Basic Backup Question

[kitjv]

I have noticed on this forum that people use various backup strategies for LR. I suspect that the "best" backup method is individually determined. In addition to backing up my LR catalog each time I exit LR, I rely on Carbon Copy Cloner to back up my entire internal drive to an external drive on a daily basis. Question: In the event of a major LR disaster, will I have a reliable source to restore everything in LR? Thank you kindly.

Kit

 

[clee01l]

Backups have no direct relationship to LR. A backup strategy needs to consider all of your critical user data. All of your critical user data of course includes your LR catalog, settings and original image files, as well as your personal mail, documents financial information etc. There are three (only 3?) instances that you need to cover with your backup strategy. Any time you don't cover all there instances, your backup strategy is incomplete.
The three instances:

1. Your whole hard drive fails. You can count on this as an eventuality. Sometimes the can happen with warning, Other times and more often the case. you get no warning. Can you rebuild all of your critical user files from the backup that you have made?
2. Fire, Flood or other disaster. Due to some unforeseen event, your whole computer and everything in your house could be destroyed. You will need to start over with a new computer. Is your backup in a safe place such that this disaster won't affect the location of that backup data?
3. Stupid user mistakes. We all make them. It's late at night, you are tired. You try to delete one image file and you have 47 selected. Weeks go by. Suddenly, you realize the mistake. Worse, you make keyword changes and discover that you have affected 2000 images when you only wanted to apply to one. Months go by. and you discover your mistake. Does your backup strategy include versions and deleted files?

FWIW, al three of these things have happened to me. The third was the most recent. I had to go back to October 2015 to find a catalog that contained images with some important keywords intact.

 

[tspear]

Stupid user mistakes. We all make them. It's late at night, you are tired. You try to delete one image file and you have 47 selected. Weeks go by. Suddenly, you realize the mistake. Worse, you make keyword changes and discover that you have affected 2000 images when you only wanted to apply to one. Months go by. and you discover your mistake. Does your backup strategy include versions and deleted files?

Since Lr is a non-destructive editor, I always wondered why they chose to make the meta-data editing destructive.

 

[clee01l]

Since Lr is a non-destructive editor, I always wondered why they chose to make the meta-data editing destructive.

I think you miss the point. Not destructive means that LR does not make adjustments to the original image data. Overwriting the header block with new metadata is an option that only is possible with non proprietary file formats like JPEGs and DNGs. And it is an option. One that I think unnecessary. You are the one that chooses to make metadata editing destructive. Adobe give you the choice. It is up to you to make a good choice.

More important, the Keyword mistake happened in the catalog where I have backups of the backups.

 

[LouieSherwin]

Hi Kit,

I used Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) for years as my primary backup tool. If you always have the Safety Net option turned on it is an ok solution. But that was before Time Machine (TM) was part of Mac OS. Time Machine is much better as a backup tool than CCC. It manages the backup disks more efficiently, it is easier to restore from your history and it is completely integrated into the Mac OS.

Neither CCC nor TM will protect you against fire, flood or other local disaster. When I used CCC I used backup to several portable hard drives and rotate one off to my office for offsite backup. It is not so easy to do that with TM so I use CrashPlan one of the cloud based backup services backup all my important documents and images.

Note that just copying files to one of the cloud based storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. is not the same as a true backup service such as CrashPlan. One of the things that I appreciate about CrashPlan is that it has the option to encrypt my entire backup on their servers. This means that unlike all the "free" (really no extra charge) services they are not data mining my documents for their own marketing purposes.

I still use CCC for several purposes. One is to make true clones of my system hard drive weekly. This gives me a bootable backup system disk in case my main system disk fails. I had to use this within the last year when one of the memory modules on my system SSD failed and instantly erased my system drive. A simple boot from the backup system drive and a quick restore from TM had me back up and running in about half an hour or so.

I also use CCC as my backup when traveling.

