# Lightroom Classic compressing back up and saving a ZIP file.



## John Cicchine (Jan 29, 2020)

Hello.

I just upgraded to Lightroom Classic 9.1. I just did my first Catolog Back up when I quit Lightroom and it compressed it and saved it as a ZIP file. In the older version I had 5.7 it did not do that. I was able to unzip the back up but I prefer it just saved the back up with out compressing. Can I change this or is this the standard way the new versions of Lightroom will back up a catalog? 
Thank You Very Much.

John


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 29, 2020)

No, you can’t change this. This is the new standard. Why would you want to change it anyway?


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## John Cicchine (Jan 29, 2020)

Johan Elzenga said:


> No, you can’t change this. This is the new standard. Why would you want to change it anyway?



Hi Johan.

Ok. Thank You Very Very  Much. 

John


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## John Cicchine (Jan 29, 2020)

John Cicchine said:


> Hi Johan.
> 
> Ok. Thank You Very Very  Much. As for why I would want to change I am just so used to the way Lightroom did it before and I am one of those individuals who when I am used to things done a certain way I am a bit resistant to change. But this does make sense since it saves Hard Drive space and I like that a lot.
> Thanks again my friend.
> ...


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 29, 2020)

That doesn’t really answer my question, so let me explain why I asked this. A backup is something you never use, unless you have a problem with your current catalog that cannot be resolved, like severe catalog corruption or the drive with the catalog failing. Only then you take a catalog backup, unzip it, and start using this catalog instead of your current catalog. If the fact that the backup is now zipped changes the way you do things, then I wonder if you understand what a backup is for.


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## John Cicchine (Jan 29, 2020)

Johan Elzenga said:


> That doesn’t really answer my question, so let me explain why I asked this. A backup is something you never use, unless you have a problem with your current catalog that cannot be resolved, like severe catalog corruption or the drive with the catalog failing. Only then you take a catalog backup, unzip it, and start using this catalog instead of your current catalog. If the fact that the backup is now zipped changes the way you do things, then I wonder if you understand what a backup is for.



Hi Johan.

Thank You for your concern and help in this matter. I would say that I basically do understand how back ups work and this does not affect my current workflow but I do admit there are a few things about back ups that I do not understand. I am planning to post some screen shots of my back ups as soon as I can to see if anyone can see if I am doing something wrong. For now I would say that I basically understand what back ups are for. 
Thanks again for your help and concern Johan.

John


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## clee01l (Jan 29, 2020)

Sometime in LR6, Adobe  decided that a more compact backup file would result if the file were ZIPped and compressed.    This change was out of the numerous requests to manage the size of the backup folder.   This change was met with great approval from the Lightroom community.


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## John Cicchine (Jan 30, 2020)

clee01l said:


> Sometime in LR6, Adobe  decided that a more compact backup file would result if the file were ZIPped and compressed.    This change was out of the numerous requests to manage the size of the backup folder.   This change was met with great approval from the Lightroom community.



Hi Cletus!

Good to hear from you! I see your point as well the thinking of others who use Lightroom. It saves on Hard Drive space and that makes sense and as someone who likes to save space on my Hard Drives I like the idea. But as I told Johan Elzenga when I get used to doing things a certain way I can be a bit resistant to change. Plus I am always concerned that some problem may arise that I may not be able to correct so as the saying goes "If it ain't broke don't fix it". But I agree totally that this is for sure a better method. Also it does not affect my work flow. As long as I can unzip the catalog if I need to. There are still some matters about the LR Catalog system that I do not understand but I plan to work on that in the future. I am glad that I was finally able to update to Lightroom Classic. Thanks again for your help Cletus. It is good to hear from you and I will be posting other questions soon.
Take care my friend!

John


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## Califdan (Jan 30, 2020)

Old habits are hard to bread. 

In addition to what John mentioned, an Adobe employee also told me that a major motivation to zip the files was cost.  Not of disk space but of Tech support time.  It seems that a fair amount of tech support time was handling issues where a user somehow started using a backup catalog by mistake and later had a real mess their (now) real catalog was in the backup folder and upon LR shutdown were creating backups of a backup in the backup folder.  Also many times they didn't notice for awhile that a bunch of work they had done between the original back up and when they accidentally switched to using it as their "real" catalog were missing.   So, Adobe figured that it would be less likely to accidentally start using a backup catalog by mistake if it required an extra step to un-zip the file before it could be used.


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## John Cicchine (Feb 2, 2020)

Califdan said:


> Old habits are hard to bread.
> 
> In addition to what John mentioned, an Adobe employee also told me that a major motivation to zip the files was cost.  Not of disk space but of Tech support time.  It seems that a fair amount of tech support time was handling issues where a user somehow started using a backup catalog by mistake and later had a real mess their (now) real catalog was in the backup folder and upon LR shutdown were creating backups of a backup in the backup folder.  Also many times they didn't notice for awhile that a bunch of work they had done between the original back up and when they accidentally switched to using it as their "real" catalog were missing.   So, Adobe figured that it would be less likely to accidentally start using a backup catalog by mistake if it required an extra step to un-zip the file before it could be used.



Thank You Very Much Califdan for posting this!


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