Lightroom backup questions

[JulieM]

I backup my Lightroom catalog once a week. Can I safely delete previous backups of the catalog and if so, which file names are the ones to delete?

Are there any negative consequences if I have my catalog backups saved to a drive other than the one on which the program is housed? (My program files are on my C drive but I have my images saved on an EHD along with the catalog backups)

Thanks!

[rhynetc]

Julie,

MattK has a tutorial video at
http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/archives/videos/page/2/
in which he suggests backing up your entire disk rather than just your LR catalog. Makes sense, because this way you back up your photos as well as the LRcat file.

If you want to back up only the catalog, you can safely delete older backups to "clean up" your disk. I routinely keep the last two backups, just because I'm a bit obsessive about security:D.

Tom

[rhynetc]

...which file names are the ones to delete?

On the PC, look in the My Pictures/Lightroom/Backups folder. The backup files are named by date of the backup, so keep the most recent one or two.

Tom

[rhynetc]

Are there any negative consequences if I have my catalog backups saved to a drive other than the one on which the program is housed? (My program files are on my C drive but I have my images saved on an EHD along with the catalog backups)

By default, LR will write the catalog and backups to the My Pictures/Lightroom folder on your PC, but it can access photos stored on the EHD with no problems. There shouldn't be any problem doing it this way, except that you MAY have to deal with the situation in which your EHD might be assigned a different drive letter at different connection times. If it is always assigned the same drive letter, there should be no problems.

Tom

[JulieM]

Tom,

Thank you so much for all that information!

I will check on Matt's video. I'm embarrassed to ask but how do I go about backing up the entire disk if I choose to? No doubt that is something I should have learned to do some time ago.

Otherwise, I think that answers all of my questions...

[rhynetc]

...how do I go about backing up the entire disk if I choose to?...

Julie,

Matt explains at least one way to do this in his video. I use Windows backup.

Tom

[JulieM]

Great. Thank you so much, Tom...