Do you back up your photos? Do you keyword them religiously and then back up your catalogue? I do. And my goodness I am grateful today.
Mrs. Ha (who is unwell still) sent me 3 images today. From her iPhone. I thought I would be a dutiful husband and file them under August 3rd. Except LR couldn’t see them. How I did it doesn’t matter. But I lost 50,000 files in a matter of a mouse click. All I was left with was Mrs. Ha’s three.
But of course LR is a database. There are no photos in LR. It sounded simple enough. Just point LR back to my external hard drive. It sort of started to work but lost my sub-folders. So I stopped, thunk again and second time got it right. It still takes a while to import 50,000 files to a database.
Then I had to pray that my catalogue back-ups had worked. Well I was 5 days out so I have less than a week of keywording to redo. But work it did. From disaster to salvation in about 8 hours. I actually have 3 copies of my images. One is automated through TimeMachine, another is the original files on my so-called Red Drive and then a further copy of the RD on the creatively named Blue Drive. It does not contain any blue movies, honestly.
But what if I had not backed up my catalogue? Well I would have had to keyword 50,000 images again. I think I would have said a naughty word. So if you use LR and have a catalog you have not backed up in a while – it is so tempting to click on “skip this time” – do yourself a favour. Back it up NOW. And whilst LR is only a database, do make sure you have at least 2 copies of all your precious images.
I’m off to bed. Lesson over. Phew!!!!!!!
Bark
All downhill from here 