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Grant Fergeson
Known Participant
November 25, 2016
Question

LR catalogue backup, storage and access

  • November 25, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 1442 views

I am moving from LR 4 to Creative Cloud. Currently on my desktop Mac, the LR back up catalogue is named Lightroom 3 Catalog-2-2.lrcat. I didn't realize that my Lightroom folder has placeholders for other catalogues up to LR4 but I am not sure if anything is in them and concerned if I access them I wont be able to get back to my current catalogue. So i would like to know if anyone can suggest whether I should migrate my current catalogueLightroom 3 Catalog-2-2.lrcat to the folder named Lightroom 4 Catalog lrcat and if so how?

Once that is resolved, I will be adding a Creative Cloud license to my Laptop and also needing to copy all of the data from my desktop lightroom to an external drive and then accessing that data from my laptop. I would appreciate any suggestions as to how that is best accomplished. Thank you

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    1 reply

    Just Shoot Me
    Just Shoot Me
    Legend
    November 25, 2016

    If you have multiple catalog files and you used multiple versions of LR on your Mac then as you installed the newer versions of LR they took the older catalog file, made a copy of it and converted that copy to one that works with the newer versions of LR. This will happen again when you install LR CC and open it for the first time. So you will end up with another LR catalog file.

    Just make sure it converts the most recent LR 4 catalog file.

    You can't access those older catalog files without having LR then convert them to a format that works with the newer version of LR. In fact it is a bad idea to even try accessing them unless you have the older version of LR installed on your system.

    Under the File menu item there will be a list of catalogs LR has open in the past. It is under Open Recent.

    G
    Grant FergesonAuthor
    Known Participant
    November 26, 2016

    Thank you. That sounds quite logical but when I back up LR 4 it always back up to the Lightroom 3 Catalog 2-2.lrcat. So I don't know what is on the LR 4 catalogue or how to view it. I notice that in Preferences  the default catalog is  "most recent" so maybe that is the reson it is not backing up to or loading LR 4 catalog.

    Just Shoot Me
    Just Shoot Me
    Legend
    November 26, 2016

    What do you mean it backs up to LR 3 catalog.

    If you have LR 4 installed and you have a LR 4 catalog then the backups should be named after the LR 4 catalog.

    Please show a screen shot of your File Manager window with the catalog and backup folder showing.

    If you go to the File menu item and look in Open Recent it should list the catalog name LR is currently accessing. What is the name?

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