LR Backups and Catalogues.

superpippo

superpippo

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Alan
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i am looking to free up some disc space and I have looked at my LR backup file which is 11gb and I note that I have 134 backup files dating back to the first in July 2020.
I back up every time that the LR programme suggests it.
Is it safe to delete all but the most recent?

Also there is a folder titled 'Lightroom Catalog-2-v13 Smart Previews.lrdata' which is 21gb .

presumably that should be left alone?
 
Back when I was using LR version 6 I took the advice of the Lightroomqueen.....further forum discussion there about the practice with the more current version(s)?

Deleting old back-ups

Can I delete old back-ups? I back up when closing LR. I have many many 1.2 GB zip archive files.
www.lightroomqueen.com
 
I would say yes, safe to delete all but the most recent unless you ever want to roll back. In the unlikely event that you might back up a corrupt catalogue, it's probably worth keeping 2 backups (the latest and the one before that). I don't bother with using LR to back up because a) it doesn't back up the images, and b) as you've discovered, it clogs your drive. I just backup the .lrcat file (the catalogue) in the same job that backs up my images.

Previews are the jpeg images that Lightroom makes to display them in the program. You can delete it if you like, but LR will just make more whenever you open and image to work on it (or open the grid view). There's a setting to delete previews after x days, which I set to the lowest. No point in having previews built for photos I took back in 2010 - I just want previews for what I'm working on now (maybe the last 12 months or so). As I said, it's no great loss as LR will just rebuild them as it needs them.
 
I do the same as ecoleman and never had any issues (y)
 
I keep the last backup of each year, and have done since 2007, not that I have needed to use them... I also keep the past 3 months' worth and clear them down occasionally.
 
Box Brownie said:
Back when I was using LR version 6 I took the advice of the Lightroomqueen.....further forum discussion there about the practice with the more current version(s)?

Deleting old back-ups

Can I delete old back-ups? I back up when closing LR. I have many many 1.2 GB zip archive files.
www.lightroomqueen.com
Click to expand...

Harlequin565 said:
I would say yes, safe to delete all but the most recent unless you ever want to roll back. In the unlikely event that you might back up a corrupt catalogue, it's probably worth keeping 2 backups (the latest and the one before that). I don't bother with using LR to back up because a) it doesn't back up the images, and b) as you've discovered, it clogs your drive. I just backup the .lrcat file (the catalogue) in the same job that backs up my images.

Previews are the jpeg images that Lightroom makes to display them in the program. You can delete it if you like, but LR will just make more whenever you open and image to work on it (or open the grid view). There's a setting to delete previews after x days, which I set to the lowest. No point in having previews built for photos I took back in 2010 - I just want previews for what I'm working on now (maybe the last 12 months or so). As I said, it's no great loss as LR will just rebuild them as it needs them.
Click to expand...

ecoleman said:
Yes it's safe to delete them. I clear them out every now and then and just keep the most recent 2-3 backups.
Click to expand...

Bristolian said:
I do the same as ecoleman and never had any issues (y)
Click to expand...

Craikeybaby said:
I keep the last backup of each year, and have done since 2007, not that I have needed to use them... I also keep the past 3 months' worth and clear them down occasionally.
Click to expand...


Thanks for all the advice. (y)
All very useful and gave me the confidence to create more space on my hard drive.
 
I backup up to 2 separate hard drives - one is a time machine backup (currently have my library on my internal hard drive and one is a straight copy of the library that just gets added to on import to Lightroom. Time Machine just fills the disc up then overwrites the oldest files when its full. Theoretically when my straight copy disc fills up I just start another ot get a bigger disc. It's an evolving system.
 
I generally only keep the latest backup, unless in very special circumstances.

The previews can be deleted but that will just cause them to be regenerated causing slowdowns. Maybe not all at once so only do it if you are desperate for those last few GB.
 
Wellsyboy said:
I backup up to 2 separate hard drives - one is a time machine backup (currently have my library on my internal hard drive and one is a straight copy of the library that just gets added to on import to Lightroom. Time Machine just fills the disc up then overwrites the oldest files when its full. Theoretically when my straight copy disc fills up I just start another ot get a bigger disc. It's an evolving system.
Click to expand...
Tm is great for apple machines. I would suggest making exclusion for preview folder, as well as any other temporary files and cache directories. You get faster backups and use less space. Same for indexing
 
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