gorgehiker Loc: Lexington, Ky

About once a month, I have been using the "export as a catalogue" function to copy my picture files and lightroom catalogue from the hard drive in use to another portable hard drive . My plan would be to recover my pictures and catalogue if the hard drive in use were to become defective. Is this a reasonable plan?

rwilson1942 Loc: Houston, TX

I've never used "export as a catalog", does it do your entire original catalog each time you do this? In other words, can you just do the new stuff created since the last time you did a backup? If not, it would seem like a dedicated backup program would be a better choice. There are several pretty good free ones out there. I would also do the backup much more often than once a month.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

I spent part of yesterday watching a webinar put on by X-Rite with Tim Grey. One of the topics was about exporting as a catalog. Answering one of the questions, Tim said that your method would work as long as you were sure you were exporting the catalog WITH THE IMAGE FILES.

The problem is that it really only works when you don't have very many images. If you've taken photos for anytime at all and have them in Lightroom the backup would tie up your computer for way to long.

His preferred backup method is to use synchronizing software. He keeps his images and catalog backups combined in a master folder to make it easier. His choice is one called Goodsync. One I've used is from Microsoft called SyncToy.

The idea with syncing software is to have a primary drive and two external backups. In the software you create a preset for each backup drive that includes all your data files from word processing, to LR backups and image files. Daily, weekly or monthly (what ever floats your boat) you "synchronize" one of the backup drives. The software moves any new files and deletes files you've deleted on the master drive.

You alternate the two external backups and keep one out of the building.

Thus, the two backup drives can have exactly what the primary has on it. Because it is only copying what has changed, it is quick by comparison to other methods of keeping a backup.

gorgehiker Loc: Lexington, Ky

Thanks for responding to my question. I will look into a more efficient backup strategy.

Capture48 Loc: Arizona

This system breaks down over time. The more photos you have the more this breaks down, assuming you continue to take photos eventually this will totally fail. This also assumes you can stand a month's worth of loss.

A better option is to keep one catalog on your local computer, and your photos on an external drive. How you back up photos does not matter. You can use a second drive, the cloud or any other method. Then store a backup of your catalog with your photos. You want your catalog on your internal drive for performance reasons.

Exporting as a catalog is something I use to join two catalogs. For instance I recently toured New Zealand for a month. During my time there I created a catalog I called Travel, while my main catalog remained at home on an external drive. When I returned home I simply imported my travel catalog into my main catalog and once again had one big catalog.

Brian in Whitby Loc: Whitby, Ontario, Canada

For backup purposes, I have Lightroom import the photos to two locations, my hard drive and an external hard drive. Lightroom periodically prompts me to back up the catalogue, which I do storing the back up catalogue on the external hard drive.

I do use export as a cataloyue when I have been travelling and want to merge the catalogue on my laptop with the one on mybdesktop.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

This can work. Another way is to keep the catalog and image files on your external drive, and copy/sync the contents of that drive to another external drive on a daily basis. I think the redundancy of two external drives that are always in sync will better serve your needs.

alandg46 Loc: Boerne, Texas

Not if you have 2.5 terabytes, like I have. My computer would be grinding forever.

Erik_H Loc: Denham Springs, Louisiana

I'm curious, does having LR import to two locations double the amount of time it takes for the import? I've been thinking of doing it that way, but if there are a lot of files to import, it could take quite a while.

Brian in Whitby Loc: Whitby, Ontario, Canada

It does jot seem to have much effect. I don't have particularly fast hard drives so maybe the effect is minimal.
As far as I can tell, the files arecwritten to both drives is nearly simultaneous so the copy process would be limited by the speed of the slower drive.

What seems to take more time is the preparation of the file previews. I usually start the download andvgo for a cup of coffee.