# Basic Backup Question



## kitjv (May 19, 2016)

I have noticed on this forum that people use various backup strategies for LR. I suspect that the "best" backup method is individually determined. In addition to backing up my LR catalog each time I exit LR, I rely on Carbon Copy Cloner to back up my entire internal drive to an external drive on a daily basis. Question: In the event of a major LR disaster, will I have a reliable source to restore everything in LR? Thank you kindly.

Kit


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## clee01l (May 19, 2016)

Backups have no direct relationship to LR.  A backup strategy needs to consider all of your critical user data.  All of your critical user data of course includes your LR catalog, settings and original image files, as well as your personal mail, documents financial information etc.   There are three (only 3?) instances that you need to cover with your backup strategy. Any time you don't cover all there instances, your backup strategy is incomplete. 
*The three instances: *

Your whole hard drive fails. You can count on this as an eventuality. Sometimes the can happen with warning, Other times and more often the case. you get no warning.  Can you rebuild all of your critical user files from the backup that you have made?
Fire, Flood or other disaster.  Due to some unforeseen event, your whole computer and everything in your house could be destroyed.   You  will need to start over with a new computer.  Is your backup in a safe place such that this disaster won't affect the location of that backup data?
Stupid user mistakes.  We all make them.  It's late at night, you are tired.  You try to delete one image file and you have 47 selected. Weeks go by. Suddenly, you realize the mistake.   Worse, you make keyword changes and discover that you have affected 2000 images when you only wanted to apply to one. Months go by. and you discover your mistake.  Does your backup strategy include versions and deleted files? 
FWIW, al three of these things have happened to me.  The third was the most recent. I had to go back to October 2015 to find a catalog  that contained images with some important keywords intact.


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## tspear (May 19, 2016)

clee01l said:


> Stupid user mistakes.  We all make them.  It's late at night, you are tired.  You try to delete one image file and you have 47 selected. Weeks go by. Suddenly, you realize the mistake.   Worse, you make keyword changes and discover that you have affected 2000 images when you only wanted to apply to one. Months go by. and you discover your mistake.  Does your backup strategy include versions and deleted files?



Since Lr is a non-destructive editor, I always wondered why they chose to make the meta-data editing destructive.


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## clee01l (May 19, 2016)

tspear said:


> Since Lr is a non-destructive editor, I always wondered why they chose to make the meta-data editing destructive.


I think you miss the point. Not destructive means that LR does not make adjustments to the original image data.  Overwriting the header block with new metadata is an option that only is possible with non proprietary file formats like JPEGs and DNGs. And it is an option. One that I think unnecessary.   You are the one that chooses to make metadata editing destructive. Adobe give you the choice.  It is up to you to make a good choice. 

More important, the Keyword mistake happened in the catalog where I have backups of the backups.


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## LouieSherwin (May 19, 2016)

Hi Kit,

I used Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) for years as my primary backup tool. If you always have the Safety Net option turned on it is an ok solution. But that was before Time Machine (TM) was part of Mac OS. Time Machine is much better as a backup tool than CCC. It manages the backup disks more efficiently, it is easier to restore from your history and it is completely integrated into the Mac OS. 

Neither CCC nor TM will protect you against fire, flood or other local disaster. When I used CCC I used backup to several portable hard drives and rotate one off to my office for offsite backup. It is not so easy to do that with TM so I use CrashPlan one of the cloud based backup services backup all my important documents and images.

Note that just copying files to one of the cloud based storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. is not the same as a true backup service such as CrashPlan. One of the things that I appreciate about CrashPlan is that it has the option to encrypt my entire backup on their servers. This means that unlike all the "free" (really no extra charge) services they are not data mining my documents for their own marketing purposes. 

I still use CCC for several purposes. One is to make true clones of my system hard drive weekly. This gives me a bootable backup system disk in case my main system disk fails. I had to use this within the last year when one of the memory modules on my system SSD failed and instantly erased my system drive. A simple boot from the backup system drive and a quick restore from TM had me back up and running in about half an hour or so. 

I also use CCC as my backup when traveling.

-louie


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## tspear (May 19, 2016)

clee01l said:


> I think you miss the point. Not destructive means that LR does not make adjustments to the original image data.  Overwriting the header block with new metadata is an option that only is possible with non proprietary file formats like JPEGs and DNGs. And it is an option. One that I think unnecessary.   You are the one that chooses to make metadata editing destructive. Adobe give you the choice.  It is up to you to make a good choice.
> 
> More important, the Keyword mistake happened in the catalog where I have backups of the backups.



