13
Replies
Just for context, for many years I’ve been working with Lightroom Classic on my MacBook Pro, with the photos on an external volume. First with hard drives, now with SSDs. My catalog is now over 150,000 photos, and it’s rock solid (crashes and SSD disconnections are rare). So the problems you are having should be solvable, and should not be directly related to using SSDs, number of photos in catalog, etc.
One thing to try: After using Windows to repair it so it can be mounted, next open Apple Disk Utility. Select the SSD and click First Aid, to see if there are any Mac-specific file system issues that Disk Utility can fix that might have been missed by Windows.
In case it’s a defective cable, definitely experiment with different cables, as long as you use one that supports the speed of the SSD.
And you're absolutely right, I don't currently have a backup for my photos…Any tips on how to do that? Is it just as simple as routinely copying my image folders over to a new drive, or is there a specific program that would help be more efficient? I know keeping the folder paths/hierarchy the same is what LR wants if I should ever resort to using those photos -- or am I mistaken?
By @tylers73957003
You are correct, you want the backup to exactly mirror the folder organization that you use for Lightroom Classic. That way, if something happens to your working SSD, you simply get the backup and copy the same folder organization back to the replacement working SSD.
And no, it is not as simple as copying the folders yourself. It can be that simple for the initial backup. But a backup is only useful if it’s kept current, so how do you do that? You don’t want to manually figure out which images are new/changed, and then manually drag them over, because that’s tedious and prone to error especially since you could change hundreds of different images in a session.
Apple has its built-in Time Machine backup feature, and that is one way. It updates the backup every hour. If you enable Time Machine, I think by default it does not include external volumes so you would have to add them. You will also have to understand how to restore an external volume from a Time Machine backup, because it’s different than restoring the Mac’s internal volume.
However, I do it in a different but also common way that’s existed since before Apple created Time Machine. I use reliable, proven Mac backup software (Carbon Copy Cloner) that can maintain an exact copy of any volume or folder. You can also use other Mac backup apps like SuperDuper! or Chronosync, they will work just as well for this.
For the first backup, whatever software you use will simply copy the whole volume to the backup volume you designated.
For subsequent backups — this is where you save time and effort — the software analyzes the working and backup volumes, and lists every difference (new and changed files). It then copies just the files that changed. This is called an incremental backup. (Time Machine does incremental backups too.) By automating incremental backups, it takes only a minute or two to update your backup so that it is once again an exact copy, and you don’t have to think about it at all. You just push the button and it does it.
You might not even have to push the button to update. Many backup apps let you schedule backups so that it updates the backup at the time interval you specify. Of course this works only when the backup volume is connected. I like to keep my backups disconnected and in a locked fire safe so that if something happens to the computer like a fire, burglary, or computer crash, it doesn’t take the backups with it.
Software like Time Machine can save multiple versions of a file over time, so that if the current version is screwed up you can roll back to an earlier one. But this means the multiple versions on the backup will use more space than the original files. So if you use a backup app that maintains versions, get a backup drive with more capacity than the original.
Regarding your catalog -- with that many photos, I'm assuming they're spread across multiple SSDs, or is it just one large drive to hold them all, with others as backup drives as you mentioned? If it is the case where you're using multiple at once when accessing the catalog, how would you facilitate that in Lrc? Hope that makes sense.
By @tylers73957003
I have a single SSD with enough TB to hold all the photos I’ve ever shot with my digital cameras and scanned from my old film. It’s an NVMe SSD, so it fits in a tiny bus-powered enclosure that easily slips into a pocket or bag.
The same Lightroom Classic catalog also tracks images on some folder on my laptop’s internal SSD and some other volumes. As you saw in the 2022 post, this is not a problem. The basic guidelines are:
- A Lightroom Classic catalog can live on any direct attached storage (DAS), such as an internal volume or an external USB/Thunderbolt volume. The main restriction is that a catalog cannot be stored on network attached storage (NAS), and should not be stored in a cloud-synced folder.
- That catalog can import and index photos and videos on multiple volumes, which can be DAS or NAS.
- Each cataloged volume appears as a top level entry in the Folders panel, again as you saw in the 2022 post.
So it’s your choice as to whether you want to keep everything on one volume with enough space, or spread them out. Or you can start one way (consolidated or spread out), and switch to the other way by moving parent folders around in the Folders panel, depending on how much space you have on your volumes. Like if you start out cataloging across three hard drives and later you buy one that’s large enough for everything, you can consolidate them on the new large drive as long as you follow procedures for maintaining catalog links to source files.
I'm assuming it doesn't matter where the catalog is stored -- meaning it doesn't have to be copied on both? Say, if one of the SSDs wasn't connected, it just wouldn't be able to access those photos. Am I correct, or misunderstanding? Again, hopefully I'm making sense.
By @tylers73957003
That’s basically correct. I keep my photos on the external SSD, but their catalog is on the internal SSD. If I open the catalog and the referenced external SSD isn’t mounted, I can still work with the photos in the catalog (for example, apply keywords) except that:
- I can’t apply visual image edits, it needs access to either originals or Smart Previews.
- I can only see images that already had previews or Smart Previews built. Any images that lack both are listed but not viewable until I plug in the external SSD that they’re on.
Plugging in the external SSD restores full access to all images.
In short, Lightroom Classic tracks files the same way as a page layout program (e.g., Adobe InDesign), a video editing application, and a web page: All of those track images by remembering the volume/folder path to the source file’s filename. All of those will remember the path if the source file is not available, so that when the source file is available, they will all relink automatically. If the filename or the folder containing the source file changes, all three have ways of updating the link so that the link can be re-established.
AdChoices