Lightroom backup of photos

KongKurs · Oct 27, 2012

My LR catalog and photos are placed on an external harddrive since I don't want to be slowing down my Macbook Pro by saving everything on the internal harddrive, but I've never really backed up my catalog including the photos (!), since I can't find the right way to do it.

Apparently, the backup built into LR only backs up the catalog settings and whatnot, not the photos (why there's no built-in backup for the photos is really a puzzle to me).

I read online that people use the "export as catalog" function, but to me it seems to be quite extensive to backup everything over and over again, if the changes vary quite little from backup to backup?

Since my photos are not stored on my internal HD I cannot use Time Machine to do this, so does anyone have a suggestion to backing up properly, or am I really needed to manually export my new photos from LR?

Thanks in advance

KmH · Oct 27, 2012

The photos are never in Lightroom.

Lightroom only knows the path (ratings, and keywords) to where the photos are stored, and has no way to back up the photos.

If you want to learn the ins-and-outs of managing your digital assets, get the indispensable, inexpensive, reference book - The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers

Big Mike · Oct 29, 2012

You need to have a system or plan for backing up your files. Lightroom gives you the option, when you import, to also copy the files to one or two locations. So you could use LR to create your backup files...but you'll want to have a place for that. For example, you might want a 2nd external drive in case your main one dies or is lost etc.

As for backing up the catalog, LR can do that automatically. You can tell LR how often you want it to create a new backup, once a week, once a month etc. It does the backup when you close a catalog.

You should know where it saves the backup catalog and also backup that file on another drive.

Lightroom will save several previous catalog backups...so every so often, I go in a delete all but the most recent backup. This helps save drive space.