Ray B

Without reservation I admit to being a Lightroom supporter. Beginning with version 1.0, I’ve never looked back. I’d say too, this has been an excellent investment since I’ve sold enough prints to pay for my hobby …. equipment, prints, custom frames, and travel expenses included. Not bragging, just admitting how fortunate I’ve been.

Among the features I love about the program is the simple belief that I would always be able to go back into my catalog(s) and pull up any image I processed and then export that exact file to a printer.
Unfortunately, there was a flaw in that belief.

As a UHH reader, I’ve read countless posts touting many reasons why I should or should not export finished images to a backup position outside Lightroom. For some reason, I’ve always been in the camp that finds it comforting to export a finished JPG, and a finished TIFF file to another folder just in case something unforeseen happened along my journey.

Sure enough, ‘someday’ finally arrived. Lightroom began giving me messages that it could not read the current catalog, and more often than not, the program would also quit working This made it difficult to simply open a previous catalog, or one of the backup files produced by the program and return to work. Fortunately, Adobe jumped in, asking me to send them the damaged catalog. A week or so later, they sent me a link to download the repaired file. That link came with an apology that they were unable to save every file, but most were intact. Sure enough, many of my favorites no longer exist in this catalog, but many do, so I’m very appreciative and still a fan of Lightroom and Adobe.

Even though I lost some files, I’m just as happy to have a backup copy of every important file I’ve printed and sold in a separate location simply because I choose to play it safe. Of course, I could go back to my original files, import them again, and do my best to reprocess the image with a bit of effort and time, so certainly my loss is not catastrophic. At the same time, my exports give me the option to reproduce an exact copy of the original file should an existing customer need to replace a print they purchased from me.
The decision I made long ago to stand on both sides of the ‘export for security’ became an important one in the long run. Exporting that original file only cost me a few gigabytes of space making this an easy trade-off from where I stand on this issue.

Bottom line – just another layer of insurance should I ever need it.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

How about updating your parameters to create XML side cars? I find both full-resolution JPEGs and TIFFs to be unnecessarily over-kill, given the amount of storage needed to support this redundant approach. Assuring you have a safe copy of the original image and the edit instructions in an XML (outside the catalog), that would be the fall-back approach I'd suggest, more so than export copies of the images, particularly TIFFs.

What did Adobe say about the corrupted catalog? Being able to send off for a partial 'fix' seems a lot less important than understanding the root-cause and how to avoid the corruption altogether.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Ray I’m a fan of not depending on one system for storage and organization of my photo library.

Sounds like your precautions paid off. I’m sorry you lost some work but it’s good you did not lose all.

rbtexas

I’m sure your workflow makes a lot of sense to you. My post should have included a disclaimer noting there are a great number of photographers with limited knowledge and experience in this area. As to Adobe, what they did not tell me is surely my fault. I simply don’t know whatto ask in situations like this. Thank you though for your thoughts and suggestions.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

You know, you actually haven't "lost" any of your original image files. Lightroom is merely a catalog of thumbnails and notations of changes you have set to be made during RAW conversions or modifying a JPEG or TIFF file.

What you've "lost" is some of your notations. You can re-Import the images and make the changes again.

You don't need to create JPEG or TIFF files as backups.

You DO need to save a backup copy of your LR catalog. If you had one of those, none of your work would have been lost.

If it's not already doing so, go into LR "Preferences" and set it to call to run a backup of the catalog periodically. I've got mine set to ask me once a week. If I haven't done a catalog backup in the last 7 days, when I exit LR it asks me if I want to do one (it also can be set up to not even ask, but to go ahead and do the backup). During the backup process, LR also can be set to "optimize" the catalog, so that it will run smoothly without any problems.

One catch to this is that when LR creates a backup, it doesn't overwrite or erase earlier backups. So they tend to pile up after a while. Occasionally I go in and delete the older ones, keeping only the latest one or two.

Jack 13088 Loc: Central NY

I’m just curious. On every exit (after I have made changes) I ask LR to check the integrity and compact the database then store a zip compressed copy in Dropbox. I do this secure in the belief that backup preserves and protects my catalog from any and all failures. Have you demonstrated this is a false belief?

