When to back up
Jul 10, 2018 10:21:12 #
I recently had a computer failure and thought I had lost all of my Lightroom photos, but I didn't. Simply Mac was able to back everything up to an external hard drive My question is where to back up? When I import to Lightroom or when I am done with the editing process.
Jul 10, 2018 10:24:32 #
I do backups after I have deleted rejects and done my post processing, right after exiting LR/PS.
Jul 10, 2018 10:44:08 #
LR automatically backs up to an external hard drive when the photos are downloaded from a card. Then I backup to an external hard drive and the cloud after post processing before reformatting the card in my camera.
/George
/George
Jul 10, 2018 11:45:13 #
Lightroom will back up your catalog each time the application exits. For a Mac User, set up an external drive with Time Machine and back up that way. I back my photo directory to Dropbox in realtime and to an external NAS every other day.
Jul 10, 2018 12:10:35 #
Crad1998 wrote:
I recently had a computer failure and thought I had lost all of my Lightroom photos, but I didn't. Simply Mac was able to back everything up to an external hard drive My question is where to back up? When I import to Lightroom or when I am done with the editing process.
The best answer is everyday.
Jul 10, 2018 12:15:11 #
gsmith051 wrote:
LR automatically backs up to an external hard drive when the photos are downloaded from a card. Then I backup to an external hard drive and the cloud after post processing before reformatting the card in my camera.
/George
/George
Not true, and if it did, you'd only have a backup of the catalog, not the images.
Jul 10, 2018 12:52:40 #
rgrenaderphoto wrote:
Lightroom will back up your catalog each time the application exits...
Lightroom DOES back up your catalog using the preference you set up: on program exit; once a week; manually.
Lightroom DOES NOT back up your images. You have to do them separately. The Lightroom catalog only stores the location of those images.
Jul 10, 2018 13:56:14 #
Any time you've added photos, or other important material to your computer, back it up. I loaded photos from a vacation onto my last computer and the graphics card died before I backed it up. I still need to remove the hard drive and access those photos.
Jul 10, 2018 14:29:44 #
TBerwick
Loc: Houston, Texas
I have 2 programs running. One backs up to my local RAID5 backup device every night. My second backup is iCloud which backs up files to my cloud account as soon as a change occurs. About as secure as I can get. If the computer does fail, I have software tools that allows me to boot Unix and read almost all Windows hard drives, that is unless the drive itself has a meltdown.
Jul 11, 2018 03:42:55 #
Crad1998 wrote:
I recently had a computer failure and thought I had lost all of my Lightroom photos, but I didn't. Simply Mac was able to back everything up to an external hard drive My question is where to back up? When I import to Lightroom or when I am done with the editing process.
Both. And frequently.
Jul 11, 2018 07:17:07 #
Crad1998 wrote:
I recently had a computer failure and thought I had lost all of my Lightroom photos, but I didn't. Simply Mac was able to back everything up to an external hard drive My question is where to back up? When I import to Lightroom or when I am done with the editing process.
I back up to a local RAID array every night and to a cloud backup continuously (and sleep well at night!)
Jul 11, 2018 08:56:30 #
peterg
Loc: Santa Rosa, CA
Crad1998 wrote:
1. When downloading pics from your camera/card choose the Lightroom option to write a copy to an external drive. I recently had a computer failure and thought I had lost all of my Lightroom photos, but I didn't. Simply Mac was able to back everything up to an external hard drive My question is where to back up? When I import to Lightroom or when I am done with the editing process.
2. If you're using a Mac, always use the included free "Time Machine" app, which automatically backs up your Mac to an external drive. This is also valuable if your hard drive fails or moving data to a new computer using the free/included "Migration Assistant".
3. Keep backups in the cloud or elsewhere off property.
Jul 11, 2018 08:59:43 #
peterg wrote:
...3. Keep backups in the cloud or elsewhere off property.
Yes. Keep a copy of the backups off site. But it's OK to keep them on site also. Much more convenient if you need them. Make multiple copies of the backups.
When it comes to backing up (archiving) you can't be too paranoid.
Jul 11, 2018 09:08:43 #
Crad1998 wrote:
I recently had a computer failure and thought I had lost all of my Lightroom photos, but I didn't. Simply Mac was able to back everything up to an external hard drive My question is where to back up? When I import to Lightroom or when I am done with the editing process.
The general rule-of-thumb is to back up when you don't want to re-do the work you've just done. Using your examples, I back up my 'Photography-related' data just after an import, and after each session of post-processing work. Then, I back up everything on the PC on Wednesday morning and Saturday morning.
Jul 11, 2018 09:19:44 #
Crad1998 wrote:
I recently had a computer failure and thought I had lost all of my Lightroom photos, but I didn't. Simply Mac was able to back everything up to an external hard drive My question is where to back up? When I import to Lightroom or when I am done with the editing process.
I back everything up when I'm done deleting / editing.
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