Backup of my Lightroom data

[John E Anderson]

I keep my entire collection of image files and my catalog files on an external USB drive (I use both a MacBook and WIndows PC).  I regularly backup this drive to a NAS on my local network, which is then replicated to my Amazon S3 cloud storage (yes, I'm paranoid about backup).  I notice that the backup of the folder containing the catalog file also includes several folders ending in ".lrdata".  Some of these contain thousands of files and subfolders.  This takes a while to backup and consumes storage on my NAS and my Amazon S3 account. 

My question is: Are these .lrdata folders absolutely necessary to backup?  It looks like that have to do with previews.  If the worst happened and I restored just my .lrcat file, could these files and folders be regenerated?  I'd like to cut back on the number of files I need to backup.

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

Good for you about being paranoid about backups. Far too often, we see people at the opposite extreme, who haven't made backups in 6 months (or haven't ever made a backup).

Please see this document which describes what files need to be backed up: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/backup-lightroom-files/

[John E Anderson]

Thanks for that info.  Sounds like the absolutely critical files are the .lrcat and .lrcat-data folder.  Makes sense, since these are backed up into a ZIP file in my backup folder every time I exit lightroom.  I will definitely skip backing up the xxxPreviews.lrdata and xxxSmart Previews.lrdata folders   38GB on my drive!

Wasn't mentioned in the main article you linked, but I saw in the comments section that it looks like the xxxHelper.lrdata and xxxSync.lrdata folders don't need to be backed up either, that these can be rebuilt like the preview data.

[GoldingD]

And just to double check, as this has come up with other members.

You are backing up your photos as well, correct?

Some member have the mistaken idea that the photos are actually in the catalog, and that a LrC backup, backs them up. I see that you are not new to the community, so you may have read such postings in the past.I will be very happy if your thoughts are, Dang David, I know that, bug off, as opposed to Oooops.

[John E Anderson]

Absolutely, I back up all the raw data files (.dng & .jpg) and video files.  All are under one folder, by year and day (yyyy/mm-dd).  I understand that the catalog is just a database that points to the image/video file on disk.

Side note: I keep all the data on an external USB flash disk and switch between a MacBook and a PC.  Whenever I switch from one to the other, LIghtroom seems to be smart enough to know that \\Volumes\Photos\Main on my Mac is the same as D:\Photos\Main on my PC.  In previous versions of Lightroom, I used to have to right-click on the folders and set where the root of my data files was located every time I switched systems.