Incomplete Download from Camera 14.0.1

I haven't ruled out whether the camera connection is failing. It definitely wasn't in "connected" mode when I check.

Download = from camera to computer. Yes, I really mean import.

I guess I was thinking that it couldn't be upload since you don't push images from LRC up to your camera, so the logical inverse is download. But import makes more sense 😀

My manual back up solution is to drag my Lightroom folder structure which is an external thunderbolt drive to a NAS. That's manual. Time machine doesn't back up external drives to other external drives by default.

I never went to the cloud for photo storage. It's a large amount of data and when I first started we didn't have incredible internet speeds (we still don't). I also don't like my photos being stored on unencrypted servers or have any chance of being used to train machine learning models.

Incomplete Download

What do you mean by Download? To most of us the word download refers to a process on the Internet, to download from the Internet, files. In LrC most of us refer to the word Import. Now if you stored the photos on the cloud before using LrC, then yes, you could download (or sync). Now if you were using Lr, then you could upload to the cloud. to the Lr Album.

Perhaps I am being a pest, pickle about download vs import, but are we talking about the same software and same process??

I"m hoping so because I erased the card after each day)

Where do you keep the backups of your original photos?

And I hope that you create those backups at the outset, certainly before deleting from the card.

There is no fail safe.

Sure their is, Create backups before being destructive. Do not delete from that card until at least two backups exist in addition to the initial import (most would go with 3, as in 3-2-1 strategy). And do that ASAP as one should never ever trust a memory card, and as you should always assume a memory card is going to fail.

3 days of shooting. Typically under 5500 images per day.

That is a HUGE number f photos to import. When you import do you select COPY, Copy as DNG, or Add?

IMO, you should select ADD, that gets the images from the memory card to the hard drive in the shortest amopunt of time, and is not dependant upon LrC. And you might consider creating the backups at that point, before moving on to LrC Import. You use your OS File Manger to accomplish that. Then you use LrC to Import via ADD. Perhaps with minimum preview creation, etc. To get them into that catalog quickest.

If I was at say Yosemite National Park, and took hundred's of photos that Day, I would start the copy from my SD card to my hard drive, and go out to dinner, when I come back, I would create my first backup, Then I might bring up LrC and Import with minimum previews, likely no develop presets, just enough so I could do a bit of review.