Lightroom: Backups

Many websites, i.e.: people, talk about Lightroom and backups. The problem is that most people do not understand the difference between a copy and a backup. Not only people make that mistake of confusing copies with backups but Adobe makes the same mistake. And I expected better from Adobe.

When you start Lightroom, Lightroom will ask every week:

It’s not a backup!, it’s a snapshot.

To have a backup you require:

1. A schedule, daily, weekly… Lightroom does that.
2. You can recover all of the application related data. Lightroom only copies its own database, none of the photos are copied. None of your personal preferences are copied either. So you can’t recover if there is a crash, corruption. Any crash or any corruption and you’re toast.
3. You can recover if the computer crash. Lightroom only copies its own database to the same disk, same directory, as a sub-directory, none of the photos are copies… So you can’t recover if there is a crash, corruption. Any computer crash and you’re toast.
4. You can recover if the hard drive crash. Lightroom only copies its own database to the same hard drive, none of the photos are copies… Any hard drive crash and you’re toast.
5. You can recover in case of fire/theft/floods. This means that you must be able to separate your backup from your computer and from Lightroom.

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1. Do not confuse snapshots with backups.
2. Data Robotics has come out with a new model the “Drobo Pro”. This hard drive array is aimed at photographers. Many “big names”, such as Scott Kelby, love it. I have a very strong opinion and dislike it. The new “Drobo Pro” still has the same basic flaw as the original Drobo. It does not follow the RAID standards. This means that if 1 drive fails, you are OK, but what about 2 or 3 drives fail at the same time? After to many crashes, Scott Kelby abandoned the Drobo system: I’m Done with Drobo