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Author Topic: What to do with old Lightroom catalog backups?  (Read 2138 times)

Ellis Vener

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What to do with old Lightroom catalog backups?
« on: August 20, 2012, 12:48:38 pm »

Is there any point in keeping them or is it safe to delete them? By "old" I mean older than two months.
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Malco

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Re: What to do with old Lightroom catalog backups?
« Reply #1 on: August 20, 2012, 01:53:45 pm »

I never keep more than 5.
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john beardsworth

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Re: What to do with old Lightroom catalog backups?
« Reply #2 on: August 20, 2012, 02:13:35 pm »

Make sure they're backed up somewhere, just in case, but beyond that there's no use keeping them.
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Kirk Gittings

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Re: What to do with old Lightroom catalog backups?
« Reply #3 on: August 20, 2012, 02:20:44 pm »

Donate them to Goodwill..........
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Kirk Gittings

howardm

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Re: What to do with old Lightroom catalog backups?
« Reply #4 on: August 20, 2012, 02:39:03 pm »

Honestly, that should be considered an LR shortcoming.  It shouldn't be making backups open-ended like that.  There should be a pref to keep <N> backups and/or some time based value.

wolfnowl

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Re: What to do with old Lightroom catalog backups?
« Reply #5 on: August 20, 2012, 02:46:15 pm »

Ellis:  This might be of use: Deleting Old Lightroom Backups

Mike.
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john beardsworth

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Ellis Vener

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Re: What to do with old Lightroom catalog backups?
« Reply #7 on: August 20, 2012, 04:14:13 pm »

Thanks for confirming what I already thought. Much obliged. John I'll check out the LR Backup plug-in shortly.
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: What to do with old Lightroom catalog backups?
« Reply #8 on: August 20, 2012, 06:29:11 pm »

LOL!  When I first configured LR2 several years ago, I wasn't paying good attention to how I did things and I had files all over the place.  Of course I was paranoid to delete anything for fear that I would lose something in the process.  A couple of months ago when I upgraded to LR 4, I bit the bullet and managed to get everything relocated into a sensible file structure (Win7) and it wasn't as hard as I thought.  I backed up all the old catalogs and other stuff to an external drive before deleting things and restarting LR to make sure that everything works well.  The only fault that I can find with LR is that the backup system within the software should be easier to manage.  I'll have to check out the link that John provided.
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sbay

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Re: What to do with old Lightroom catalog backups?
« Reply #9 on: August 20, 2012, 09:25:40 pm »

Once or twice I've managed to overwrite the meta-data on some of my pictures by accident in a copy-paste error (e.g., some travel location was captioned as a banana slug). Having an old backup of the catalog could help recover this when you finally notice it. BTW I think this happened when I was using IMatch not LR, but still something I worry about.
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