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Catalogs What if?

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Robert Harvey

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Operating System: win 10
Lightroom Classic version: 7.1 [ 1148620 ]

I have my images on H: and catalog is connected to it. I have backups of images and catalog on other drives, but again catalog is connected to H:.
What if H: crashes and can not recover - how do I get edited images on to new drive from saved images and backup of catalog??
 
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Is the catalog also on the H drive, or a different drive? Are the backups of the images on the other drives in the same folder hierarchy as the originals?

If the catalog is on a different drive, and H fails, and the backups are in the same folder hierarchy, you would remove H, mount one of the backup drives, start Lightroom, all folders and images on H will be listed as missing, simply right-click on the top level folder and select "Find Missing Folder". A file browser opens, use this to navigate to the backup drive and select the same top level folder. That will relink all the folders and images below that top level folder. Repeat as needed if you have more than one top level folder.

If the catalog is also on the H drive, remove H, mount a backup drive, navigate to the folder containing the backup catalog, double click on the catalog file to launch Lightroom, then do the same relinking of the missing folders as described above.
 
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Yep. Just disconnect H, change the drive letter of your image backup disk to H and all is back to normal.
 
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That works if the backup drive is a clone of the failed drive, but may not work if its not. My own backup drives contain more than just my Lightroom stuff, they are used for all my critical data which comes from a variety of drives. As such there's a small backup-created hierarchy above the image folders which precludes a simple drive letter/name switch (because the full path would be different to what Lightroom expects).

Either way, Robert should now have sufficient information to deal with a failure of his H drive.
 
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Have the LR catalog on F drive and images on H drive (H is an external drv). Have backup images on several other external drives, but not clones of H only copy and paste to other drvs.
 
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Robert Harvey said:
Have the LR catalog on F drive and images on H drive (H is an external drv). Have backup images on several other external drives, but not clones of H only copy and paste to other drvs.
Click to expand...
That works fine too, but it does mean you'll have to do a little work with the 'Find Missing Folder' option if you ever need to use the backup.
 
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From the information I have gotten it seems that changing a backup drive letter to H would be the easiest way to go. Does the backup drive need to be a clone or only copies from H?
 
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Robert Harvey said:
From the information I have gotten it seems that changing a backup drive letter to H would be the easiest way to go. Does the backup drive need to be a clone or only copies from H?
Click to expand...
The image folder hierarchy needs to be a clone. You can store other files on the drive too, however. Lightroom does not mind about that.
 
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My next question is backing up images. At present I save my edited images (dng and tiff files) to H drv and then copy those images to other external drives. Is this a good method?
I just watched a video that backs up both catalog and images using export folder as catalog in LR - is this a better way?
 
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Robert Harvey said:
My next question is backing up images. At present I save my edited images (dng and tiff files) to H drv and then copy those images to other external drives. Is this a good method?
I just watched a video that backs up both catalog and images using export folder as catalog in LR - is this a better way?
Click to expand...
The best method is to use a backup or clone application. That will make sure that you backup all images, and after that it will only copy new images and changed images (but Lightroom doesn't normally change an image) to the backup disk. Doing it manually (using whatever method) may save you a little cash, but you run a serious risk of making mistakes, and when you find out you made a mistake it's too late.
 
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