaction with time machine, I thought this an appropriate place for the topic)

 

[ccraig]

As to backing up the catalogue, it's not really that big and it's really unlikely to be inconsistent even if you're working on it when the backup is running. A single write transaction just doesn't take that long compared to a human interaction with Lightroom. So I would include it, but if I had to restore it I would let Lightroom integrity check it. There's a very good chance it's a consistent backup and you didn't lose changes since the last time Lightroom backed it up itself. (And if you did lose them you still have the backup copies backed up, too)

As to your image files, yes, if they're included in Time Machine, you should have a backup copy. When Time Machine cleans up old images it leaves the stuff that's still in images newer than the ones deleted.

The reason that Time Machine isn't an "archive strategy" is that that term implies tiered storage. That is "archive storage" is where you put your pictures from 5 years ago that you don't use anymore but might want if the customer comes back and wants a reprint (and you then delete them from your primary storage) Time Machine will happily delete those when it decides they haven't been on the disk in a while so you don't need them anymore. My guess from your question is that you're keeping everything in active storage, so that's not really what you want. If that is really what you want then, no, Time Machine can't do it. Also, I'm pretty sure Time Machine doesn't do any integrity checking on its backups so if you got incredibly unlucky and your Time Machine disk had disk corruption on the same file as your main disk then it's possible you could lose it, but there's a really low chance of that. (And if you want a zero chance of it you're going to need to shell out some cash for a real backup system)

 

[rhone]

[quote author=ccraig link=topic=86''.msg58149#msg58149 date=126'39232']
I'm pretty sure Time Machine doesn't, however, do any integrity checking on its backups (which is one of the reasons it's not good for an archival solution) so if you got incredibly unlucky and your Time Machine disk had disk corruption on the same file as your main disk then it's possible you could lose it, but there's a really low chance of that. (And if you want a zero chance of it you're going to need to shell out some cash for a real backup system)
[/quote]

Thanks, that made sense to me, so I appreciate it. Based on that, my understanding is as follows:
-What you've explained is where the safe zone ends in using 1 external drive and time machine. While unlikely overall, if there is going to be a dual failure, that would likely be how it happens. Understanding that risk makes periodic physical backup essential, so that,
-if that dual failure did happen, and the data was backed up otherwise (DVD offsite, e.g.), at least the data won't be gone for good. But doing that, in reality, is easy to put on the back burner, so to speak, so,
-if one wanted to make recovery less painful and more assured, it's time to start thinking more advanced, more automated, more robust, and, by extension, more expensive. However,
-in the meantime, I have a viable strategy to the extent I don't skimp on the DVD back up; when I'm more comfortable about my process, I can start thinking about adding a 2nd external hard drive to mirror the first.

thanks again! I've learned more in these few exchanges than I have trying to piece together piles of random data, and I encourage others to weigh in; hopefully this will be useful to others sorting this out for the first time, too.