-louie

 

[tspear]

I think you miss the point. Not destructive means that LR does not make adjustments to the original image data. Overwriting the header block with new metadata is an option that only is possible with non proprietary file formats like JPEGs and DNGs. And it is an option. One that I think unnecessary. You are the one that chooses to make metadata editing destructive. Adobe give you the choice. It is up to you to make a good choice.

More important, the Keyword mistake happened in the catalog where I have backups of the backups.

Cletus,

My point was the meta-data should be transactional also. So any changes to meta-data are non-destructive, so for each image you could go back and see all the meta-data history and how it has changed.

Tim

 

[Harley_Rider]

3.2.1 is a good strategy:

3 Copies
2 different storage media
1 offsite

 

[clee01l]

Cletus,

My point was the meta-data should be transactional also. So any changes to meta-data are non-destructive, so for each image you could go back and see all the meta-data history and how it has changed.

Tim

It is transactional. You store ALL changes in the LR catalog. and you CYA with Catalog backups. It might be nice to maintain a metadata history in the LR catalog like develop history, but I fear this would place to high a performance burden on the LR processor.

 

[tspear]

It is transactional. You store ALL changes in the LR catalog. and you CYA with Catalog backups. It might be nice to maintain a metadata history in the LR catalog like develop history, but I fear this would place to high a performance burden on the LR processor.

No need to make the performance suffer. Like now, store the existing meta-data on the core record and create a separate history table. Only additional processing is when you change the meta-data there is an extra write; or when you want to see the history of meta-data changes. But I digress; I doubt this would be a priority item for them.

 

[rob211]

The OP's backup strategy is quite dangerous IMHO. I dunno why one would use a clone in that situation.

Here's why: a clone on a schedule makes an exact copy. So if you're images and/or catalog is defective, it clones those defects. Worse, in this example it clones the entire drive. So it's cloning ALL the mistakes on that drive as well. So if boot drive is wonky, clone is wonky. If that's the only "backup" it's really no backup at all.

Clones have their uses and can be part of a backup strategy, but in this case you could literally lose not only the catalog but much more.

 

[bobbabe]

Hi Kit,

I used Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) for years as my primary backup tool. If you always have the Safety Net option turned on it is an ok solution. But that was before Time Machine (TM) was part of Mac OS. Time Machine is much better as a backup tool than CCC. It manages the backup disks more efficiently, it is easier to restore from your history and it is completely integrated into the Mac OS.

Neither CCC nor TM will protect you against fire, flood or other local disaster. When I used CCC I used backup to several portable hard drives and rotate one off to my office for offsite backup. It is not so easy to do that with TM so I use CrashPlan one of the cloud based backup services backup all my important documents and images.

Note that just copying files to one of the cloud based storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. is not the same as a true backup service such as CrashPlan. One of the things that I appreciate about CrashPlan is that it has the option to encrypt my entire backup on their servers. This means that unlike all the "free" (really no extra charge) services they are not data mining my documents for their own marketing purposes.

I still use CCC for several purposes. One is to make true clones of my system hard drive weekly. This gives me a bootable backup system disk in case my main system disk fails. I had to use this within the last year when one of the memory modules on my system SSD failed and instantly erased my system drive. A simple boot from the backup system drive and a quick restore from TM had me back up and running in about half an hour or so.

I also use CCC as my backup when traveling.

?

 

[bobbabe]

Hi- This is, so far, the first mention I've seen of Carbon Copy Cloner on this forum. I use Time machine as a general backup of my whole computer and I also use CCC to back up my Lightroom and other photos. What I am not sure of is how to know that I have chosen all the necessary files, and not more,that I need to have a correct and complete photo backup. I don't believe I have set the drive holding CCC up as a bootable drive. Is this necessary or possible? Hope this is the correct forum to ask this question. Thank you in advance.

 

[oleleclos]

Time Machine is much better as a backup tool than CCC.

I use CCC with Safety Net and keep two sets of disks, which I alternate and keep physically separate.

