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Backing up catalogs on a Mac

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process

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Joined
Jun 10, 2013
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231
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
6.x
Is there a way to script the backup feature of LR?
I ask because I have multiple hard drives in my Mac Pro and in addition to Time Machine taking hourly backups I have a separate backup drive which is run by Chronosync. That drive is unmounted as long as new files are backed up, and re-mounted whenever a backup new procedure is about to run, then unmounted again. Chronosync takes care of this.

So now, because I can't get LR to "wake up" that drive I first have to back them to a third drive (which is mounted all the time), then when the Chronosync-run backup drive is mounted again it backs up any new LR catalog files from that temporary backup location.

The ability to run a script would allow me to wake up the drive in question, so I'm hoping there's some sort of "expert option" in LR which I don't know about.

Alternatively I could just take away the unmount/mount feature for the backup drive and instead leave it mounted all the time, but I do it that way in hopes to keep the drive lasting longer.
 
No, there isn't such an option in Lightroom.
 
Thanks.
A minor inconvenience but just a change of backup strategy and it'll work out fine :)
A functional and well thought through backup strategy is a good investment IMHO.

On the subject of backing up LR catalogs I've understood that the ".lrlock" file (in the same location as the catalog) indicates that LR is running and uses that particular catalog. I've also noticed a ".lrcat-journal" file.
Are both files generated whenever a catalog is running, or could it be either one or the other?
Knowing this could help me configure Chronosync to NOT backup a catalog in use as I suppose this could in worst case mean I'll end up with a partly damaged catalog as it backs up while the file is being written to.
 
The ".lrcat-journal" file are catalog changes that have not yet been written to the catalog. LR creates this temporary file to hold database changes to be worked in the background during idle periods. The ".lrcat.lock" file is a sentinel file created by LR to indicate that the catalog file is open to write processes already. This file will always be present when LR is running. The ".lrcat-journal" file is only present when there are unwritten changes to the database.
 
Aha! Thanks for clearing this up.
I'll go with the "lrcat.lock" then, creating a filter so that a backup is NOT attempted whenever it's present.
 
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