Cletus,

My point was the meta-data should be transactional also. So any changes to meta-data are non-destructive, so for each image you could go back and see all the meta-data history and how it has changed.

Tim


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## Harley_Rider (May 19, 2016)

*3.2.1 is a good strategy:

3* Copies 
*2* different storage media
*1* offsite


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## clee01l (May 19, 2016)

tspear said:


> Cletus,
> 
> My point was the meta-data should be transactional also. So any changes to meta-data are non-destructive, so for each image you could go back and see all the meta-data history and how it has changed.
> 
> Tim


It is transactional.  You store ALL changes in the LR catalog. and you CYA with Catalog backups.  It might be nice to maintain a metadata history in the LR catalog like develop history, but I fear this would place to high a performance burden on the LR processor.


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## tspear (May 19, 2016)

clee01l said:


> It is transactional.  You store ALL changes in the LR catalog. and you CYA with Catalog backups.  It might be nice to maintain a metadata history in the LR catalog like develop history, but I fear this would place to high a performance burden on the LR processor.



No need to make the performance suffer. Like now, store the existing meta-data on the core record and create a separate history table. Only additional processing is when you change the meta-data there is an extra write; or when you want to see the history of meta-data changes.  But I digress; I doubt this would be a priority item for them.


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## rob211 (May 19, 2016)

The OP's backup strategy is quite dangerous IMHO. I dunno why one would use a clone in that situation.

Here's why: a clone on a schedule makes an exact copy. So if you're images and/or catalog is defective, it clones those defects. Worse, in this example it clones the entire drive. So it's cloning ALL the mistakes on that drive as well. So if boot drive is wonky, clone is wonky. If that's the only "backup" it's really no backup at all.

Clones have their uses and can be part of a backup strategy, but in this case you could literally lose not only the catalog but much more.


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## bobbabe (May 21, 2017)

LouieSherwin said:


> Hi Kit,
> 
> I used Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) for years as my primary backup tool. If you always have the Safety Net option turned on it is an ok solution. But that was before Time Machine (TM) was part of Mac OS. Time Machine is much better as a backup tool than CCC. It manages the backup disks more efficiently, it is easier to restore from your history and it is completely integrated into the Mac OS.
> 
> ...


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## bobbabe (May 21, 2017)

Hi- This is, so far, the first mention I've seen of Carbon Copy Cloner on this forum. I use Time machine as a general backup of my whole computer and I also use CCC to back up my Lightroom and other photos.  What I am not sure of is how to know that I have chosen all the necessary files, and not more,that I need to have a correct and complete photo backup. I don't believe I have set the drive holding CCC up as a bootable drive. Is this necessary or possible? Hope this is the correct forum  to ask this question. Thank you in advance.


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## oleleclos (May 21, 2017)

LouieSherwin said:


> Time Machine is much better as a backup tool than CCC.


I use CCC with Safety Net and keep two sets of disks, which I alternate and keep physically separate.

I ALSO use Time Machine but I do not regard it as a backup. I have used is ever since it was introduced with OS 10.5 ten years ago, and I have had at least ten major failures, all leading to the total loss of the backup. This is with (Ethernet) networked Time Capsules (several of them, so it's not just one bad TC), and although I know people who have used USB disks with T M for years with no problems, I know several others who have the same problems I have with networked T Ms and have lost the data they thought were safely stored there.

So why do I still use it? Because since I had the TCs anyway (mainly as wireless access points), I might as well use the T M functionality, AND I admit that T M is useful for catching those ooops moments which we all get ourselves into. But as a reliable backup? Absolutely no way!


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## oleleclos (May 21, 2017)

bobbabe said:


> I don't believe I have set the drive holding CCC up as a bootable drive. Is this necessary or possible?


Yes, CCC can make bootable clones. No, it's not necessary.

A bootable clone potentially makes it easier and quicker to continue after a disk failure, because you just need to swap round the disks and you're up and running again. But on the other hand then you are using your backup as a work disk, and that's asking for trouble if you only have one backup.

Probably far better to install a new disk and use Migration Assistant to move everything from the clone to the new disk. That's what I would do (and have done), but in a commercial environment, downtime is important. So it's horses for courses, and keeping several clones alleviates the risk.