I ALSO use Time Machine but I do not regard it as a backup. I have used is ever since it was introduced with OS 10.5 ten years ago, and I have had at least ten major failures, all leading to the total loss of the backup. This is with (Ethernet) networked Time Capsules (several of them, so it's not just one bad TC), and although I know people who have used USB disks with T M for years with no problems, I know several others who have the same problems I have with networked T Ms and have lost the data they thought were safely stored there.

So why do I still use it? Because since I had the TCs anyway (mainly as wireless access points), I might as well use the T M functionality, AND I admit that T M is useful for catching those ooops moments which we all get ourselves into. But as a reliable backup? Absolutely no way!

 

[oleleclos]

I don't believe I have set the drive holding CCC up as a bootable drive. Is this necessary or possible?

Yes, CCC can make bootable clones. No, it's not necessary.

A bootable clone potentially makes it easier and quicker to continue after a disk failure, because you just need to swap round the disks and you're up and running again. But on the other hand then you are using your backup as a work disk, and that's asking for trouble if you only have one backup.

Probably far better to install a new disk and use Migration Assistant to move everything from the clone to the new disk. That's what I would do (and have done), but in a commercial environment, downtime is important. So it's horses for courses, and keeping several clones alleviates the risk.

 

[oleleclos]

So if you're images and/or catalog is defective, it clones those defects... So if boot drive is wonky, clone is wonky.

Not if you use features like Carbon Copy Cloner's "Safety Net" which archives old versions of files instead of overwriting them (as long as disk space allows, just like Time Machine).

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

3. Stupid user mistakes. We all make them. It's late at night, you are tired. You try to delete one image file and you have 47 selected. Weeks go by. Suddenly, you realize the mistake. Worse, you make keyword changes and discover that you have affected 2000 images when you only wanted to apply to one. Months go by. and you discover your mistake. Does your backup strategy include versions and deleted files

I'd add (4) Software bugs. Every once in a while software may go bad and (worst case) silently and subtly corrupt your data, without your immediately noticing it. By the time you notice, if you have only clone-type backup strategies, all your backups include the error.

And (5) subtle hardware bugs, which like above silently and subtly corrupt data (often called "bit rot") that you do not notice until, again, all your backups include the corruption.

To be a backup, you must have point-in-time recovery. You must be able to say "that happened around March 1, when I did X, and I need to go back to February to get good copies". If you can't say that kind of statement (and make it happen), you do not have adequate backups.

 

[LouieSherwin]

I ALSO use Time Machine but I do not regard it as a backup. I have used is ever since it was introduced with OS 10.5 ten years ago, and I have had at least ten major failures, all leading to the total loss of the backup. This is with (Ethernet) networked Time Capsules (several of them, so it's not just one bad TC),

I also had several instances where the Time Machine data file was corrupted on my Synology NAS. However, this has not happened for several years so it seems that Apple has probably resolved the issues. I am curious if your experience is the same.

-louie

 

[oleleclos]

Hi Louie. No, I'm afraid my problems continue. These are my two latest - in August 2016, when TM threw in the towel with a "disk full" error:

When that happens, TM should start deleting old files, but it didn't. Next time was February this year with this error message:

Needless to say, the errror was not temporary and Disk Repair didn't work, so I had to erase the TC for the umpteenth time (deleting the TM disk image over the network takes for ever and a day) and start over.

Besides, even when TM appears to be working, I have often not been able to access files back in time. All sorts happens - it hangs, it shows the files but won't restore them etc. etc. I've also had several instances of TM updates not wanting to work with the previous file. A real piece of sh.... software, but never mind; there are other options out there. I used SuperDuper for years, but have changed to CCC which I find much faster.

