External Hard Drive Full

[dave_dejoy]

<p>I have what I hope is a simple problem to solve. Using Lightroom I have an external drive that is my automatic backup drive. This drive is full. Can I simply unplug it and connect a new drive? After a Lightroom session, I get the message: "do I want to backup now?" With the new drive in place if click "yes", would Lightroom backup up everything on the main/primary drive both previous and new work? I am working in a Windows environment. Thanks for any help.</p>

[blumesan]

<p>It depends on how the Lightroom backup program is configured. Some programs will distinguish between new files and those already backed-up, and copy only the new files. Other routines just back up everything that's not already present on the backup drive. Since I don't use LR I can't tell you how it works.</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>You'll want to clone the contents of the smaller external to the newer bigger drive. Then everything should run as it did in the past. FWIW, there's no reason to keep lots of old copies of the LR backup, it's just the database and nothing more. You want to backup that database yes, along with all your images. I can see little reason to keep more than 1, perhaps two backup's using the LR backup routines. In fact I don't use it at all since it only backs up on part of this important data. I dedicate one big drive for the LR database, previews and all images. Then I clone (backup) that to another equally large drive, several actually. Everything gets backed up and I'm able to turn off the LR backup which only handles a small part of this very important data. </p>

[mccosh]

<p>Lightroom creates a new backup file dated to the day of the backup and never removes any previous backup files. Therefore every so often you need to go into your backup folder and delete all your old backup files that are no use to you. You wouldn't want normally want to restore Lightroom to was last year when you can restore it to how it was last week. I normally only keep the last two backups. This might free up enough room that you no longer need a new drive if your just using it for backing up your catalog.<br /><br />If your new drive has been assigned the same drive letter and have the same backup folder then I image that Lightoom would just backup to this new drive with no issues.</p>

<p>John</p>

[fkohan]

Keep in mind that Lightroom only backs up the catalog and not the actual image files. You should back those up separately.

[tudor_apmadoc]

Lightroom doesn't have an option to keep xx copies, it keeps them forever. Go to the backup directory on the external

drive and delete copies older than 3 months

[hjoseph7]

<p>Do you always have to do a backup ? I disabled the automatic backup on my external hard drive because it was filling up to quickly. </p>

[chuck_albertson1]

<p>Read Fernando's post above - LR only backs up the catalog(s) it creates, not the image files or anything else on your hard drive. Run a backup utility (I just use the Windows 7 backup utility) to save an image of your system, or specific files.</p>

[mccosh]

<p>Another way is when importing your images you import them to two separate drives, one for working on and the other a backup. Then all you need to do is backup your Lightroom catalog on a regular basis. I do mind once a week and then only keep the last two copies.</p>

[dave_dejoy]

<p>Thanks all for the help and forgive me if I seem unusually slow. When I import photos into LR, I save a second copy to my external drive in a folder labeled My Photos. Then when exiting LR, I have the option to backup. That action apparently backs-up the LR Catalog only. If I go directly to the external drive, I see a folder My Photos. Inside that folder are subfolders arranged by date and also subfolders labeled - Imported on a particular date. Also on the external drive, there is a folder called - Owner-PC. Inside that folder I see several "Backup Periods", each about 1 year. Together, these backups seem to account for the majority of the space on the external drive. So, that's the picture and I hope it makes some sense. Appreciate any advice on how to proceed. It looks like I could free up considerable space on the external drive by deleting some of these older backups? Thanks.</p>

[howard_m]

<p>Dave, the 'Owner-PC, Backup Periods' folder does not sound like LR's catalog backup method naming convention. Do you see a number of .lrcat files there? If not, then I would think some other process/software is doing backups and they are unrelated to Lightroom.</p>

<p>But, to answer the question, you can keep only the last few .lrcat files (the Lightroom catalog backups). Left to itself, Lightroom will never delete/housekeep old .lrcat backups which would eat a lot of disk.</p>