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## oleleclos (May 21, 2017)

rob211 said:


> So if you're images and/or catalog is defective, it clones those defects... So if boot drive is wonky, clone is wonky.


Not if you use features like Carbon Copy Cloner's "Safety Net" which archives old versions of files instead of overwriting them (as long as disk space allows, just like Time Machine).


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## Linwood Ferguson (May 22, 2017)

clee01l said:


> 3. Stupid user mistakes.  We all make them.  It's late at night, you are tired.  You try to delete one image file and you have 47 selected. Weeks go by. Suddenly, you realize the mistake.   Worse, you make keyword changes and discover that you have affected 2000 images when you only wanted to apply to one. Months go by. and you discover your mistake.  Does your backup strategy include versions and deleted files


I'd add (4) Software bugs. Every once in a while software may go bad and (worst case) silently and subtly corrupt your data, without your immediately noticing it. By the time you notice, if you have only clone-type backup strategies, all your backups include the error.

And (5) subtle hardware bugs, which like above silently and subtly corrupt data (often called "bit rot") that you do not notice until, again, all your backups include the corruption.

To be a backup, you must have point-in-time recovery.  You must be able to say "that happened around March 1, when I did X, and I need to go back to February to get good copies".  If you can't say that kind of statement (and make it happen), you do not have adequate backups.


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## LouieSherwin (May 22, 2017)

oleleclos said:


> I ALSO use Time Machine but I do not regard it as a backup. I have used is ever since it was introduced with OS 10.5 ten years ago, and I have had at least ten major failures, all leading to the total loss of the backup. This is with (Ethernet) networked Time Capsules (several of them, so it's not just one bad TC),



I also had several instances where the Time Machine data file was corrupted on my Synology NAS. However, this has not happened for several years so it seems that Apple has probably resolved the issues. I am curious if your experience is the same.

-louie


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## oleleclos (May 22, 2017)

Hi Louie. No, I'm afraid my problems continue. These are my two latest - in August 2016, when TM threw in the towel with a "disk full" error:




When that happens, TM should start deleting old files, but it didn't. Next time was February this year with this error message:



Needless to say, the errror was not temporary and Disk Repair didn't work, so I had to erase the TC for the umpteenth time (deleting the TM disk image over the network takes for ever and a day) and start over.

Besides, even when TM appears to be working, I have often not been able to access files back in time. All sorts happens - it hangs, it shows the files but won't restore them etc. etc. I've also had several instances of TM updates not wanting to work with the previous file. A real piece of sh.... software, but never mind; there are other options out there. I used SuperDuper for years, but have changed to CCC which I find much faster.


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## clee01l (May 22, 2017)

oleleclos said:


> Needless to say, the errror was not temporary and Disk Repair didn't work, so I had to erase the TC for the umpteenth time


It is quite possible that upgrading to Sierra would solve this problem.  FWIW, I've never had to reformat my TimeCapsule except by my intention.  You can reformat the Time Capsule disk(s) using the Airport utility.  The Airport utility uses services on the TimeCapsule NAS to quickly reformat the TimeCapsule disk.  You can also connect larger disks to the Time Capsule using the TimeCapsule USB port.  With TimeMachine, you can backup all of the local disks on one or more Macs to the Time Capsule and other locally attached EHDs.  I alternate between a Time Capsule for both my Macs and a Locally attached EHD for back.  I never worry about losing a back up disk since it would be extremely unlike that both disks would fail at the same time


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## oleleclos (May 22, 2017)

clee01l said:


> It is quite possible that upgrading to Sierra would solve this problem.


Possible, but not very likely. I have used TM with countless OS versions, going back to 10.5.0, and it has never worked reliably. I know it does for some, but it doesn't for me and plenty of people that I know. 

The problems are always on networked systems, never im my experience with directly attached drives, so maybe it's similar to some of the problems people discuss on this forum with originals kept on network disks. Whatever the case, a piece of core Apple software shouldn't be this unreliable.

But as I say, it’s not a problem; there is plenty of other backup software to choose from


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## clee01l (May 22, 2017)

oleleclos said:


> I have used TM with countless OS versions, going back to 10.5.0, and it has never worked reliably. I know it does for some,


I've never had it work other than reliably.  I think that you and the people that you know are a unique and limited set of Mac users.  That said.  I think it unwise to rely upon only one backup solution.  In addition to TM backups in two places, I also have Crashplan backed up locally and to the cloud.


