Lightroom Tip: Back Up More Than Just Your Photos and Catalogue

Friday 18 January 2019, 20:10 by Huub Keulers | 9,296 views | 5 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

If, like me, you have a large photo archive with, for example, more than 50,000 photos, it can be useful to back up two other files as well as your Lightroom catalogue.

These are the preview files for your photos, namely 'Lightroom Catalog Previews.lrdata' and 'Lightroom Catalog Smart Previews.lrdata'.

When closing Lightroom, you have the option to create a backup of your catalogue. If you accidentally delete this catalogue, if it becomes corrupt or, even worse, if your hard drive crashes, you will lose all the edits you previously made to your RAW photos.

It is therefore important to set up Lightroom so that it creates a backup of your catalogue, for example, once a week. The safest option is to do this to a different location from where your catalogue is stored, such as an external hard drive. By default, Lightroom places your catalogue in the /pictures/lightroom/ folder.

When importing your photos, you can specify the format in which you want your previews to be created, as well as whether you want to create so-called smart previews.

With smart previews, you can edit photos that are not physically connected to your computer. Smart preview files are a new, smaller file format based on the lossy DNG file format.

What many people may not know, however, is that Lightroom also creates files containing previews (Lightroom Catalog Previews.lrdata) and possibly smart previews (Lightroom Catalog Smart Previews.lrdata) of your photos.

Lightroom places these files in the same folder as the Lightroom catalogue (Lightroom Catalog.lrcat) itself.

If you 'lose' these files for one reason or another, you will no longer have access to these (smart) previews either. Normally, this is not a problem because Lightroom can recreate these previews using your actual photos.

However, if you have a photo archive of, say, 50,000 photos, recreating these previews can take a very long time, especially the 1:1 previews.

Since creating a 1:1 preview takes around 1 to 2 seconds, this would take approximately 14 hours for 50,000 photos in the best-case scenario. If your photos are stored on an external hard drive with a slower USB 2 connection, it will take even longer.

One solution to this problem could be to back up your previews and smart previews. Unfortunately, you will have to do this manually, as Lightroom does not save these files automatically like it does your catalogue.

I have made it a habit to back up the two preview files to an external hard drive along with my Lightroom catalogue backup. Backing these up and restoring them, if necessary, is much faster than having to recreate your Lightroom previews.

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About the author

Huub Keulers is een enthousiasmerende veelzijdige freelance fotograaf woonachtig in Elsloo (Li). Hij is gespecialiseerd in sport-, bedrijfs-, straat-, honden en portretfotografie. Daarnaast is Huub auteur van diverse educatieve fotografieboeken en verzorgt hij allerlei fotoworkshops, masterclasses en lezingen.

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5 comments

Reinoud wrote on Friday 18 January 2019 at 23:17 | reply
Admittedly, it takes time to create new (smart) previews, but Lightroom is smart enough to process the photos you're looking at first. So in practice, the problem isn't too bad. I do it, but previews really aren't that important.

What I do consider important are presets (not just Develop presets, but also those for export, import, IPTC, watermark, print layouts, filename templates, locations, and so on). There's often a lot of work in those.
And don't forget the plugins either, including the installation files that may no longer be available online.

Translated from Dutch.

Bart wrote on Tuesday 22 January 2019 at 13:04 | reply
Important addition, Reinoud. How can I back up all those presets etc. Now I have a backup made every week of my C, D and two external drives at Jottacloud. That covers LR too, doesn't it. I back up both the catalog and photos from LR on two external drives
Translated from Dutch.

stanny wrote on Wednesday 23 January 2019 at 10:24 | reply
I currently have a problem with my Lightroom catalog
it has disappeared from Lightroom, and I can't restore it from the backup, or from my DROBO, open catalog, choose DROBO-catalog - but the open window does not become active
when I import photos, it does appear in the right column of Lightroom.
does anyone know a solution?
Stanny
Translated from Dutch.

Huub Keulers wrote on Thursday 24 January 2019 at 09:33 | reply
Dear Reinoud,
I completely agree with you that presets and exports are certainly just as important. Of course you don't want to lose those either. Nice addition to the article. Thank you.
Translated from Dutch.

Huub Keulers wrote on Thursday 24 January 2019 at 09:38 | reply
Hello Bart,
Below I have placed a link to an English-language article in which your question is answered. This is just a bit simpler than explaining everything here. Good luck with the backing up and thanks for your response.
https://www.lightroompresets.com/blogs/pretty-presets-blog/17457404-backing-up-your-pretty-presets-for-lightroom
Translated from Dutch.

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