 

[clee01l]

Needless to say, the errror was not temporary and Disk Repair didn't work, so I had to erase the TC for the umpteenth time

It is quite possible that upgrading to Sierra would solve this problem. FWIW, I've never had to reformat my TimeCapsule except by my intention. You can reformat the Time Capsule disk(s) using the Airport utility. The Airport utility uses services on the TimeCapsule NAS to quickly reformat the TimeCapsule disk. You can also connect larger disks to the Time Capsule using the TimeCapsule USB port. With TimeMachine, you can backup all of the local disks on one or more Macs to the Time Capsule and other locally attached EHDs. I alternate between a Time Capsule for both my Macs and a Locally attached EHD for back. I never worry about losing a back up disk since it would be extremely unlike that both disks would fail at the same time

 

[oleleclos]

It is quite possible that upgrading to Sierra would solve this problem.

Possible, but not very likely. I have used TM with countless OS versions, going back to 10.5.0, and it has never worked reliably. I know it does for some, but it doesn't for me and plenty of people that I know.

The problems are always on networked systems, never im my experience with directly attached drives, so maybe it's similar to some of the problems people discuss on this forum with originals kept on network disks. Whatever the case, a piece of core Apple software shouldn't be this unreliable.

But as I say, it’s not a problem; there is plenty of other backup software to choose from

 

[clee01l]

I have used TM with countless OS versions, going back to 10.5.0, and it has never worked reliably. I know it does for some,

I've never had it work other than reliably. I think that you and the people that you know are a unique and limited set of Mac users. That said. I think it unwise to rely upon only one backup solution. In addition to TM backups in two places, I also have Crashplan backed up locally and to the cloud.

 

[oleleclos]

I've never had it work other than reliably.

Well, it's amazing how people's IT experiences vary. Take disk failures. The first hard disk I worked with, in 1981, was 10 MB - a 14" monster, with so much space we had a sysop share it between four users Between then and 2016 I never, ever had a hard disk failure, not once, while people all around me had one after the other. Then, last year, three failed on me in a row - one built-in and two external.

That's just the way the cookie crumbles

 

[clee01l]

Well, it's amazing how people's IT experiences vary. Take disk failures. The first hard disk I worked with, in 1981, was 10 MB - a 14" monster, with so much space we had a sysop share it between four users Between then and 2016 I never, ever had a hard disk failure, not once, while people all around me had one after the other. Then, last year, three failed on me in a row - one built-in and two external.

That's just the way the cookie crumbles

I reliably use a Disk drive for about 3 years then I move critical data to a newer drive. I have some SATA drives that have followed me through several hardware updates and are still going strong over 8 years after I first installed them. My last disk failure was the MacOS system disk on my 2011 iMac. I replaced it and restored quickly from the TimeMachine backup. I then bought a new 5K iMac and set it up using the same TimeMachine backup from my older iMac

 

[Sandro]

(5) subtle hardware bugs, which like above silently and subtly corrupt data (often called "bit rot") that you do not notice until, again, all your backups include the corruption.

I would add (6) Data Corruption. Every so often files become corrupt. Some corrupt files are easily noticed. Others could take weeks or months to notice. That's why having more than just a single backup copy of your files can be important.

I haven't seen any mention of CrashPlan or Carbonite in this thread. Both of these are incredible backup tools. I use CrashPlan but Carbonite is similar. Here's some of what CrashPlan does:

Free: Automated daily backups to a local or remote (off-site) drive. The data is compressed and encrypted. And the backup is a diff. Time Machine will back up the ENTIRE file every time a single bit changes. CrashPlan will only back up the bits that have changed. This is a huge savings with Lightroom Catalogs.

Paid: If you pay their fee, you can have multiple backups per day along with multiple data sets and backup to their cloud servers.

Several of my friends back their data up to my desktop machine. Remember – compressed, encrypted and diffs. For free!

 

[clee01l]

I haven't seen any mention of CrashPlan or Carbonite in this thread. Both of these are incredible backup tools

Welcome to the forum.
I to use Crashplan. I used to use Carbonite until they refused to support backing up multiple disk drives on a Mac. Unlimited is truly that "unlimited". I have about 3.5 TB in backup on one computer and with the Family plan I have the same cloud backup for all (I only have three) computers in the household. Backing up to the cloud protects against catastrophic events that might wipe out your home and all local backups.