rob_w Posted June 5, 2015 Share #1 Posted June 5, 2015 Advertisement (gone after registration) Recently I subscribed to large storage capacity on Dropbox for business reasons. Since there is plenty of extra space, I am planning to move my Lightroom library to Dropbox shortly -- I want to have copies safely stored in the cloud as well as replication to/from my laptop when travelling. I could simply move a set of files to the Dropbox folder but I thought I would start this thread to see whether others have taken a similar route before me and have any experience and/or advice. For example, would it be better to "export" to the Dropbox folder rather than simply move the files and make the new location the new default? How does it work for you when travelling, and what if the library grows too large to sync to my laptop, should I divide it so as to have a smaller library to sync travelling files? Any thoughts or suggestions appreciated. Thanks Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted June 5, 2015 Posted June 5, 2015 Hi rob_w, Take a look here Lightroom and Dropbox. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
Exodies Posted June 5, 2015 Share #2 Posted June 5, 2015 I've not thought this through fully but I think that using Dropbox as a backup for your library would be better than using it instead of local storage, for performance and off-line access reasons. But this leaves you with the problem of laptop-desktop synchronisation. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 5, 2015 Share #3 Posted June 5, 2015 ... Dropbox will be used only to share some single photos with some friends at higher resolutions than it is possible here on the forum. For example, experienced photo mates work on some of my DNG originals, to show me with what settings they could better edit my photos, as I was able ever. But large collections of images I would never entrust a foreign database as the only back-up. How does it looks at Dropbox with data reliability and personal exploitation rights of the uploaded photos? Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dpitt Posted June 5, 2015 Share #4 Posted June 5, 2015 Interesting idea. Entrust the cloud with your files is one thing, but there are also considerations of a more practical matter. My main problem with backup to the cloud is the sheer volume of data involved. In my case I would need to back up about 500 GB of data to dropbox. I am sure there are many forum members having over 1 TB of picture data hanging around. Even if it would fit on the laptop, what would happen if your laptop crashed or your house burned down? I mean, how would I manage to download 500 GB from the cloud to restore my libraries? Currently I am on an average internet account with a download limit of 150 GB each month. About 100 GB is taken by daily use of my family, so that leaves 50 GB to be used.... It would take me 10 months to restore everything on one PC, and then I would have to copy it over to the other devices without use of dropbox anyway Even without download limit, at current average speed it takes about 2 hours to download 1 GB. So it would take 500 hours or 21 days 24/7 to restore the backup. Thanks but no thanks, this is not an acceptable backup solution for me. At best it would be a safeguard of last resort where I would put my most treasured pictures in jpeg format. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
IkarusJohn Posted June 5, 2015 Share #5 Posted June 5, 2015 (edited) Going purely from memory (sorry), as DropBox retains local copies on all your devices, there's no reason it shouldn't work. For some reason, when I tried this, it didn't, and I can't for the life of me remember why. I would be very interested in your experience. Thorsten had a recommendation in his workflow article about setting up LightRoom to do a backup download to a storage device on import. I've just gathered all my images (I think) into a single place, so I am looking to organise them properly. One thing to remember is that if you just drag all your image files to a new location, LightRoom will need to re-establish the catalogue links (which can be a drag). Edited June 5, 2015 by IkarusJohn 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeitz Posted June 5, 2015 Share #6 Posted June 5, 2015 I never warmed up to Public Clouds because storage devices are so cheap. Connected Data, Western Digital, and others have private cloud devices that are very inexpensive to buy, then have no further cost once bought, and are totally private (specific folders accessible only by those you invite in). They can sync or not sync depending on how folders is set up. They can be located anywhere, needing only an ethernet connection to a router. They should be thought of as "Internet Attached Storage". Make sure you "copy" files to the cloud and don't "move" files to the cloud. Lightroom's uncontrolled Libraries/Catalogs/Backups/whatevers are why I use Bridge and PSCC. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LocalHero1953 Posted June 5, 2015 Share #7 Posted June 5, 2015 (edited) Advertisement (gone after registration) I think you have to be clear about your priorities: backup or accessibility across platforms. You can't have both, reliably. I have tried dropbox, and it helped me clarify my thinking wrt the issues above. I wanted backup and flexibility, but more of the former than the latter. If you store your catalogue and images in your dropbox folder and work on them there, then you do not get secure backup: any change you make, even if it wrecks an image or a catalogue, will be immediately transferred across your platforms. You have no possibility of recovery from a secure uncorrupted backup store. So consider using dropbox as the place where you store your backups, but don't work on them there. After using dropbox for a while, I concluded it was not a good place for secure storage (too easy to corrupt it accidentally, no version control, no automated backup routine etc). I now subscribe to Crashplan (there are other similar systems) which automatically backs up selected files to the cloud, and creates versions by the day, week, year as I choose. For working across platforms, I periodically simply copy my catalogue and images between my PC and laptop via my home network (I use Microsoft's free Synctoy to make sure I copy all the right files each time). My PC is my primary store, and I keep a copy on my laptop; my laptop also contains my latest/current image folder while travelling: when I get home, I import those images (dng plus Lightroom edits made on the move) to my PC across my network. Any system that syncs gigabytes of data to the cloud needs fast broadband, which I have, but it still took more than a week of data transmission to start it up. It is much quicker doing the regular sync, though (4 hourly intervals in my case). Crashplan and others can also send you a memory stick in the post if you need a quicker restore than broadband can provide. Overall, I find the regular automated syncing and multiple backup versions very reassuring. Edited June 5, 2015 by LocalHero1953 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
IkarusJohn Posted June 6, 2015 Share #8 Posted June 6, 2015 I'm not so sure about that, Paul. If you use DropBox (say, Photos Folder in DropBox), you can sync that across all your devices - in my case, Office iMac, home MacPro and MacBook Air. In each case, the original files are stored and synced across all devices, and they're accessible directly from DropBox, if I chose not to sync all devices. Now, that's not backup, that's syncing with off-site storage. So far as I know, that works, provided you have storage space. For Backup, I use Time Machine in the office and at home, in each case connected to large hard drives. If I corrupt a file, or do something to a folder of files, that corruption, deletion or whatever it was will be synced across all my devices (if I have an internet connection at the time). But I can restore earlier versions using Time Machine. I have a feeling I'm convincing myself of something I've tried before and decided was a bad idea ... 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrp Posted June 7, 2015 Share #9 Posted June 7, 2015 I thought that you could get back earlier file versions (for up to 30 days, for the consumer offering). Dropbox is built on top of Amazon's S3, which is as solid as it gets in cloud land. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LocalHero1953 Posted June 7, 2015 Share #10 Posted June 7, 2015 (edited) I am sure the comments above are correct. In the end, there was more gut feeling in my decision than I implied. I wanted a dedicated backup system, and dropbox seemed to be less about secure storage and more about accessibility across platforms. More accessibility means less security to my mind: if I can easily access it, I can easily corrupt it Edited June 7, 2015 by LocalHero1953 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
rob_w Posted June 9, 2015 Author Share #11 Posted June 9, 2015 Thanks for all the comments so far. A couple of quick responses: Dropbox by default retains a copy on your local disk so there is no performance penalty. Regarding version control, I expect I would continue to use Time Machine for that as Dropbox simply syncs the latest version to the cloud as others have said. In the meantime I have upgraded to the LR6 release of Victoria Bampton's Lightroom FAQ book (my preferred guide). She provides very detailed discussion of all the options, why you might want to do it (or not), and detailed steps to follow for each option. Highly recommended. Victoria Bampton points out two major considerations: (1) that the Dropbox sync will attempt to update files as you edit them in Develop, which can be countered by suspending sync for the duration of the LR session and (2) that having LR open on two machines at the same time will result in sync conflicts damaging the catalog, so discipline is required. That said, she discloses that she has been using Dropbox as her preferred method for some time. There are some other 'gotchas' to watch out for but if you are that interested I recommend you read her book. It's very good. I want to achieve offsite storage and synchronization over multiple machines, so Dropbox looks like a good choice. My only remaining caveat is the daunting task of uploading 300GB. When I moved my iTunes Music to Dropbox (about 200GB) it took 4 days of background upload -- although only six hours to download on the recipient machines. Do I want my home network clogged with background activity for 6 or 7 days? At the very least I will have to pick a good time to do it Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LocalHero1953 Posted June 9, 2015 Share #12 Posted June 9, 2015 When I tried dropbox for LR sync and storage, I found the upload and download reasonably quick on my broadband (I can't remember exactly, but it seemed acceptable), but Crashplan was far slower (at least a week for my 500gb). The difference is the encryption and verification process it goes through. Dropbox is just a simple copy process. If you find dropbox slow, then I suspect you'd find more specialist cloud backup storage even slower. Crashplan allows you to tune when the syncing happens and has settings for how much of the processor it can use when you are present and absent, which helps. But it doesn't make the initial upload quick. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
rob_w Posted June 18, 2015 Author Share #13 Posted June 18, 2015 I meant to add, for anyone who wants to follow up Victoria Bampton's advice directly the link is here: http://www.lightroomqueen.com/ Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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