I mean I've got like twenty days worth of lrcat backups in my backup folder and was thinking to toss most of them...maybe save the last two or three days...is that what most of you do?...

I guess this is a lightweight question but curious about others workflow habits and precautions...thanks...

M

M,

I only backup once a week and keep the two or three most recent. I don't feel the need to have more. Just my personal preference.

Rich

I only backup once a week and tend to keep only a few backups… On my Mac, Time Machine (and other software) does additional backups on remote network drives.

I back up after every "significant" work session. I keep the most recent two backups, both on two drives.

Always having VERY recent backups has saved my arse a few times, when I did something I shouldn't have, like removing photos from a catalog.

BTW, you can compress the backup catalogs to save space. They usually compress quite well.

thanks for your input guys...appreciate it...

madmanchan...do you mean compressing with something like stuffit deluxe?...or does lightroom have that capability?...i haven't seen anything like that in lightroom but maybe i missed it...

thanks mmc

M

You can use Mac OS X buit-in compression utility. Just right-click (or Control + click) on your backup and choose Compress " name of your backup". A zip file will be created in the same folder.
To give you some hard numbers, my 2008 catalog backup is around 165MB. Using the system compression, my backup shrinks to 16.6MB, a 10x factor. Stuffit Deluxe should offer the same kind of compression.

I'm not aware of any compression capability built into Lightroom but Eric could confirm that.

Francois is right ... LR does not currently contain any built-in system for compressing backup catalogs.

I do what Francois does ... context-click on the backup catalog and choose Compress from the popup.

Learn something every day. Thanks guys!

Francois, Chan, thanks for this...a little trick i didn't know about...i tried it on an older 8mb catalog...amazing...zips down to around 1.6mb...

M