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What files are needed for a complete backup

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Kimmilly

Kimmilly

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Nov 8, 2016
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48
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Intermediate
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Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic 9.4
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  1. macOS 10.15 Catalina
I have been reorganising my photos and making sure that I have 2 good backups of the photos that are in my catalogue.

Could someone please advise if I need to have the .xmp that seem to come with my photos as well in my back up.

I would like to have a copy that heaven forbid, anything happened to my catalogue and photo library, I would be able to use a back up of the catalogue and photo library to get going again....

thanks

Kim
 
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No, you do need XMP files, but you do need a backup of your catalog as well. Make a Time Machine backup of your entire hard drive, that will also backup presets and profiles. And I'm sure you have more stuff you don't want to lose than just photos.
 
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You do not need to have LrC automatically create XMP files and any information in XMP files already created would be also stored in the catalog file or a backup copy of the Catalog file. If you have set in Lightroom Catalog Preferences to "Automatically write changes to XMP", you don't need to. A good backup of the Catalog and the original image files in their original path is sufficient. Using a system backup like Time Machine is advisable over simply making copies of files or clones of folders. A system backup will let you go back to a point in time and recover files as they existed AT THAT POINT in time.
 
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Ok, so if my computer dies, I just need the latest catalogue backup and a copy of the original CR files.

But preferably a time machine back up of everything.....

Thanks


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Kimmilly said:
Ok, so if my computer dies, I just need the latest catalogue backup and a copy of the original CR files.

But preferably a time machine back up of everything.....

Thanks


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That is what TImeMachine is for. I back up three attached disks with TImeMachine. With TimeMachine I can restore a single file from 6 months ago or my primary disk and the OS on it.
And just because the backup disk can also die, I alternate between different EHDs with my TImeMachine backups every 30 minutes.
In addition to the Lightroom Catalog file I also back up the Lightroom Catalog backup files with TImeMachine. If the master catalog file was in an unstable state when backed up by TImeMachine, the backup catalog file will not be.


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clee01l said:
That is what TImeMachine is for. I back up three attached disks with TImeMachine. With TimeMachine I can restore a single file from 6 months ago or my primary disk and the OS on it.
And just because the backup disk can also die, I alternate between different EHDs with my TImeMachine backups every 30 minutes.
In addition to the Lightroom Catalog file I also back up the Lightroom Catalog backup files with TImeMachine. If the master catalog file was in an unstable state when backed up by TImeMachine, the backup catalog file will not be.


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Can you tell me if you can have a time machine back up of your whole computer on one EHD and just a backup of your LR cat and photos on another, or do you have to have two full copies??
 
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Kimmilly said:
Can you tell me if you can have a time machine back up of your whole computer on one EHD and just a backup of your LR cat and photos on another, or do you have to have two full copies??
Click to expand...

I have three disk drives (Macintosh HD and two others that total about 4 TB of critical user data. TimeMachine will back up all three of these to one an additional EHD. The size of the EHD needs to be large enough to accommodate the data being backed up. In my case my TimeMachine EHD is 8 TB
TimeMachine only backs up to one EHD (at a time) There is only one backup data set for all three source volumes. (IOW, you designate one system backup for all of your critical data.) In TimeMachine you designate which volumes to exclude but you only get one list of folders that are the folders to be backed up.

If you point TimeMachine to more than one EHD, it will alternate between EHDs every 30 minutes to provide two time machine backups that are complete but 30 minutes out of phase.


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