# Incremental Backup



## Raivavae (Jun 14, 2020)

Hello,
I have my LR Classic (catalog and files, everything except the program itself) on an external disk.
Is there a solution to make incremental backups on another external disk?


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## Paul McFarlane (Jun 14, 2020)

Hi and welcome!

Short answer is no, although in terms of photos then of course you can just backup ones that changed (or update backups with ones that changed) using appropriate software outside of Lightroom.

It isn't just the program that sits on the system disk btw, so there may be other files you're missing that need to be backed up, this lists them:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/backup-lightroom-files/


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## clee01l (Jun 14, 2020)

If I understand your question,  you need a system backup that manages versioning to backup  files that have changed.  This includes your catalog file which changes every time you use Lightroom  and your image files which will only change when you write metadata to the non proprietary files.  (Your RAW image files will get backed up one time as they are never changed by LR ) All of the metadata that you need is kept in the catalog file and in a practical sense the only file that will get backed up on a regular basis.  SO, you don't need to automatically save the partial metadata back to or with the original image file.

The "backup" that occurs on exit is not a real backup at all but a zipped up snapshot copy of your catalog state at the point of exiting LR.

I use Acronis as one of two system backup apps  used to back up  all of my critical data.  The other app that I use is TimeMachine which is a system backup app included in MacOS and not available on Windows.


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## Gnits (Jun 14, 2020)

I use third party tools.
*Macrium Reflect. *
I use this to do an incremental backup of my C drive (o/s and apps) and data files (excluding images) at 6 am every morning and a full backup every Sunday morning.  (I had to rebuild a C drive 10 years ago and never, never, never want to do that again). I keep 3 generations of each.  Macrium Reflect is totally automated.... works like clockwork. I wake up to two emails confirming my O/S and my data (ie non images) has been successfully backed up.

Macrium Reflect can do incremental backup of designated folders (such as images or catalogs).

*Beyond Compare.*
I use this to synch new and modified files from my production image repository to a backup repository.  Automated to happen every morning, but not trivial to set up the automated part.  GoodSync has similar functionality, less friendly user interface but easier to set scheduled tasks. These are not incremental backups in the true sense, as they only keep the latest ver of the files, but they are fast and efficient as they only copy new and modified files. This is good enough for me and appropriate for my editing workflow, but others will want full incremental functionality.

Windows has its own backup software, but I prefer 3rd party tools.

Tip.... Whatever backup / synch process you use, avoid backing up Lr previews.


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## Raivavae (Jun 14, 2020)

Thank you for all your answers and advises: I am going to test Beyond Compare.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Jun 15, 2020)

Two other backups with incremental functionality: Cloudberry Desktop Backup and Goodsync.  The former is by far easier to use, the latter has some very nice features buried in a cryptic interface.  I actually use both.  Both will do both local disk as well as cloud and nas backups, incrementally.


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## Gnits (Jun 15, 2020)

Cloudberry looks interesting, but seems to have a limit of 5 TB.

I am interested in a product that caters for a combination of Cloudberry and BeyondCompare (ie One Way Sync) in the same package, so I could manage traditional backups and file synch, using the same built in scheduler. I am not sure if Cloudberry provides a one way file synch, will look at the documentation in more detail later.


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## Paul_DS256 (Jun 15, 2020)

Raivavae said:


> Is there a solution to make incremental backups on another external disk?


Back to your original question since you've also received some excellent suggestions for cloud backups. 

If you are technically inclined, you can use ROBOCOPY (see attached) which comes with W10 to keep a copy of files in sync on an external drive. I use this for a nightly backup of changed pictures and LR artifacts to an external drive. 

I use Cloudberry to Amazon AWS for 'keeper' pictures. Cloudberry I do not believe is in the storage business but rather provides a very good client side tool for backing up to services from Amazon, Microsoft etc. In order to keep the size of my pictures in the cloud to a manageable size,  I had to write a script that finds picture that have any rating. That means reading JPG's and XMP files to find candidates.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Jun 15, 2020)

As @Paul_DS256 mentions, Robocopy comes with W10 and is an excellent tool. You can even schedule it with the windows scheduler. 

I am not aware of Cloudberry being able to do disk-to-disk syncs, though it might.  It is really a tool for incremental, versioned backups, i.e. those where you can do a point-in-time restore.  A real strength is that it is agnostic to media, it works with disks, nas, and most clouds, plus it has an understandable GUI interface.

Goodsync will definitely do syncs as well as backups, including two ways syncs if you choose (almost always a bad idea in my mind).  It has great features, just an awful interface and awful documentation.

I like to distinguish between sync'ing two disks (i.e. making one an identical copy of the other) and backing up.  To me a true backup must be versioned, you must be able to restore to a point in time.  That might not be Webster's definition, but it is absolutely required in today's systems.  It is much more likely to need to restore due to failures other than simple media failure of a disk -- software failures, user errors, power outages (or other system failures)  causing corruption, etc.   

I think people need to run some scenarios to see if they are adequately backed up.  None are high likelihood, but they all can happen:

- The latest version of Lightroom wiped out 100 files a day, and you just noticed a week after installing it; can you get them back?

- You had a fire/flood/burglary and your computer system was destroyed with no warning.  You can buy a new computer, where are your files?

- As you read this, your computer got infected with nasty malware, and all disk drives currently online were encrypted (including the one you backed up to last night and did not unplug -- or did you?).  Can you get your files back?

I'm not asking for answers.... I'm just suggesting you periodically put your black hat on and figure out what can go wrong, and how prepared you are.


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## Paul_DS256 (Jun 15, 2020)

Ferguson said:


> To me a true backup must be versioned


I would say this would be nice depending on how often the contents change. I have seen some posts here about people going way back on LR backups after discovering some bad setting. So LR backups offer one level of versioning. 

I know that with Cloudberry+AWS I can get versioning with a number of retention controls both automatic and manual purge.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Jun 15, 2020)

Paul_DS256 said:


> I would say this would be nice depending on how often the contents change.


I hope you do not mind if I take some issue with this statement.  Versioning on backups is not really about how often things change (on purpose), it is about the ability to recover when things change by accident (user error, malware, hardware error, etc.).   Now rapidly changing data can make versioning more "expensive" in terms of disk space and bandwidth, of course.

Let me take the least likely example: Bit rot.  9 months ago that great landscape shot you took had the raw file corrupted by a failing media spot on your drive that went undetected by the O/S.  You go to do a new edit and find half of it is purple with stripes because of the corruption.  Can you recover it, or do you have a few months of backups of the exact same corrupted file? 

If you don't like bit rot, let's pretend Adobe had a bug and 9 months ago, and Lightroom erased that file without notice.  Same question.  (By the way, if you do not think this is possible, at least one Lightroom release just blindly erased the alphabetically first folder on some OS, I think Mac, with no notice or indication -- NOT necessarily, indeed generally not, even a lightroom folder). 

Computer hardware has gotten AWFULLY reliable.  If you buy good stuff, it lasts longer than you are willing to use it for most of us (we want something new and shiny).   Most failures now are from bad users, bad software, malware and the like, and a LOT of those go unnoticed for a while.  Most users continue to fight the last war -- failure of a drive -- and not the current one.


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