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## oleleclos (May 23, 2017)

clee01l said:


> I've never had it work other than reliably.


Well, it's amazing how people's IT experiences vary. Take disk failures. The first hard disk I worked with, in 1981, was 10 MB - a 14" monster, with so much space we had a sysop share it between four users Between then and 2016 I never, ever had a hard disk failure, not once, while people all around me had one after the other. Then, last year, three failed on me in a row - one built-in and two external. 

That's just the way the cookie crumbles


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## clee01l (May 23, 2017)

oleleclos said:


> Well, it's amazing how people's IT experiences vary. Take disk failures. The first hard disk I worked with, in 1981, was 10 MB - a 14" monster, with so much space we had a sysop share it between four users Between then and 2016 I never, ever had a hard disk failure, not once, while people all around me had one after the other. Then, last year, three failed on me in a row - one built-in and two external.
> 
> That's just the way the cookie crumbles


I reliably use a Disk drive for about 3 years then I move critical data to a newer drive.  I have some SATA drives that have followed me through several hardware updates and are still going strong over 8 years after I first installed them.   My last disk failure was the MacOS system disk on my 2011 iMac.  I replaced it and restored quickly from the TimeMachine backup.  I then bought a new 5K iMac and set it up using the same TimeMachine backup from my older iMac


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## Sandro (Jun 2, 2017)

Ferguson said:


> (5) subtle hardware bugs, which like above silently and subtly corrupt data (often called "bit rot") that you do not notice until, again, all your backups include the corruption.



I would add (6) Data Corruption. Every so often files become corrupt. Some corrupt files are easily noticed. Others could take weeks or months to notice. That's why having more than just a single backup copy of your files can be important. 

I haven't seen any mention of CrashPlan or Carbonite in this thread. Both of these are incredible backup tools. I use CrashPlan but Carbonite is similar. Here's some of what CrashPlan does: 

Free: Automated daily backups to a local or remote (off-site) drive. The data is compressed and encrypted. And the backup is a diff. Time Machine will back up the ENTIRE file every time a single bit changes. CrashPlan will only back up the bits that have changed. This is a huge savings with Lightroom Catalogs. 

Paid: If you pay their fee, you can have multiple backups per day along with multiple data sets and backup to their cloud servers. 

Several of my friends back their data up to my desktop machine. Remember – compressed, encrypted and diffs. For free!


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## clee01l (Jun 2, 2017)

Sandro said:


> I haven't seen any mention of CrashPlan or Carbonite in this thread. Both of these are incredible backup tools


Welcome to the forum. 
I to use Crashplan.  I used to use Carbonite until they refused to support backing up multiple disk drives on a Mac.  Unlimited is truly that "unlimited".  I have about 3.5 TB in backup on one computer and with the Family plan I have the same cloud backup for all (I only have three) computers in the household.  Backing up to the cloud protects against catastrophic events that might wipe out your home and all local backups.


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## kitjv (May 19, 2016)

I have noticed on this forum that people use various backup strategies for LR. I suspect that the "best" backup method is individually determined. In addition to backing up my LR catalog each time I exit LR, I rely on Carbon Copy Cloner to back up my entire internal drive to an external drive on a daily basis. Question: In the event of a major LR disaster, will I have a reliable source to restore everything in LR? Thank you kindly.

Kit


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## jposada01 (Jun 14, 2017)

LouieSherwin said:


> Hi Kit,
> 
> I used Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) for years as my primary backup tool. If you always have the Safety Net option turned on it is an ok solution. But that was before Time Machine (TM) was part of Mac OS. Time Machine is much better as a backup tool than CCC. It manages the backup disks more efficiently, it is easier to restore from your history and it is completely integrated into the Mac OS.
> 
> ...


I RAID my C: drive that contains my most recent 12 months, then off-load to one (of 2) 12TB NAS boxes, both also RAIDed. I have over 636,000 archived and cataloged images. Which reminds me, I need to replace a disk (of 4 disks) in one of my NAS boxes. I have it shut down in the mean time.


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## clee01l (Jun 14, 2017)

jposada01 said:


> I RAID my C: drive that contains my most recent 12 months, then off-load to one (of 2) 12TB NAS boxes, both also RAIDed. I have over 636,000 archived and cataloged images. Which reminds me, I need to replace a disk (of 4 disks) in one of my NAS boxes. I have it shut down in the mean time.


