Backing Up

[johnb88344927]

I've just backed up my Lightroom Classic catalogue  I have 2 questions.

1. There are 9 previous backups in the Backup folder. Are they each holding copies of my 37000 photo files and therefore taking up disc space? 2.

If so can I delete them all except (say) the last 3.

[John T Smith]

Moved from Using the Community (which is about the forums) to the program forum
To find a forum for your program please start at https://community.adobe.com/

Also, please post the web link where you started, that pointed you to the Using the Community forum

[dj_paige]

Catalogs do not contain your photos. So catalog backups do not contain your photos.

You can delete however many backups you feel safe deleting. How much you take risk is entirely up to you.

[richardplondon · Accepted solution]

Yes they are taking up some disk space. They are effectively snapshots of how the Catalog was at that moment: if you accidentally do some unintended actions or your Catalog becomes corrupted in some way, they offer some ability to "go back in time" to before this unwanted thing happened. I suggest, retain only a few, but avoid ONLY having very recent ones. Because if you discover that you accidentally deleted or messed up a lot of images two weeks ago - but the only backups available are all from the last few days - all those backups will show the same (undesired) content so far as those images. But if you have always got one from a month or two ago, and one from a week or two ago, and a few from recent days - you are very well covered against any nasty surprises.

It is far better policy if possible, to have these backups saved into a different storage drive, than the one where your main working Catalog lives. That way if this storage drive ever fails, those backups won't have been made useless. Alternatively, if you make a regular backup of your image files (the imported Raws, camera JPGs, Photoshop edited files...) onto a separate drive - that is then disconnected and stored separate from your computer - then by including some Catalog backups with that, you have got the means to re-create your entire image library with all work preserved, even after something catastrophic happens to your entire computer.

[johnb88344927]

That's really helpful. Thanks.