Re: Lightroom back ups

[Lea Murphy <lea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark,

Just to be sure you understand (and you might but I want to be super sure) Lightroom is merely a catalog which tells itself where to go to find your images; they can be spread across as many drives as you like.

When you backup LR (upon exiting) you are backing up the catalog and it's keywords, file alterations done in the develop module, collections you've created, flags and ratings you given, etc. It is  NOT backing up your images.

So when I say I clone my drives twice daily I also have my LR catalogs backed up twice daily because they are on the same drives hosting my images.

I hope this will make it clearer:

Personal Drive Original: contains my actual personal digital files as well as my LR personal catalog

Personal Drive Clone

Work Drive Original: contains my actual work digital files as well as my LR work catalog

Work Drive Clone

Twice a day both original drives back up to the clone copy of itself so they are exact duplicates. Nothing else goes on any of these drives.

To properly back up you want to be duplicating your images as well as your catalog.

If, God help me, one of my original drives dies then I simply direct LR to open the duplicate catalog and I keep on trucking.

Lea

On Dec 13, 2011, at 8:40 AM, mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

It's not a single drive that's backing up.  Over the years its several smaller drives that backs up the larger drive.  Drives generally relate to general time periods, but I only have one drive large enough to hold all the contents and that's the one I am using with Lightroom.  I probably could back it up on the computer drive for a while, but that might make everything slow down.  My reasoning is I know I am going to get new computers.  Seems to me for it to be simpler to plug the external drive in a new computer, than to transfer that many files.

Yes I back up the catalog, and you are right I need to put it in more than one placed.  To compound the problem, Lightroom lets you work with files that do not have the drive available via the preview it stores.  Even after I figure this out, how can I tell its working and not just altering a file that it thinks is on a hard drive that has went to hard drive heaven?

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: Lightroom back ups
From: "Emily L. Ferguson" <elf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, December 13, 2011 7:19 am
To: List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students
<photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

>Can I plug another drive into Lightroom, and will it find images in
>my catalog even if its NOT the same hard drive (which melted) where
>they were located in the first place or an exact copy of the
>original drive? The file names should match, that is unless
>lightroom changed them. Yet will LR find them?

Don't you point LR to the backup drive when you set the drive up? I
assume you can simply point LR to the replacement drive.

I had a computer death and it did a job on my external drive as well,
or maybe the external drive made the problem. Anyway it was
expensive... But when I got the new computer and replacement
external drive I was able to reconstruct it from the backup DVDs
which I also make every time I have enough data.

I keep a folder on my desktop and drop everything into it until it's
full enough to burn. Then I burn 2 copies and take one to remote
storage. I use a databasing app called CDFinder to catalog each DVD
as I make it and CDFinder allows me to search on the IPTC data in any
file.

I only use my external drive for the quick access it gives me to my
master files, but if I used LR it would then become my LR drive, the
way yours is.
--
Emily L. Ferguson
mailto:elf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
508-563-6822
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