One of the attractive points about the Drobo is the constant background backing up activity so that one can forget about it and get on with other computer activities.
I am using mine for photography, with my images and Lightroom catalogue stored on it.
My question is whether it is still necessary to perform Lightroom catalogue backups from within Lightroom to Drobo, or does Drobo take care of this? In the event of disc failure, will Lightroom take up from the point of disc failure when a replacement drive is inserted if no such backups have been performed?
I appreciate that for full security, catalogue backups should additionally be made to another drive that is stored in a different building.
Many thanks
The backup option in Lightroom is for backing up the catalog from primary storage to some other location. Lightroom is unaware of the level of protection the drive it uses for its catalog offers. If one of your hard drives inside Drobo fails, the Lightroom catalog should remain unharmed as well as any other data stored on Drobo and for Lightroom this should be completely transparent (well, it could slow down a little). While it doesn’t make much sense to set up backup function in Lightroom to store another copy of the same catalog on the same Drobo unit, you’re 100% right you should do regular backups on some other drive stored in different location. It’s up to you if you’ll use Lightroom’s built in function, DroboCopy job or any other method which suits you best. You should consider Drobo as a more reliable than regular hard drive, but backups of your LR catalog and all the photos are still essential.
[quote=“Zbig, post:2, topic:655”]
The backup option in Lightroom is for backing up the catalog from primary storage to some other location. Lightroom is unaware of the level of protection the drive it uses for its catalog offers. If one of your hard drives inside Drobo fails, the Lightroom catalog should remain unharmed as well as any other data stored on Drobo and for Lightroom this should be completely transparent (well, it could slow down a little). While it doesn’t make much sense to set up backup function in Lightroom to store another copy of the same catalog on the same Drobo unit, you’re 100% right you should do regular backups on some other drive stored in different location. It’s up to you if you’ll use Lightroom’s built in function, DroboCopy job or any other method which suits you best. You should consider Drobo as a more reliable than regular hard drive, but backups of your LR catalog and all the photos are still essential.
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Thanks once again, Zbig, for your very prompt reply. I thought that was the case, but to have your confirmation is very reassuring. With several years work at risk of loss, isn’t it important to get it right!