Have you thought about what it will take to recover data when your RAID controller fails?  Do you have a backup RAID controller? Does the Raid controller use proprietary filesystem formats or is it a standard like NTFS, HFS, ext2, XFS, JFS, or ReiserFS?


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## jposada01 (Jun 14, 2017)

If the controller fails, I call my technician (actually, a local shop who is VERY good with high-ends) and scream FIX! It's not a proprietary controller, (NTFS).


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## clee01l (Jun 14, 2017)

jposada01 said:


> If the controller fails, I call my technician (actually, a local shop who is VERY good with high-ends) and scream FIX! It's not a proprietary controller, (NTFS).


Many people overlook this hardware component in selecting RAID.  When the controller fails and the filesystem is proprietary, you need a working controller that can read the same filesystem. I found this out the hard way.  Fortunately, I had two identical RAID controllers and could use the one still working to pull the data off of the RAID drives from the failed RAID controller. 
RAID is not backup but is useful mainly when 24X7 up time is a requirement. Your RAID system is probably overkill and may not protect your data in the case of user errors as these get replicated through out all of your RAID devices.


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## jposada01 (Jun 14, 2017)

Yeah...I understand about the user error. I'm considering incorporating Amazon Drive (I subscribe to Prime) and put a full backup (everything I work on is inside of specific folders (images and catalog) once a week (it will probably take a week to transfer). This isn't a user-error solution as much as a protection should I have fire/flood. This afternoon I spoke with the Dropbox people. Their Business Plan also gives me unlimited,  but $60 a month is giving me pause and I don't need 3 users.


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## Sandro (Jun 14, 2017)

jposada01 said:


> I RAID my C: drive that contains my most recent 12 months, then off-load to one (of 2) 12TB NAS boxes, both also RAIDed. I have over 636,000 archived and cataloged images.



How do you back up the 24 TB worth of data that resides on your two NAS boxes? 



jposada01 said:


> I'm considering incorporating Amazon Drive (I subscribe to Prime) and put a full backup (everything I work on is inside of specific folders (images and catalog) once a week (it will probably take a week to transfer).



Maybe your broadband connection is significantly faster than mine but it took a lot longer than a week to back up my 2+ TB of images to my cloud-based backup service. In hindsight, I should have spent the $75 to seed my backup – perform an initial backup to an external drive that I send to the backup service. 

On a related note, I changed my mind and decided that my JPG images should remain as JPG. For a brief period, I had converted processed JPGs to DNG. About a hundred or so ended up converted. The original JPG images have long since been deleted from my local machine (and my CCC clones) but, handily enough, they were all easily restored from my CrashPlan backup. Hurray for keeping deleted files!


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## jposada01 (Jun 15, 2017)

How do I back up 24TB? First, it's only 15TB  because a 12TB box has 8TB usable storage. How long? I think remember that I once did about a TB to my Amazon Drive and it took me about 24 hours over the fastest FIOS connection speed they had to offer (I think). So...if I can go at a TB per day, I'll just have to let it run 15 days.   

Side note...I spoke with a Dropbox technician and seems that Lightroom has an integration with Dropbox...they're sending me the technical data.


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## jposada01 (Jun 15, 2017)

BTW...I'm interested in the Dropbox integration because Dropbox Business allows versioning for the last 120 days of file changes.


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## clee01l (Jun 15, 2017)

My backup plan in cludes two solutions in 4 places.  Time Machine makes regular backup to alternative location  (my time capsule NAS and a local HDD.  This is free except for the hardware purchase.   My other backup is Crashplan with unlimited backup to the CrashPlan cloud for $60/yr and a local backup to another EHD.  The CrashPlan local backup is free.  I have three local backups to recover the usual stuff like HDD failures and stupid user mistakes  and a Cloud backup to cover the fire, flood, pestilence  that might wipe out my home network.


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## Sandro (Jun 15, 2017)

I use CrashPlan (family plan) to backup all of my data to their cloud service. I have a reciprocal agreement with a friend across town to backup critical files using CrashPlan. At some point, I'll install a large enough drive in his machine to backup all of my images. Every week or so I use CCC to clone my machine onto portable drives. I have two sets of portable drives, one of which resides in my safe deposit box. 

