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LR Backup and External HD

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rvin

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  1. Windows 10
I bought a Seagate 8 TB external HD for LR back up. The Mirror activity lets you create a Mirror folder on your PC or Mac that is synced to your Mirror folder on the storage device.
Whenever you add, edit, or delete files in one folder, Toolkit automatically updates the other folder with your changes.
The LR cat and images are on my HD in a folder called LR. Moving the cat and 50,000 images into the Mirror folder seems a bit extreme to me.
I could continue to back up manually to the external but this would defeat the purpose of the auto feature.
Am I approaching this wrong? Any suggestions???

Thank you,,
Richard
 
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rvin said:
I bought a Seagate 8 TB external HD for LR back up. The Mirror activity lets you create a Mirror folder on your PC or Mac that is synced to your Mirror folder on the storage device.
Whenever you add, edit, or delete files in one folder, Toolkit automatically updates the other folder with your changes.
The LR cat and images are on my HD in a folder called LR. Moving the cat and 50,000 images into the Mirror folder seems a bit extreme to me.
I could continue to back up manually to the external but this would defeat the purpose of the auto feature.
Am I approaching this wrong? Any suggestions???

Thank you,,
Richard
Click to expand...

Saving a LR catalog while is it open can save the database in an unstable state. If that file on the mirror is then opened, LR may find it corrupt. OTOH, if LR is closed, then the catalog file is stable and the mirror will be also. Backing up the LR catalog file using the backup on close option always produces a stable file and any backup or mirror of that will be stable too.
Mirror is NOT backup. There is no version history and if you screw up the master file, then the mirror file is screened up too.
And example of Why you want a real system backup: For example you remove keywords from 2000 images by accident. Six months later you discover this mistake. How are you going to correct this huge mistake? You can do this with LR backup catalog files or with a true system backup app like Time Machine or Similar product.

This mirroring function is fine when your drive fails but only in that one instance. IMO seagate is in the business to sell EHDs. If you double your data stored, you double the need for more EHDs. The app is good for Seagate’s business not yours.


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Yes, on many levels. ;)

On a tangent: Mirroring a huge folder is no different really than copying it manually. If only changes are sync'd to the mirror, and if (as you do) you want to have a copy of all images, what's the big deal?

But...

A mirror is not a backup, if it literally mirrors the changes. Let's say you accidentally deleted a file on your HD, and noticed a few weeks later. The mirror likely also has deleted it, and you are out of luck.

Or a more scary example, your PC gets infected with ransomware, and it encrypts all your images. The mirror then dutifully mirrors the encryption and now your backup is held ransom as well.

To be a real backup you need one that is versioned, and allows a restore to a point in time. Depending on your O/S (I'm guessing windows) there are many such products out there, but the idea is that you do one full backup once, then daily (+/-) you copy over all changes. If a file is changed, it keeps the old and new copy both. There may be limits, e.g. if it is changed every day maybe it keeps only the last 30 copies, or maybe only 90 days... you can set it in most programs.

The extra space for this is usually small, since especially with a raw (non-DNG, or at least without metadata writeback DNG) you are not changing originals even if you continue to edit. But it becomes absolutely critical for common problems. About the only time you do NOT need it is when you lose the original disk all at once, catastrophically. Historically that was likely, now not as much -- human error, software bugs, malware, and similar slow, hard-to-notice issues are far more common.

I've used both Goodsync and Cloudberry backups, the former more capable, the latter much easier to use, and both can also make a copy in the cloud (your cloud that you purchase separately). I do not suggest those are the only (or even best) tools, there are MANY.

But do not use a simple sync/mirror approach.

And do backup images and catalog. You do not need to back up the catalog previews, or catalog backups (separately). Also if you have presets, profiles, etc. review the file locations for those and make sure you are backing those up also. I think this is still current:

Lightroom Classic File Locations | The Lightroom Queen

PS. Dang, Cletus types faster than I do apparently. :( Hopefully all this wasn't completely redundant. Think of it as stereo!
 
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Cletus/ Linwood,,
Thank you and thank you for your time and insights. I'll be forever grateful for saving me the tears and anguish down the road.
Not redundant Linwood,even if it were I appreciate your input.
Be well gentleman and thanks again!!

:)
 
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