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Author Topic: Any way to auto-delete backups (n0) and save them elsewhere?  (Read 4848 times)

PhotoEcosse

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Any way to auto-delete backups (n0) and save them elsewhere?
« on: August 08, 2013, 05:55:12 am »

In an idle moment I was browsing through my external HDDs to ensure they still had sufficient free space and eventually got to the one that contains my Lightroom catalogues.

When I opened the folder containing the catalogue that I currently use, I found a sub-folder named "Backups".

Looking into that backup folder, I found a whole series of sub-sub-folders; one for every back-up Lightroom had made of the catalogue since I started using it. Each sub-sub-folder contained a backup of the catalogue file, each of them over 600,000Kb.

That seems an awful lot of HDD space being used unnecessarily.

Is there any setting in Lightroom that would tell it to retain only a certain number of backups (say two for safety) and automatically delete older ones when it saves a new one?
« Last Edit: August 10, 2013, 07:39:38 am by PhotoEcosse »
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RikkFlohr

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Re: Any way to auto-delete backups?
« Reply #1 on: August 08, 2013, 08:14:35 am »

No.

Backup files must be managed by the User at the OS-Level.
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john beardsworth

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Re: Any way to auto-delete backups?
« Reply #2 on: August 08, 2013, 09:12:07 am »

Backups zip down to about 10%. Alternatively, see this plug-in http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/mdawson/tpglrbackup/
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kaelaria

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Re: Any way to auto-delete backups?
« Reply #3 on: August 08, 2013, 09:24:38 am »

I don't even find that feature to me useful.  I do my own real backups of files including the catalog.  Managed by my backup software.  I never understood the point of it in LR.
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jrsforums

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Re: Any way to auto-delete backups?
« Reply #4 on: August 08, 2013, 10:17:12 am »

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Jeremy Roussak

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Re: Any way to auto-delete backups?
« Reply #5 on: August 08, 2013, 01:55:30 pm »

There's no setting in LR. If you're using a Mac, it's trivial to write a folder action script to delete all but n backups.

Jeremy
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PhotoEcosse

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Re: Any way to auto-delete backups?
« Reply #6 on: August 08, 2013, 02:23:30 pm »

Gotcha!

So if I want to save disc space then, each time that Lightroom tells me it is backing up (and optimising - whatever the hell that is) the catalogue, I should simply manually delete one of the older ones.

Good to know. (Mind you, my Lightroom Catalogue HDD still has 155Gb of its 189Gb of capacity free - so it's not exactly urgent. But we Scotsmen have a saying - "Look after the groats and the punds will look after themselves!" )

.
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wolfnowl

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Re: Any way to auto-delete backups?
« Reply #7 on: August 10, 2013, 02:18:45 am »

Try this: http://bit.ly/LRBackup  It's written for Windows, but I'm sure there's a Mac-equivalent way of doing it.

Mike.
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Rhossydd

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Re: Any way to auto-delete backups?
« Reply #8 on: August 10, 2013, 04:18:04 am »

That URL doesn't work Mike (wolfnowl).
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PhotoEcosse

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Re: Any way to auto-delete backups (n0) and save them elsewhere?
« Reply #9 on: August 10, 2013, 07:42:28 am »

So, the next question is - Is there a way of telling Lightroom to save the back-ups of the catalogue on a different HDD to the one it saves the original catalogue on?

(I can get my normal back-up software to back-up the whole of the Lightroom Catalogue HDD to one of my normal back-up HDDs but just looking for a more elegant solution.)
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john beardsworth

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Re: Any way to auto-delete backups (n0) and save them elsewhere?
« Reply #10 on: August 10, 2013, 08:47:46 am »

It remembers the last folder you told it was the backup folder. So get it to backup next time upon exit, choose a folder, then you're done.
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PhotoEcosse

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Re: Any way to auto-delete backups (n0) and save them elsewhere?
« Reply #11 on: August 10, 2013, 04:34:33 pm »

Thanks John.

Will do.
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digitaldog

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Re: Any way to auto-delete backups?
« Reply #12 on: August 10, 2013, 05:17:30 pm »

There's no setting in LR. If you're using a Mac, it's trivial to write a folder action script to delete all but n backups.

Or you can use Hazel which will delete the files among many other features. Easy to use but powerful too and not expensive.

That said, I NEVER set LR for backups, it's a tad half baked (only backing up the catalog). I prefer to backup everything.
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Tony Jay

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Re: Any way to auto-delete backups?
« Reply #13 on: August 10, 2013, 06:56:36 pm »

... I prefer to backup everything.
Yes, it is easy enough to have the catalog and its associated images on a dedicated drive and backing up that drive to other drives bit-for-bit is a cinch.

Tony Jay
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wolfnowl

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Re: Any way to auto-delete backups?
« Reply #14 on: August 11, 2013, 03:05:54 am »

Try this: http://bit.ly/LRBackup  It's written for Windows, but I'm sure there's a Mac-equivalent way of doing it.

My apologies.  Remembered the link wrong.  It's http://bit.ly/DOLRB The full link is: http://www.wolfnowl.com/2010/05/deleting-old-lightroom-backups/

Mike.
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