dfrost01 Loc: Princeton, NJ

My computer is almost out of storage space and I couldn't understand why. When I checked to see what it was that is occupying so much space, it turns out that I have a ton of LR Catalog backups for the past several years on it. I don't really understand if the backups are mostly updated duplicates of older ones or whether the backups contain only new items, so I am unsure if it's alright to delete them. Would appreciate any advice from those more technically enlightened than I am.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Go into the Lightroom back-up folder and select everything with a date older than the last back-up. Next, consider how often you're allowing LR to make a back-up copy of the back catalog. These are entire copies of the current catalog. Do you need a back-up every time you exit LR? Do you instead maybe need one once a week? You probably don't ever need to keep more than the last two versions. Alas, there's no automated method to delete these old back-ups and you have to periodically visit that Backup folder and manually delete the outdated files. Your catalog preferences control how often LR takes a back-up. If you revised to weekly, you can also take a backup ad-hoc by setting the preference for the next-exit that overrides the frequency to just your next exit of the software.

sloscheider Loc: Minnesota

Since you’re looking into your catalog backups, why not make some changes? Update the location to an external drive, even if it’s just a usb flash drive you leave plugged in. I have my backup save to a folder within my local Google Drive sync folder so backups automatically get saved to cloud storage for an offsite option.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

That's an interesting question. Do I want to take a chance on losing the last fifty images I just processed by not backing up the catalog? If I do any processing, I backup the catalog. I'd like to see a setting to have LR keep only the last two catalogs.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

I'd like to have less gray hair and / or maybe the numbers for the next power ball ...

Things I can control are the frequency of the LR back-up and whether I want an ad-hoc back-up within a 7-day frequency. The LR catalog back-up is only your edit instructions and organization values (keywords, collections, where-is location data of the image files). The back-up does nothing for the actual image files. If you import and heavily edit 50 new images every day, take a daily backup or at every exit. Weekly might be more realistic for the import and editing frequency of most photographers.

Until Adobe sees the benefit to their customers of automating the retention and purge of the catalog back-ups, we're stuck with doing it ourselves.

mizzee Loc: Boston,Ma

Thank you!

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

Yes you can delete them, but you'll need to do more than just removing old backups. Automatic removal of backups past a certain date is not recommended if you are trying to preserve data and avoid losing stuff. I'm sure you are aware that all you would be losing are records of files and their previews, not the files themselves. If you have the catalog option to save metadata changes to xmp, it is a simple matter to just re-import the images which will come with the xmp file that reflects the state of the edits and other metadata as of the last time you changed the file.

I just checked and I've got 80 undeleted catalog backups in my backup folder - 72,000 images in my current catalog. They only take 19 gb. Most drives operate best when there is no less than 25% free space. If the catalog backups are taking up too much space, you probably need to consider another way to organize your files.

What works for me is to use 3 or more drives. An SSD for boot and program loading, a relatively small SSD -250gb - for scratch disk for Photoshop and catalog and backup location for Lightroom, and a bunch of drives in a RAID 1+0 for actual image storage. Keeping the catalog on a physically separate, dedicated SSD does help LR's performance over putting the catalog on a drive that is shared with lots of other "stuff".

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

Hi. Deleting older backups is a good practice. You only need the most current back ups to ensure your work is safe. Backing up after processing a lot of images is wise. I set my LR program to backup daily but I normally tell it not to when the backup box appears unless I have done processing. Being careful is better than being sorry. I do use an external drive for this process. My image files and my LR catalog reside on external drives, too.

dfrost01 Loc: Princeton, NJ

Thank you everyone for your clarification.

dfrost01 Loc: Princeton, NJ

OMG, i just deleted all LR catalog backups from 2018 and back leaving the ones from 2019 on my computer. Now when I just booted up LR it asked me which catalog to use and I chose a recent online and it updated it and all my 2018 and 2019 photos and maybe more are not in LR. I thought these were all full backups! I have my photos on an external drive, but how am I ever going to figure out what’s missing? Latest collections and keywords are gone also. What happened???

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

It would seem you were not using the catalog you thought you were. Did you permanently delete the files or can you just move them back from the recycle bin? Where else do you have back-ups to recover from?

Do you have multiple versions of LR installed and / or launch icons? Although recovering your work is priority #1, you seem to have some other issues to clarify.

dfrost01 Loc: Princeton, NJ

I only ever had one catalog. When I deleted the backup, it never went into trash. I just got a message that the catalog would be permanently deleted. I thought it was OK since I kept the ones from 2019. That's what I don't understand. Why wouldn't my 2019 catalog have all my images in it? I still have the images, Thank God, since they're on an external drive. So what do I do? Just reimport them? Will that restore all my collections and edits?

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

We can't see what you see, but what you've described is illogical. Deleting the back-ups should not impact LR's knowledge and pointer to the current catalog that doesn't reside in the back-up folder. Why were you prompted to pick a new catalog? What happened to what had been your current catalog? If you've been working all of 2019 and making back-ups of that current catalog, every single back-up should have all your work through the date of the back-up. Before you make more "corrective actions", you need to understand with more clarity the current situation.

Did you delete the current LRCAT rather than the backup, as that might fit to what you've described. Close down LR and try:

a) rename the current LRCAT file, add 'save' to the name.
b) Go into the backup folder and find the most current date.
c) If it's a ZIP file, extract the enclosed LRCAT file
d) copy the back-up LRCAT file into the same folder where you renamed the 'save' LRCAT
e) start LR and see what happens and what is included in the catalog.

lschiz Loc: Elgin, IL

A lot of good advice here for you to sort thru. My 1 cents worth:
The back up
Is a complete compressed backup.
I only keep 3 or 4 in case one gets corrupt.
I back up every time I exit which is
most every day. It’s easy and guarantees you don’t lose your last 15 min or 5 hrs of work.
Twice a week or so I go in and delete old ones.
Just another idea to think thru😊