How to backup photos and catalog to external hard drive with LR CC (Cloud Centric version)

[DovG1]

Hi Folks

New using Lightroom CC not Lr Classic. Cloud storage is expensive so can one backup onto an external drive? What are the pros and cons of doing this?

Thanks

Message was edited by: Mod (Discussion successfully moved from Lightroom Classic — The desktop-focused app to Lightroom — The cloud-based photo service)

[dj_paige]

I think most people use an external drive for backup.

The only negative of local only backups is if a fire or natural disaster destroys your house, then your pictures are gone too. Which is the reason many people also have cloud backups.

[gwinaz]

An Off Site backup of all your important files is recommended. Protects against all kinds of disasters. Portable hard drives are cheap insurance. Just update them periodically. They can be kept at a relative's house or even a safety deposit box. I actually keep two! One at a local relative's house and one at a relative out of state. Even if they are only updated occasionally it is better than losing everything. I also keep a backup in my emergency go bag I update every few weeks.

For constant protection I use a local NAS Raid 1 drive (mirrored hard drives) and an external desktop drive that gets updated nightly. Maybe paranoid but my sister did lose everything in a fire, including all of her pictures.

Don't forget to copy your phone pictures to backup also. Phones can instantly turn into a brick or be lost.

[Just Shoot Me]

I've moved your discussion to the correct forum.

Here is your last post to the other topic and forum.

DovG1 Jun 30, 2019 7:31 AM (in response to LisaMReny)

So if one does not use the new Lightroom CC cloud because it gets expensive if you need lots of storage,

how can I back up from Lightroom CC  to an external and what are the negative s if one does this?

thanks

[JohanElzenga]

Lightroom CC has an option to store a local copy of the images, and you can set the location of that storage. That’s in the preferences. There is no option to backup the ‘catalog’ (called ’Library’ in case of Lightroom CC), but you don’t really need that. You can simply rebuild it from the cloud data. The Lightroom CC library is not like the Lightroom Classic catalog. It’s more like a local cache of the cloud data.

[DovG1]

Thanks for the reply but I am still not clear.

I understand New Lightroom CC not Classic automatically uploads images into the cloud for which they give 20GB free. If one needs more storage it becomes expensive so, if you do not sync to the cloud can one backup  from Lr CC  to an external and  what are the negatives of doing this And can you import from the external drive to work on the images in Lr CC?

thanks

[Just Shoot Me]

If all you have it the 20GB option then you should not be using LR CC (Cloud). That free space is with the Photography subscription and if you had subscribed to the Cloud base option you would get 1TB of space.

So you are using both LR Classic and LR (The Newest name for the Cloud Centric version. NO CC after the name) and PS?

As to backing up your images. Yes you can do that. You use the File manager for the OS you are using to Copy them to an external drive. You do that independent, outside, of LR.

[DovG1]

Thanks for the reply but I am still not clear.

I have subscribed to the Photography programme.

I see from tutorials that New Lightroom not Classic automatically uploads images into the cloud for which they give 20GB free. If one needs more storage it becomes expensive so, if you do not sync to the cloud can one backup  from Lr CC  to an external and  what are the negatives of doing this And can you import from the external drive to work on the images in Lr CC Without them all being backed up in the cloud?

what are your suggestions?

thanks

thanks

[Just Shoot Me]

If all you want to do is use LR, the cloud based version, and NOT LR Classic or PS then you have chosen the wrong subscription plan.

You should of chosen the LR plan and not the Photography plan.

So now the question is what do you want? You can change plans.

And as stated before you can Save copies of your images from the Clouds onto your hard drive of your computer and then COPY them over to an External hard drive to Back them Up.

[DovG1]

Thanks again. I do use PS as well so this plan is good for me.

i  understand I can back up from the cloud to the computer then to an external but once

i do that can I delete from the cloud to free up space

so it does not

go over 20GB?

[Just Shoot Me]

Well you can but then you lose the ability to edit those images and or display them over multiple devices. This also may delete the copy of them on your computers hard drive that is selected to store the copy of them. Not sure as I do not use the Cloud based version at all other then on my phone to display images I have selected and placed in collections in LR Classic.

Do you realize that you can use LR classic to upload Smart Previews of images to share and use with the Mobile version of LR.

[DovG1]

I did not realize that. Thanks.

However  if I import images  to Lightroom, work on the images, back up these completed images to an external drive and then clear the cloud is that possible?

thanks

[Just Shoot Me]

DovG1  wrote

I did not realize that. Thanks.

However  if I import images  to Lightroom, work on the images, back up these completed images to an external drive and then clear the cloud is that possible?

thanks

Again I am unfamiliar on how LR (Cloud) version works and I guess it all depends on whether you are working on JPGs or RAW files but with LR Classic and most other image editing programs unless you specifically save a copy, in LR Classic Export, the edited image file those edits are only view-able, Added to, that image in that specific program.

From what I read LR (Cloud) doesn't do exporting to save an edited copy of the image. But I could be wrong. Not Sure, I don't really know.

[JohanElzenga]

DovG1  wrote

I did not realize that. Thanks.

However  if I import images  to Lightroom, work on the images, back up these completed images to an external drive and then clear the cloud is that possible?

thanks

No. The cloud is your catalog, so clearing an image from the cloud means deleting all your work. Lightroom CC stores everything in the cloud; original images as well as edits and other metadata. If you don’t want to pay for cloud space, then Lightroom CC is not for you. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

[Theresa J]

Lightroom is a cloud based application. You can not move images in and out of the cloud to work on them. It is all or nothing. If you want to save the expense of cloud storage you should use Lightroom Classic instead. With Classic all of your images are stored on local drives, which can include external drives. You create collections of images you want synced to the cloud, and Classic uploads smart previews. The originals remain on the hard drive. You can make this work with only 20GB of storage space.

[DovG1]

Sorry not Lr CC but regular Lr

[Just Shoot Me]

Please keep all replies in this discussion.

[Jao vdL]

Another subtlety that is often underapprciated is that the local storage option in Lightroom cloud is NOT A BACKUP!!!!!!!!. If you delete an image in the cloud, it will get automatically deleted from the local storage too. there Is no undo for this and deleting images in Lightroom Cloud is very dangerous therefore. The only way to create backups in Lightroom Cloud is to export originals to an external drive or other cloud backup service. just making sure you are appropriately cautioned.

[JohanElzenga]

The local storage itself is not a backup for the reason you mentioned, but a backup of the local storage is. That is easier than having to remember to export copies each time you add new photos.

[Jao vdL]

Yes that is definitely a working solution. Just making sure people realize that having the local storage option turned on does not mean they have a backup at all. You still have to have a secondary backup solution. Also backing up the local storage does not save the edits to the images, just the originals. You can only backup the edits from Lightroom "cloud" by exporting!

[JohanElzenga]

You can probably get back the edits if you backup the library, but I've never tried to restore anything that way.

[Jao vdL]

I am pretty sure it is impossible to restore anything from the local

catalog with Lightroom Cloud. If you back it up, delete an image from the

cloud and then restore the local catalog and the image from a backup

locally all that will happen is that Lightroom will recognize the state of

the local catalog is incoherent with the cloud and will dump the local

version and download a new one and again delete the local image copy you

restored from backup. Perhaps if you know how to use database tools you

could reverse engineer the backup catalog but that takes some serious

skills.

On Sun, Jun 30, 2019 at 3:09 PM JohanElzenga <forums_noreply@adobe.com>