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Author Topic: LR catalog redundancy question  (Read 933 times)

Rusty

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LR catalog redundancy question
« on: April 03, 2019, 01:31:42 pm »

My catalog is set to back up once a day on exit from LR
It seems that a new back up file is created each time which is fine until the drive gets close to becoming full.
Is it necessary to retain all these old catalog back up files? I'm thinking they are redundant but are they?
Should I just retain the more recent back ups?
Thanks in advance

digitaldog

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Re: LR catalog redundancy question
« Reply #1 on: April 03, 2019, 02:26:19 pm »

It's not necessary nor all that useful IMHO. The backup schema is severely limited. What you want to do is have a dedicated backup that backs up everything you can't afford to lose. That includes the catalog, the images, the profiles and presets; everything. LR's backup only deals with the Catalog. Far better to use an application that backs up on a schedule (mine does this every day, at night automatically) and only backs up new data that's changed since the last backup. Some applications can backup iterations of changes too (Time Machine on the Mac is just one example). I don't recommend that approach for files like the catalog but you can do so depending on the robust backup application you pick. LR's is far from robust.
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Rusty

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Re: LR catalog redundancy question
« Reply #2 on: April 06, 2019, 07:37:14 pm »

Thanks Andrew, will proceed to set up a JBOD back up routine.
As to the catalog redundancy, back ups seem to duplicate themselves adding files to the drive thus filling the drive. Is it safe to delete older catalog back ups?
I save photos to two separate drives on import and will want to add a third via clone

digitaldog

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Re: LR catalog redundancy question
« Reply #3 on: April 06, 2019, 07:38:36 pm »

Yes you can delete.
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: LR catalog redundancy question
« Reply #4 on: April 07, 2019, 08:09:54 am »

Andrew is correct and remember, the backups that LR does are worthless if the drive they are on fails.  Best practice is always to have redundant backups.  Computer storage drives are quite robust these days but failures do happen.
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Wayne Fox

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Re: LR catalog redundancy question
« Reply #5 on: April 07, 2019, 04:54:25 pm »

To add to the conversation, my system backs up to a second identical raid each night, which then backs up to another raid.  Once a week that is synced to an offsite Synology.  All of these backups employ a system where all replaced files are archived for 2 weeks, which means I can easily go back and find multiple versions of a catalog file if something happens.

Yeah, I know a little over the top, but the only sure backup system is redundant copies of data.  I gave up on raid 5’s a long time ago, since they really aren’t designed for backup.

All that yakking just to mention that  I never have Lightroom backup it’s library file.
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