If I need to restore previously deleted files, 
  I can restore from my cloud backup. 
If my machine or primary drive fails, 
  I can use the portable drives to boot from and be operational with minimal downtime. 
If my house gets flattened, 
  I can do the same using the drives stored at the bank. 
If the entire region gets flattened, 
  I'll have other things to worry about but all of my data will be safe!


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## process (Jun 21, 2017)

I use both Time Machine and Chronosync.
Time Machine does its default thing (I think it backs up once an hour) and back up to a separate, internal drive (I have a Mac Pro with multiple internal drives). Time Machine is nice for situations where I've accidently deleted a file, overwritten it etc. and want back the version from say 2 days back. I've never used it to fully recover a drive, so I don't know how well that works.

Chronosync is a much more advanced piece of backup software which I have set up to create a bootable clone of the drive with OSX on it as well as all my apps. So in case my main drive goes bad I can immediately reboot from the backup drive. I find cloning this twice a day adequate.
Then there are all my files/user area which is automatically backed up once every hour. Chronosync also takes care of deleting old backups (I keep a couple of copies in the "backup archive" as well as the latest file, just in case I've ended up with a corrupted file or whatever as discussed earlier here) so I don't have to worry about "housekeeping" 
When in comes to LR the photos are of course among those files. The same goes for my catalogs (I have multiple catalogs for different "categories" (work, private, special projects and so on, just to keep things apart and their sizes not too big, hence slower response in LR I assume) -they're actually on a thirds drive: an SSD, as I've been told that keeping the catalog and previews on an SSD will greatly increase access speed compare to a regular hard drive. I also keep a "backups" folder within each catalog folder on that same SSD. Those are the ZIP compressed backups that I've told LR to do (I have set LR to "Backup catalog: whenever LR quits" and manually make a choice if I need a backup, or I just press the ESC key to quit LR without backing up if I feel a recent backup has been made already). 
An SSD of course is much more expensive than a normal hard drive, hence I don't have unlimited storage space there, which is why I'm struggling to figure out a backup/cleanup strategy for that drive. My current plan is to continue having Chronosync back up the current catalogs (perhaps keeping an additional one in the backup archive), then keep several of the ZIP compressed ones as catalogs I can go back in time with (sort of like Time Machine). 
The SSD of course will be a secondary backup source which is good, but will eventually get full because of all the ZIP compressed catalogs, so I'm thinking some sort of "cleaning up" script will be in order here (I'm still trying to figure that one out).
Oh, I almost forgot: when importing photos from my memory card I have LR simultaneously copy those images to a separate location (I think it's configured in LR's "import" section), and that would be a folder on my Time Machine drive. Very handy in case I mess something up in LR, deleting images I should have kept etc. And Time Machine might not have had the opportunity to back up those files yet, so that's a good way of safekeeping anything I import. Since that drive also fills up I could need some automated script to clean out very old image copies. Still working on that one as well.

Of course, as people here have already mentioned, none of the above would help in case of a fire or theft, which is why I've got an external 4-bay hard drive rack with removable hard drives. I have 2 drives making the same backup (so I can rotate them), and Chronosync automatically starts backing up the right files according to which drive is inserted. Two drives makes it possible to keep one nearby, in a safe location while the other one can be kept off-site at a physically different location. And since I rotate them I'll only lose whatever I added since that last backup. Not ideal perhaps, but at least I won't lose everything.


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## CloudedGenie (Jun 28, 2017)

I am now again evaluating all the different backup options. 

We lost a significant amount of data when the RAID controller of our NAS failed. Initially it appeared as if one after the other of the Enterprise grade hard drives started failing, we replaced one and later a second drive, and I started frantically copying everything onto portable USB drives... We discovered the problem when I had to restore some files after my external hard drive failed (after being dropped from the desk). We found copies of some of the data on the original hard drives where we originally copied it from before retiring the old desktop machines and throwing the hard disks in a drawer, and I discovered some photos on DVDs that I burnt back in 2007 after reading the DAM book - original RAW files that I thought I had lost years ago.

I now sit with 11 4TB USB drives on my desk (and one in an unopened box in my drawer), all with partial copies of our data (and a few with copies of my catalogs, photos and videos). We also have two WD 8TB network drives (intended for interim storage so I can sort this mess out).

I have been looking at the Synology NAS systems, but I don't want to be at the risk of a single component failure again... I would prefer a non-proprietary solution.

