kitrn23

When I do a LR backup, not sure where to backup catalog, any help? To C drive or external?
I use carbonate, should I backup my pictures everytime I exit LR to a external hard drive?
My LR folders and collections are neatly organized by year, month and day, but all pics are missing from hard drive
crash, and for the life of me I cannot get them back into LR where they belong.
they are all on my PC, I have tried importing, no luck. I have read how to get missing photos back but can't seem to get it working. I believe it is just old brain syndrome. Think I should pay geek for help.
Any help would surely be appreciated.

alvin3232 Loc: Houston, TX

Good day
A few things would be helpful
1A. Address one issue at a time.
1. Windows PC or Mac(Define this, but sounds like your a Windows user(am guessing)
2. If Windows PC would this be your local C drive or are your pictures stored on an external drive?
3. It Would help if you could say as I mentioned before. Are your pictures stored on your C drive or an external drive
4. Let's start with that, when last did you access your files, a few days ago or a month ago, etc?

Alvin

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

1. Are you saying you've had a crash?
2. Are you saying you have an accurate / current copy of your image files and LRCAT file safe on an external drive as a backup and you're trying to recover?

Let's start with the LRCAT back-up:

a, You should regularly be copying the entire contents of your "pictures\lightroom" folder into your external back-up drive. This is either a manual process you perform periodically or something that you have automated. That "pictures\lightroom" is the folder where the file *LRCAT resides. Adobe will default to your "pictures" folder, but you need to adjust this reference if you chose to install someplace else.

b, The Lightroom software may prompt you to "backup" the catalog when exiting the software, either every time or some other frequency you specify in your configuration settings. That backup performs maintenance on the LRCAT file and writes a ZIP file into a \backup folder inside your "pictures\lightroom". That ZIP file is a point-in-time version of the master LRCAT file. It can be used for recovery, but the actual un-zipped LRCAT file is the true 'master' copy of your LR catalog.

c, The Adobe catalog "backup" doesn't copy that ZIP file onto / into your back-up drive. Although, you can specific an alternative location other than inside your "pictures\lightroom" folder. You'll have to look at your own actions / configuration to determine where the ZIP file is being written and how often. That ZIP file is only the LRCAT file, where as discussed below, you need the entire contents of the files and folders of "pictures\lightroom" to successfully recover your LR catalog of your harddrive is being restored.

To your recover issue, you need all your old images and folders restored to their old location on the local computer. If they were on the C: drive, say something like: C:\Users\<user-account>\Pictures, you just need to restore the images (files and folders) back into the same "pictures" folder structure.

Your LRCAT file, that is: the entire folder structure that includes the LRCAT file, needs to restored to local C: drive too. Along with the LR catalog (a database of pointers in the LRCAT file), there are also "preview" files of all your images inside the folder structure of "pictures\lightroom".

So, if your old LRCAT was on the C: drive and the images and folders were on the C: drive, to "recover" you need to recreate these folders by copying from any backup copies of all these materials.

If you want to change any of the set-up parameters, this is easily done, but a better explanation of the issue(s) and desires change(s) is needed.

Joexx

A couple of comments that may minimize the confusion on what to backup.
There are 2 important parts. 1-Lightroom Catalog. 2. Actual pictures (ie. JPG, NEF, Tiff etc).
If you want to have a backup, you need to copy both. The LR backup when you exit LR, just backs up the Catalog, NOT your actual pictures. The Catalog does lots of stuff such as photo organization & edits, but it is NOT your original pictures.
This means that you need to make sure you do two backups. 1 LR Catalog 2- actual pictures. Make sure you back them up to a DIFFERENT physical drive (not a logical drive). This drive can be in your computer, or an external drive. An external backup usually will offer more protection in case your computer has major issues.

kitrn23

I did mention that I use Win11, and have Carbonate. My pictures are on my PC C: drive, some in Amazon and some are in a pictures folder.
Brand computer with a faulty hard drive, replaced by Dell tech. I just seem not to understand where to d/l files to. I have several external backups. Thanks for the help. I will spend some time and attempt to get my pics back into
LR. I tried to do an import from hard drive but that did not work.

alvin3232 Loc: Houston, TX

Hello
So I have to ask when the Dell tech replaced your hard drive, was any of your data backed up, and were those files copied over to the new hard drive? Now based on this conversation seems like maybe the files were moved or were not. If the drive was replaced was any data from that old drive copied over or nothing was recovered from the old drive that failed?
Based on the notes above few things.
1. Drive failed and was replaced
2. Since the drive was replaced seems no data was copied over
3. Do you still have the old drive or did the Dell tech take it(can you answer the status of the old drive.)
4. Where is the old drive at this time.
5. If you still have it you may be able to get your files if you have it.

Alvin

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

To the extent you can avoid starting over, you do not want to re-import all your existing images. Rather, if rebuilding a computer, you want to accomplish:

1, Re-install LR Classic software. (aka clean / empty / new install). Confirm where the LRCAT file is installed, should be a "lightroom" folder under your "pictures" folder.

2, Copy existing image files & folder from back-up disks onto C: drive and into the "pictures" folder. I don't have a Win11 machine here, so just find where "pictures" go on your new machine and copy them there.

3, Find your LRCAT back-up on your back drives. Copy the entire "lightroom" folder and replace the same "lightroom" folder on the Win11 machine where the LRCAT was installed in step 1.

4, Open LR Classic and see if everything is recovered / operational.

There's a lot of assumptions above, the most important is item #3 that you have a full "lightroom" backup of the folder that includes a recent copy of your LRCAT file.

Given the ideas / steps above, what is your situation regarding available back-up data? If you don't have item #3, then you're stuck placing your images files back where they belong (item #2) and re-installing LR (item #1) and starting over. Hopefully, that's not the case.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I use the C drive for the OS and programs. The D drive has "My Pictures," with "Lightroom" inside that. That's where the backups go.

Joexx

A suggestion for you. If I understand your description correctly, you really do not have any "backup". Even if your C & D drives are separate physical drives, you are leaving your self exposed to a pretty big risk. Yes, if the C drive fails, you will still have your photos & catalog from the D drive & will be able to restore it. But, if the D drive fails you will be SOL.
I can predict one thing for sure. At some point in the future, the D drive will fail. (might be in 1 year or 10 years, but it will fail).

delder Loc: Maryland

Great Response!
NOTE LR itself does NOT have your actual immages!
Read many tales of woe UHH members moving LR files ONLY then loosing the ACTUAL Immage Files!

delder Loc: Maryland

GREAT REPLY/WARNING!

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

Since this is a photography forum, there is great interest in backing up your photos.

HOWEVER, backup is SO much more. You should be backing up any file that would cause you pain if it disappeared. That might include (but would not be limited to) word processing files, emails, program configuration files, important documents, spreadsheets, etc.

The safest thing to do is to backup everything. Your entire data disk. It's probably a good idea to keep your data disk separate from your C: drive (Windows) or your primary drive (Mac). if (when) you start to get too much data, it's easy to copy the data disk to a larger drive and then swap them out (with the same drive name). The old drive can be used for archive or erased for additional drives.