I have demonstrated that with a copy of the original photos in the the correct folder structure in a different computer double clicking on the zipped backup will restore the library. It will rebuild the previews when necessary if .lrdata is missing. BTW this works when moving from a Windows PC to a MAC

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

The 'back up / optimize' process for the LR catalog is important. But, this regular maintenance is just one aspect of protecting your digital image assets in a LR-based environment.

My LR catalog is now just over 90,000 images. The back up / optimize routine runs for nearly 5-minutes on relatively new equipment. Similar to Alan's comment above, I let this process run only weekly, not every exit. Also Alan notes, these 'backups' created by LR just stack-up with no overwrite nor automated removal process. One has to manually purge the outdated files yourself.

Your back-up strategy should address the following issues:

1. Where and how often do you copy all your original image files to "safe" off-line or cloud-based media?

2. Where and how often do you copy the entire contents of your "Lightroom" folder that includes your LRCAT file to "safe" off-line or cloud-based media?

3. How often do your purge the date-stamped back-up files of the LRCAT file?

4. Have you updated your LR parameters so that any LR user presets and similar customizations are saved in the same folder as the Catalog so these files are automatically backed-up in item #2?

Jack 13088 Loc: Central NY

Here is “The rest of the story”. The precious files move through as follows:

Files from the memory card are Imported with a copy to a SSD dedicated to LR. It is copied with folders named D: Master Image Files\yyyy\yyyy-mm\yyyy-mm-dd (date captured). I do not rename the files. This memory small so I just keep current year here until a few months into the next year.

I need the year to facilitate moving the files from disk to disk by date. I don’t look at the file location from within LR. At one time I stuck a descriptor on the end. Eventually I noticed I use Collections to file images so I omitted the description. Now I often add the imported photos to a collection at import.

I will also take advantage of the fact that, if you do not allow LR to save metadata then LR never modifies the master files. Therefore, you can archive that file immediately.

So the next step is copy these files to a large (4TB) rotating disk which is a set of all images into the catalog. The files are copied to E:Master Image Files\. The operation looks like a backup but I don’t consider it a backup. It allows you to export any image in the catalog. When it is nearly full I will buy a larger drive.

Now we back up D: to a removable drive that is mounted just for that occasion. There are a pair of the drives one that sits on the desk and another in the safe deposit box. I swap and sink those drives frequently. I used to take one to work daily but I don’t have a work anymore. So now I have a backup of the master files on site and off site. Included in these backups is also a backup of the last catalog and previews.

As I said I get a fresh backup into Dropbox at nearly exit. I have about 30K images so backup does not take as long as yours does and I don’t actually pay attention to how long I have to wait to turn the machine off. I haven’t automated a cleanup of the stale backups in Dropbox but I do it manually every few weeks.

I am not keen on using the cloud (I fear a thunder storm that will zap my data.) I do however backup archival backups to AWS Glacier which is designed and priced for that duty.

I didn’t mention a few details: First, I use Acronus to back up the C: drive every Wednesday to yet another ping pong pair of removable drives that follows an identical pattern to the master image backups. That grabs the other LR files weekly. Second, switching a year from D: to E: in LR is trivial. Just move the pointer for the year yyyy to E:Master Image Files\. After peeking to see if LR is on the same page just delete it from D:. Finally, I didn’t mention some important details on backup from D: to E: and the removable disk. I use an ancient command line command XXCOPY which is slow and not reliably maintained. I use in a script that I tested carefully but it does give fine grained control over what it actually does. Finally, if an image goes astray to PS or other programs and then returns to the fold then it has to be backed up every time it is modified so the script has to enable that.

Nickaroo

I truly want you to know that I feel you are a contributor that really does point people in the right direction. I happen to be a 62yr. old man and I suffer from a terminal lung disorder. My Son passed away 14.6yrs. ago from the same disease. I demolished all of my camera gear vowing never to get back into photography. Then I lost my oldest Son in the war, but he made me proud. I raised both of my Sons on my own as we lost their Mother at an age where they were very young. You are truly an inspiration to all of the UHH members and I respect that very highly.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Thank you Nickaroo! Take care of yourself.