That also does not take care of the off-site backup. Our network upload speed is ridiculously slow, and it would take months to upload everything to Dropbox...


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## clee01l (Jun 28, 2017)

CloudedGenie  Here is what I use in addition to Time Machine backed up to both a Network drive and an EHD  My secondary backup is CrashPlan  both locally and the cloud.  CrashPlan is free for local use.  The Cloud service is $60USD/yr. or a little more for a family plan.  This gives you an unlimited storage in the cloud.  The cloud backup  does take a while.  It tool me about 2 months to get about 3TB to Crashplans cloud.   The Local Crashplan completes fairly quickly and once backed up to the cloud, incremental backups are quick and transparent.  Cloud Backup is just for catastrophic events and local backups are IMO necessary for recover of the usual stupid user mistakes and hard drive crashes.


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## LouieSherwin (Jun 29, 2017)

CloudedGenie said:


> I am now again evaluating all the different backup options.
> 
> We lost a significant amount of data when the RAID controller of our NAS failed.



CloudedGentel,

Sorry to hear about the unfortunate situation that you find yourself in. I hope that you are able to get everything back together with our too much pain or trouble. Thank you for reporting your troubles as hopefully, it will be instructive to others.

As you have discovered a real "Backup" is a necessary part of your data protection plan regardless of the type of mass storage that you use. What is often misunderstood is that a RAID array, directly attached to your computer or as part of a NAS is just another storage device. The whole RAID can fail just as a single drives can fail. 

Real backup software such as Time Machine and Crash Plan will periodically recored all the changes to a backup dataset on a separate storage device. This device needs to have at least 1.5 to 2 times the capacity of the device it is backing up. For those of us with large and growing image collections this is going to require a lot of capacity. So if you have 5 TB of user and images you need at least 7.5 TB and ideally 10 TB for your backup. It is easy to see why people balk at the additional effort and expense of setting up such a system.

My personal setup is similar to the way Cletus is organized. My user and image data are about 2TB. For that I use a pair of 3TB internal drives that are mirrored (RAID 1). For local backup I use Time Machine to backup to a Synology 1511 NAS that holds five 2TB drives, four online for 5.9TB capacity with one hot spare. For catastrophic protection I use Crash Plan. In addition I also periodically clone my system drive to a bootable external drive. 

As you can see I use RAID, NAS and even cloning as part of my backup protection system. However, in and of themselves none are sufficient to provide complete protection. 

This has served me well. I have had two hard drive failures. One a disk crash (loud noises etc.) on my wife's iMac recovered completely from Time Machine, after the pain of opening up the iMac and replacing the crashed drive. The second a SSD system drive on my MacPro simply disappeared never to return. Simply rebooted from my latest clone and restored from Time Machine and was back up in about an hour. 

-louie


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## Fairlight (Jul 19, 2017)

Only last week my external hard dive failed. This wa s the second time this has happened over a 7 year period.
Fortunately this time I did not lose anything as I had done daily backups not just when LR shut down but also of the referenced images. This meant all was restored fairly quickly with no loss. 
I am sure I am not the only one who previously had not backed up the referenced images but only the catalogue backup when closing down Lightroom.
Hope this, perhaps obvious, comment helps someone.


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## clee01l (Jul 19, 2017)

Fairlight said:


> I am sure I am not the only one who previously had not backed up the referenced images but only the catalogue backup when closing down Lightroom.


I am constantly amazed that  people using computers in the 21st century ignore the recommendations to make regular system backups of all of their critical user data. For Mac users it is even more mystifying since the MacOS comes with a very robust system backup app in TimeMachine and all that is needed is a spare disk drive.


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## Dan Marchant (Jul 19, 2017)

Another thing to remember is the LR does not backup your presets (as in user created develop, import or export presets). So if your drive fails and you need to reinstall they will be gone. You need to back those up as well if they are important to you. 

to find out where they are stored on your computer go to Edit > Preferences > Presets and click the button "show Lightroom presets folder".


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## clee01l (Jul 19, 2017)

Dan Marchant said:


> Another thing to remember is the LR does not backup your presets (as in user created develop, import or export presets). So if your drive fails and you need to reinstall they will be gone. You need to back those up as well if they are important to you.


This is part of what I mean by critical user data,  Other important critical user data are documents and settings for Word or spreadsheets or even emails. Simply ask yourself what you would miss when you disk drive fails. These are the thins that need to be backed up.


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