LR Classic catalogue on OneDrive (MacOS), minimising bandwidth usage

[nremy1984]

Lightroom Version

11.2

Operating System

1. macOS 12 Monterey

Hi everyone,
I have read half a dozen threads on the topic of using OneDrive with Lightroom Classic so I think my question is slightly different.
Besides, most over threads were from Windows users, whereas I am one of the odd Apple lovers that also loves... Microsoft Office! And I've got a Onedrive 1 TB storage as part of my Office plan.

Anyways, my intention is to move everything (still within my Macbook Pro internal storage) related to LR Classic into the folder that syncs with OneDrive. Meaning I'll be moving the following:
-LR Classic Catalogue
-Catalogue Backups
-RAW files
-PSD files, for the 2% of my images where I do the LR->PS->LR round-trip.

From what I've read in other posts, I am not expecting any particular issue (I was initially concerned that OneDrive would tamper with my files and cause LR Classic some grief), save for an issue with XMP files, but I've just un-checked the "create XMP" option.

The only thing that bothers me is that my 1.4 GB catalogue is going to be fully re-uploaded to the OneDrive Cloud whenever I do the slightest change in any one photo. In fact, I do open/close LR Classic multiple times per day, so I think this will be quite inefficient.

Hence my thinking is to deviate from my initial plan: the LR Classic Catalogue could be the only file that I do not move to the OneDrive folder.
However, if my catalogue gets corrupted, or I loose my laptop, I could always resume from my latest LR Classic backup (one backup created weekly, which would straight away go to OneDrive Cloud).

Is there any flaw with my thinking, or any better suggestion?

It would be great if OneDrive was able to only sync the small changes within the LR Catalogue whenever I work on it, but I understood from this thread that it wasn't possible, at least in 2018,

thanks and have a good day
Nicolas

 

[Steven_LR]

I used Lightroom with OneDrive - due to the limited storage on my Surface device.

You have three sync options with OD, Desktop, Documents, Pictures - I used Pictures. The LR catalog and related images were in the Pictures folder.

OneDrive will sync the adds and changes. It works well.

I have since stop using OD for the image storage (still store the LR catalog on OD) - moved to DNG, and those files do not have sidecar files.

 

[BobT]

I'm sure many of us are waiting with baited breath to see how you get on. It would be heaven to have the catalogue and entire image library on OneDrive. I tried once. With a small catagogue, it worked like a dream. I then tried with my full image library. It did a few strange things so I quicky back pedalled and pulled out before any damage was done. I suspect LrC has issued with uploading delays. It would be great if Adobe and Microsoft could get together on that. While they are on that, they might tackle colour management as well :whistling:

 

[Ken @ Canadian Rockies]

IMHO, having a Stored back up copy (that syncs) online and using a local catalog file would work. But I would never try working over a network with a database file. Of any real size anyway.

 

[PhilBurton]

IMHO, having a Stored back up copy (that syncs) online and using a local catalog file would work. But I would never try working over a network with a database file. Of any real size anyway.

How about that sqlite was never designed to work over a network. Full stop.

 

[nremy1984]

Thanks everyone for chipping in.

I'm sure many of us are waiting with baited breath to see how you get on. It would be heaven to have the catalogue and entire image library on OneDrive. I tried once. With a small catagogue, it worked like a dream. I then tried with my full image library. It did a few strange things so I quicky back pedalled and pulled out before any damage was done. I suspect LrC has issued with uploading delays. It would be great if Adobe and Microsoft could get together on that. While they are on that, they might tackle colour management as well :whistling:

I've figured out that's going to be too much of a risk, photography is now my main activity so having cold feet.
Besides, having slept over it, I am really comfortable enough that I will loose at worst a few days of editing, having recent zipped catalogue backups safely stored on my OneDrive.
And I just don't want my home/shared-office with my wife's bandwidth to get cramped whenever I do an edit and as OneDrive triggers an upload.

So, I've decided to go on with the following backup strategy:

LR Catalogue: 1 backup (at home)
-Master on my Macbook local 2TB SSD
-Included in my weekly (or more frequent) Time-machine backup (on external HDD).

LR Catalogue backups: 2 backups (home and Cloud)
-Master on my Macbook local 2TB SSD
-Hourly backup to OneDrive Cloud
-Included in my weekly (or more frequent) Time-machine backup (on external HDD).

RAW files of the current year: 2 backups (home and Cloud)
-Master on my Macbook local 2TB SSD
-Hourly backup to OneDrive Cloud
-Included in my weekly (or more frequent) Time-machine backup (on external HDD).

RAW files of previous year: 2 backups (home and Cloud)
-Master on my external 4TB SSD
-Included in my weekly (or more frequent) Time-machine backup (on external HDD).
-Archived on Amazon Glacier (low-cost Cloud storage, but you only can access data once or twice a year, which is OK for my usage, which would be disaster recovery).

If anyone interested just say, and I'll report in a few weeks time any issue encountered.

 

[BobT]

Thanks everyone for chipping in.


I've figured out that's going to be too much of a risk, photography is now my main activity so having cold feet.
Besides, having slept over it, I am really comfortable enough that I will loose at worst a few days of editing, having recent zipped catalogue backups safely stored on my OneDrive.
And I just don't want my home/shared-office with my wife's bandwidth to get cramped whenever I do an edit and as OneDrive triggers an upload.

So, I've decided to go on with the following backup strategy:

LR Catalogue: 1 backup (at home)
-Master on my Macbook local 2TB SSD
-Included in my weekly (or more frequent) Time-machine backup (on external HDD).

LR Catalogue backups: 2 backups (home and Cloud)
-Master on my Macbook local 2TB SSD
-Hourly backup to OneDrive Cloud
-Included in my weekly (or more frequent) Time-machine backup (on external HDD).

RAW files of the current year: 2 backups (home and Cloud)
-Master on my Macbook local 2TB SSD
-Hourly backup to OneDrive Cloud
-Included in my weekly (or more frequent) Time-machine backup (on external HDD).

RAW files of previous year: 2 backups (home and Cloud)
-Master on my external 4TB SSD
-Included in my weekly (or more frequent) Time-machine backup (on external HDD).
-Archived on Amazon Glacier (low-cost Cloud storage, but you only can access data once or twice a year, which is OK for my usage, which would be disaster recovery).

If anyone interested just say, and I'll report in a few weeks time any issue encountered.

That Amazon Glacier sounds interesting. I'll check it out.

 

[nremy1984]

For those interested in my backup strategy, here's a progress/issue update.

I travelled last week and OneDrive was offline, but I had photos to import to LR Classic each day. I received the following error right from the first day:
"Could not copy a file to the destination folder because it is not writable (103)"

That's when I tried to have newly imported RAWs go in a folder backed-up by OneDrive.
I suspected OneDrive was kindof "keeping a hold" on that folder so while travelling I simply reverted to the default LR Classic folder (on a mac that is /myUsername/Pictures/).

I'll share anymore observations later.