Restore Lightroom from a recovery disc after catastrophic failure.

[hhcawley]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom Classic version 10.2

Operating System

1. macOS 11 Big Sur

I was using a WD My Book Duo to store my photos and catalogue. It has totally failed and I am waiting for my recovery disc from the local data recovery store.

They have recommended that I get an NAS, RAID configured, to use in future. I was wondering the best way to move my RAW data to the NAS and the catalogue to my iMac so that Lightroom recognises everything.

Thank you in advance for your help.

 

[clee01l]

The default location of the folder containing the master catalog and previews is a sub folder of the System Pictures folder . That folder is called Lightroom. Restore that folder to the Pictures folder.
The folder containing your images folder should be restored to the new NAS.
Once done, when you open your master catalog file in Lightroom, the images folders will be indicated as missing. This is because they are now located on a different volume.
In the Lightroom Classic Folder panel, right click on the top most level missing folder and choose "Update folder location".

FWIW, you do not need a NAS. And you do not need RAID, Especially RAID. What you do need is a system backup app like TimeMachine running constantly as a background task to back up all of your critical data to a dedicated backup volume. Your backup volume needs to be large enough to accommodate all of your critical data on both the Primary disk (MacIntoshHD) and your volume containing your images. If you want to back up to a NAS, I's suggests getting a TimeCapsule from Apple.
RAID is not backup. Any errors that you create simple get replicated to all of the RAID configured disks. If you accidentally delete a file on the RAID drive, it is gone forever and not available on any backup volume unless you are running a system backup app. If your RAID package runs a proprietary file system, when the RAID Controller fails, you will lose access to all of your data stared on the RAID disks until you replace the RAID controlled with an identical RAID controller that can read the proprietary RAID filesystem.

 

[Paul McFarlane]

I concur with all Cletus mentions. One other point to note is that access speed using a NAS will always be slower than a directly connected device.

 

[hhcawley]

The default location of the folder containing the master catalog and previews is a sub folder of the System Pictures folder . That folder is called Lightroom. Restore that folder to the Pictures folder.
The folder containing your images folder should be restored to the new NAS.
Once done, when you open your master catalog file in Lightroom, the images folders will be indicated as missing. This is because they are now located on a different volume.
In the Lightroom Classic Folder panel, right click on the top most level missing folder and choose "Update folder location".

FWIW, you do not need a NAS. And you do not need RAID, Especially RAID. What you do need is a system backup app like TimeMachine running constantly as a background task to back up all of your critical data to a dedicated backup volume. Your backup volume needs to be large enough to accommodate all of your critical data on both the Primary disk (MacIntoshHD) and your volume containing your images. If you want to back up to a NAS, I's suggests getting a TimeCapsule from Apple.
RAID is not backup. Any errors that you create simple get replicated to all of the RAID configured disks. If you accidentally delete a file on the RAID drive, it is gone forever and not available on any backup volume unless you are running a system backup app. If your RAID package runs a proprietary file system, when the RAID Controller fails, you will lose access to all of your data stared on the RAID disks until you replace the RAID controlled with an identical RAID controller that can read the proprietary RAID filesystem.

Many thanks for this, you make it sound less daunting.

It seems that Apple have discontinued the Time Capsule though. I was warned that I would need to back up the NAS.

I am a bit of a novice on computers. I had time machine backing up my book duo, but am not sure about retrieving it as it does not show on the back up disc.

 

[hhcawley]

I concur with all Cletus mentions. One other point to note is that access speed using a NAS will always be slower than a directly connected device.

As I just replied to Cletus, Apple have discontinued the Time Capsule, do you have any other suggestions?

 

[clee01l]

As I just replied to Cletus, Apple have discontinued the Time Capsule, do you have any other suggestions?

I was not aware that Apple discontinued the TimeCapsule. Mine is still going strong. Any attached NAS can be designated the destination for a TimeMachine backup. I backup to alternate volumes so that I always have two recent backups to restore from in case one of the disks fail.

By default TimeMachine only backs up the primary volume. You need to add additional volumes (like your image volume) and the destination disk needs to be large enough to hold data from all of the volumes being managed by TimeMachine.


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[Johan Elzenga]

I was using a WD My Book Duo to store my photos and catalogue. It has totally failed and I am waiting for my recovery disc from the local data recovery store.

Didn't you make catalog backups? I'm afraid that the experience with recovery of the catalog from a crashed disk is not good. This often fails.

 

[hhcawley]

I was not aware that Apple discontinued the TimeCapsule. Mine is still going strong. Any attached NAS can be designated the destination for a TimeMachine backup. I backup to alternate volumes so that I always have two recent backups to restore from in case one of the disks fail.

By default TimeMachine only backs up the primary volume. You need to add additional volumes (like your image volume) and the destination disk needs to be large enough to hold data from all of the volumes being managed by TimeMachine.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Many thanks.

 

[hhcawley]

Didn't you make catalog backups? I'm afraid that the experience with recovery of the catalog from a crashed disk is not good. This often fails.

Yes, but I did not copy TIF files! Fingers crossed for the recovery.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Yes, but I did not copy TIF files! Fingers crossed for the recovery.

I’m only talking about the Lightroom catalog file. If you have a backup of that file, you should be safe. TIFF files can usually be restored just fine.

 

[hhcawley]

I’m only talking about the Lightroom catalog file. If you have a backup of that file, you should be safe. TIFF files can usually be restored just fine.

Yes, I do have a copy of the catalogue back up (in fact 2 to be on the safe side)

 

[Per Thege]

I use Mac. I keep all my LR Classic images and catalogue etc on a master external hard drive.
Using Carbon Copy I regularly make backups to other external hard drives of that master drive.

Recently, I used one of my back up drives in LR Classic instead of the master. And all some 100000+ images were missing!!
I realized that the path to the image location was set to the master drive. Of course (!)

I tried to “update the folder location” without success. Nothing happens after I tried this.

I renamed my backup drive to the same name as the master drive, which works nicely.

Is there any other way to change the path to the image location on the back up drive?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Because the folders were missing, you did not see an ‘Update Folder Location’ menu at all. Instead there would have been a ‘Find Missing Folder’ menu that works exactly the same way.