Hip Coyote

I looked in the search history and did not find EXACTLY what I am looking for on LR best practices.

The question is where to keep the LR Catalog? On my computer internal hard drive or on a cloud drive, such as Dropbox?

Situation:

1- I currently have my LR Catalog in a folder on Dropbox. It works great. No lag time of usage in LR. I also have my catalog backed up in Dropbox. So far so good. I only have one catalog and it is very organized.

2- I have Carbonite that backs all that up..odd I know, a cloud back up of a cloud storage.

3- My photos are on an SSD external drive. That is well organized, all by LR. I cull photos like crazy.

4- Pics on local SSD are backed up to Carbonite

5- I back up the SSD card to another SSD card periodically...maybe once a month. That stays at my house. This is important in that Carbonite backs up all files. So if I upload pics to my SSD, then cull from there, Carbonite already has the files, even the culled ones, backed up. Should I ever need to retrieve a backup, I'd prefer my local drive because thousands of files/photos have been deleted that I did not want. A retrieval from carbonite would certainly bring my photos back but thousands I do not want.

Question: Would it be advisable to put the LR catalog on my computer hard drive (which is also backup on Carbonite) and not keep it in Dropbox? Or leave as is. Am I missing something here?

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Don't count on those files you delete on your system being up on Carbonite forever...
From Carbonite:
"When Carbonite scans for files to back up, it also removes deleted files from the backup to keep it up-to-date. Depending on your plan, Carbonite removes deleted files after 30 or 60 days from the date they were deleted from the computer."

Hip Coyote

good to know

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

You also backup your other important files, not just photos, correct?
.doc
.pdf
.xls
etc.

Hip Coyote

yep. I actually keep all stuff on dropbox and backed up to carbonite...I once had a computer blow up and I was up and running in about an hour on a new computer..

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Sounds like everything is working. Why do you need to fix it?

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

There is no "best" for everyone, there is best for you.
As long as you have all the bases covered, you're good.

Hip Coyote

I was kinda looking over the horizon for when and if the catalog got bigger, possibly causing problems. Admittedly, the LR catalog is not very big. And/or maybe I traveled and did not necessarily have access to the internet for a period of time but wanted to work on photos and not have to merge catalogs if I created one whilst traveling.

fredpnm Loc: Corrales, NM

My LR catalog has over 106,000 photos in it and it, the catalog, has never given me a bit of trouble. I don't have the catalog on the same drive as the photos, but that's just me.

I do have one suggestion - consider putting all your important photo files - photos, XMP, catalog folder, etc on a portable USB drive and keep that one save off-site - like a safety deposit box at your bank. I know you backup everything to the cloud, but who is to say the cloud will be available or even still around when you want your backup files?

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

When I first started using LR I was pretty sloppy and disorganized. I got up around 65K shots in the catalog including duplicates and different edit versions. After a couple years I went through everything and got down to about 15K in the catalog. Of course it built back up from there. As it got larger I found shutting down took longer because of the catalog backup process, coupled with the aging windows background processes.

Two years ago I switched to apple silicon and the LR catalog backup became much quicker. So I don’t worry about the catalog size now. Also the editing goes much faster now.

Hip Coyote

Deal. I have two homes. I’ll just leave one at each site. When I go there I’ll do the back up. And if both burn up then I know God has it in for my meager photos.

Thx

fredpnm Loc: Corrales, NM

With our luck, God will hit us with a gamma-ray burst that wipes out our storage devices and the clouds at the same time. In any event, be prepared just in case God has a change of heart.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Maybe we all should be purchasing radiation hardened devices.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

"Would it be advisable to put the LR catalog on my computer hard drive (which is also backup on Carbonite) and not keep it in Dropbox? Or leave as is. Am I missing something here?"

All the well known Lightroom Classic wizards say to do it that way for best speed, lowest lag and most secure storage. They also say you should do catalog backups on exit to the same drive. Then, as you say, you backup the drive.

Non of this matters until you have a crash or failure.

Pauld

"Would it be advisable to put the LR catalog on my computer hard drive (which is also backup on Carbonite) and not keep it in Dropbox? Or leave as is. Am I missing something here?"

You can tell Dropbox to keep the LR catalog on your hard drive, and it will still sync it to the cloud. That should solve the dilemma, do both. I don't know if there is a performance hit doing it this way, I would think not, but don't really know.