rbmitch123

Every time I exit LR I backup my work on my iMac hard drive (as opposed to’skip this time’). I just realized that each backup is not overriding the last back up and I have 56 gb of backups. I need space on my hard drive.
Do I need to manually need to delete all the backups except the most recent, or is there a setting to do this automatically?
Also, I am backing my LR to an external hard drive about once a month. That means the hard drive backup is redundant except for most recent work.
Second question, how should I address my workflow relative to the back up?

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

The Lightroom backup on exit is making a copy of and checking the catalog where all your work is. Keep a few of them delete the rest manually as you need space.

Backups to an external include both copies of the catalog backups and the image files themselves. Lightroom does not contain your image files. "I am backing up my LR to and external drive about once a month" is good if it includes both the catalog and image files.

Largobob

Interesting question. I am not sure how LR manages its backup. I do know that with TimeMachine on the Mac, it only seems to back up the files that have had any change since the last backup. So, each time I run TimeMachine, only a very small additional file is created.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Yes, those files do accumulate. I go in every so often and delete all but the last two or three. I just checked, and I had only 250MB since October.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

Once a month, I go and delete my LR backups except for the last three. I backup my LR when I exit if I made major changes to images or added new files.

AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!

I had an interesting situation some time back. I have many external hard drives, and my LR backs up to whatever one is plugged in at the moment. But one day I discovered that my C drive was totally full. I couldn't find enough files on it to even make a dent, but it was full. Then I discovered one LR backup that was 40G! had no idea why it was so huge. But it was old, so I deleted it! Voila! I had space on my C drive again! None of the other backups have been that large. Now I delete all but the latest 2.

don26812 Loc: South Bay of Los Angeles, CA

Is the first sentence in second paragraph accurate? It is my understanding that wherever you backup the LR Catalog, it is only the Catalog and NOT the photos themselves. You must back up your images by some other means. Am I missing something here?

AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!

That was what apparently made that one back-up be such a huge file. It contained actual images!

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

Yes, the LR catalog only backs up the metadata files in the catalog. One would need to have figured out, best way is upon import, how to create a backup of RAW/JPEG original images separately if they desire to do that.

Jack 13088 Loc: Central NY

There are three types of files that LR uses to manage your library. They are all located where you told LR to put them. Really, if you just tacitly accepted LR defaults you told LR where to put them.

One is the original files from the camera which LR never modifies. It just reads them whenever it needs to. These are most important to be backed up. If you loose them all is lost! You must back them up externally to LR. LR doesn’t help back them up.

The other two types of files are created and kept up to date as you use LR.

Previews are stored in a folder [catalog name]Previews.lrdata.
They are previews of your edits and are the source of nearly every view of images you see on your screen. These previews are matched to your display and JPG compressed but can still require a large amount of storage. However, they need not be backed up since LR will regenerate them when it needs them if they have gone missing.

Finally there is the catalog [catalog name].lrcat.
This file contains ALL your work while LR is open. This is what is backed up if you choose when you exit. When you exit after changes you should take the opportunity to optimize the catalog and save a back up which is zip compressed. I save these backups to Dropbox which moves a copy offsite which is a good thing. As noted it does not overwrite previous backups so every so often I delete to stale copies leaving just the latest.

SusanFromVermont Loc: Southwest corner of Vermont

I put my LR Catalog backups into a folder for each month. At the end of a month I delete the oldest one, keeping 1 month's LR backups and making a new folder for the current month.

Backing up your images is also an important thing to do. But one backup is not enough - it is not a matter of IF an external HD will fail, but of WHEN. I went for years without a problem, but then one of my external HDs failed. Without another backup, I would have been very anxious until a new one arrived and I got my images backed up again. The images are irreplaceable.

If you take a lot of photos over the course of a month, and do a lot of editing, you should consider backing up the images more often. I assume you do it manually, which can be hard to remember and a pain to do. Another way to do it is to let a computer service do it for you. There are lots of them, and have been mentioned on a number of threads you could find on UHH. I use Synchback [2brightsparks.com] which lets me set a schedule for backups. I can also choose what type of backup, the time of day, and whether to do it twice from the computer onto different HDs, or to have the second external HD backed up from the first. Mostly I use Mirror, which will reflect any changes you made on your computer, including deleting anything you have deleted. I also have one backup that is the regular type which does not change anything, just incrementally records whatever has been added or changed. That is a "fail-safe" in case I want to find something I had deleted earlier. Synchback has a free level and paid levels to choose from.

Not sure why you think backing up should affect your workflow. Normal workflow is transferring images to the computer/LR Catalog, editing, etc. If you elaborate on what you mean, it would help to answer that question.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

Just a note, someone said "and do a lot of editing, you should consider backing up the images more often." The editing you do has nothing to do with the original image and there is no need to re-backup any images due to editing in LR. All of the edits you do are in the catalog. Having said that, a caveat about changing file names. Once you change a file name the back up would not link up with the edits if you needed to use the original image as a back up. Just something to be aware of. I suppose, in this case, backing up the file with the changed name would be a good idea but it is something I have not done and may be sorry for at some point!

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

I think you have it exactly right.

gsmith051 Loc: Fairfield Glade, TN

About once a month I delete back ups leaving only a few. No problem so far.

Jack 13088 Loc: Central NY

As part of your normal workflow after every import add files imported to your backup. Also if you open Photoshop for processing and save the resultant .psd or .tif back to Lightroom or merge files to form a panorama add those to your backup. I have a little script that does the backup which I start as soon as I get the media ejected message during every Import. (I would like to automatically trap on that message to run the backup script. However, I don’t know how implement that. I was a requirement writer not a software developer.)

I also backup the catalog every time I exit LR except when I have only viewed photos or just exported images neither of which modify the catalog.