Moving to new computer - now writing xmp

[davidlhoste]

My PC crashed. I got a new one. I have my photos on two external hard drives. I use syncback by 2brightsparks to keep the files on the two drives synced.

In Lightroom on my new computer I opened the last saved catalog backup, but configured my preferences a little differently in the catalog settings, telling Lightroom to automatically write changes into the xmp sidecar file. Lightrtoom wrote the xmp files for 124,000+ images in my catalog. Then I tried to to sync my two hard drives using syncback, and every one of my images are showing as changed plus there are 124,000 new xmp files to be written to the second drive. I aborted the sync run when the estimated time of completion went above 31 days. The computer is a Dell XPS i7-6700k CPU @0 GHz with 32 GB of memory. I don't know what to do. Any suggestions as to how I can correct will be greatly appreciated.

[Brad_Polt-Jones · Accepted solution]

A sync time of 31 days seems completely out of the ballpark. That has got to be an issue with Syncback. How long did it take Lightroom to write the metadata out to 124,000 files? As a temporary measure, you could try connecting the secondary backup to Lightroom, linking the catalog to that drive, and then write the metadata the same way you did to the primary drive. That should at least give you two drives with the same data on them.

I would also try using a different backup software to see if the problem was within Syncback. There are a lot of great backup utilities for Windows users out there.

Writing the metadata out as XMP is a good strategy to prevent loss of data from catalog corruption problems. However it will not prevent the loss of many of the catalog operations that are only stored within the .lrcat file or the previews.lrdata file. Both of these database files should be included in a weekly backup to an external drive.

[davidlhoste]

It took LR about 20 minutes to write the XMP files. But then syncback saw every image file on the drive as having changed and so wants to overwrite 124,000 files, some big tiffs and layered PSDs of 100+MB.

[Brad_Polt-Jones]

When metadata is saved as XMP from Lightroom there will be two possible outcomes. The raw images will not be modified in any way, syncback should not see any changes because the XMP is written into a sidecar file independent of the original raw.

For the TIF and PSD files however, the metadata is written directly into the files themselves, so syncback should report them is being changed.

XMP sidecar files take up very little memory, the average should be around 8 KB. It should take very little time to sync those sidecar files. The larger TIF & PSD images however will take longer.

The bottom line is that the sync process between the two drives shouldn't take much more time than the initial creation of those files from Lightroom.

I know it can be cumbersome switching to a new workflow, but I would seriously look into something like Acronis True Image backup software. It provides a fast and reliable backup system that you can trust.

[johnrellis]

For the TIF and PSD files however, the metadata is written directly into the files themselves

...and for JPEGs, DNGs, and PNGs.  It's only raw files that use .xmp sidecars.

[davidlhoste]

Thanks for your help.

[davidlhoste]

Thanks for your help.