(Updated 1/23/2011) My backup procedures are not perfect, but they work for me. They can be improved, so if you have comments please leave them. I’d also be happy to answer questions, too. I hope that someone finds this useful. This is really not as complicated as it seems. I’ve just tried to be as explicit as I can be.

I use a Macbook Pro laptop. My external drive is a Drobo HD enclosure with four 2TB drives. I use Lightroom and Photoshop.

First let’s recap how Lightroom works: Lightroom never edits your files! If you make a change to a photo in Lightroom, all it does is record that step in a single Catalog file that handles all the photos in that Catalog. The original photo files remain unchanged. So to backup photos from Lightroom, you just need to copy the original files, plus the one Catalog file which records all your edits. If you ever lose the Catalog file, you still have original unedited source files.

I have three main sources for image files, but all of them end up in Lightroom: 1) Digital camera, 2) scanned negatives, and other 3) miscellaneous projects like files downloaded off the Web.

1) At the end of a digital shoot, I import all the files off my memory card right into Lightroom.

2) After I develop a roll of negatives, I scan them with Scangear and save the scanned files as TIFFs. I use exiftool to tag them with EXIF data. Then I import those TIFFs into Lightroom.  Note that Lightroom reads the EXIF from the TIFFs as keywords, so I don’t need to retag files when I import them. (I have Lightroom copy the files into the same folders as my digital files. This means I delete the scanned TIFF files from where Scangear puts them periodically)

3) Miscellaneous files, even if I’m just working on them in Photoshop, I still import them into Lightroom first so that it’s copied into the catalog.

So from there everything is in Lightroom, which keeps all the files in handy folders organized by date. I tag anything I import with keywords to help make it easy to find.

I keep the current Lightroom Catalog and about a months worth of working files stored right on my laptop.   I do my editing from there to keep things snappy.  Every month or so I send everything older than a month to a backup external drive; That’s my Drobo.

That means I need to backup two things: The Lightroom catalog file, as well as all the original image files.  I do this with a powerful command line utility called rsync that is already part of OSX’s utilities.

Again, I’ve set Lightroom to organize all my files by Date. This is extremely handy.  I plug in my external drive. Then I open up Terminal and navigate to where I’ve told Lightroom to keep all my original files. Easily for me  that’s Pictures/2009/ and then Lightroom creates folders for each day.  rsync will navigate down into all the subfolders for me.  So this is what I type into Terminal:

rsync -avru Pictures/2009/ /Volumes/Main/Lightroom/main_catalog/2009/

(The trailing slash can be important to tell rsync that both places are folders) What does this line do?

rsync is the command

-avru is a list of flags.
•    ‘a’ means it’s in archive mode.
•    ‘v’ means it will tell me what its doing (verbose)
•    ‘r’ means it will go down into subfolders (recurse)
•    ‘u’ means it will only update with new files

Pictures/2009/ = where my photos are now.

/Volumes/Main/Lightroom/main_catalog/2009/ is the location of the backup folder on my external drive. In this case it’s named “Main”

rsync compares the the folder on my external drive and the folder on my Macbook and sends any files that aren’t backed up to the external.  I could have rsync delete the local files once they are copied, but I’m paranoid. So after rsync is done, I take a peek at the external; drive in Finder. Once I confirm the files are on the backup, I delete them from my Macbook.

I also copy the Catalog file itself to the External drive.  I continue working from that same Catalog file after the backup. If I need to get to a photo that’s on the external drive, I connect the drive. Then I have Lightroom re-link that file to the current working Catalog.  (Here is a page on how to do that) Working on a file on an external drive is somewhat slower than working on a local file, but it’s definitely useable.  Note: I can even open an old file in Photoshop, and Lightroom creates the PSD right on the external. So, that is slower too, but it has the advantage of being already backed up on the external.

Eventually, the local Catalog file will get too big on my local Macbook drive. Then I just close out that Catalog and start a new one. As of right now, I can basically keep one Catalog per calendar year.  I could develop a more sophisticated Catalog flow at some point, but for now this works for me.
So to recap my basic steps:

1.    Keep the current month’s files and catalog on my Macbook.
2.    Use rsync to send original files older than a month to an external drive.
3.    Keep the working Catalog on the Macbook, but copy it periodically.
4.    Access archived files through my working local Lightroom catalog.

If you have any followups or questions, lemme know and I will do my best to help you.

If you’re like me you have five or six BP-511 style batteries for your SLR. And, going out on shoots, coming back from shoots and during shoots, it can be a challenge keeping track of which ones are charged. Some of the batteries came with weak plastic trays that never stay on when tossed in your bag. Other times these batteries (or their knockoffs) come with a cap that can help protect the battery, but I always seem to lose those.

So I use this method to protect my batteries and keep track if they’re charged or spent. And my solution uses the miracle of gaffer’s tape: An Informative Battery Case

One of the beauties of gaffer’s tape is that when you stick it to itself, it makes a flexible, strong, grippy material not entirely unlike leather. I guess you could also do this with duct tape or some packing tape. That is, if you’re a punk!

My roll of tape is 1 and 7/8 inches, or about 47mm. Tear off a strip about 28cm long. Wrap it around the battery sticky side out. Make it as tight as you can, the more snug the better.

When the battery is wrapped, double back around being careful to line up the tape. This gives you a basic tube. Then I tear off two shorter strips for the bottom.Stick a short strip to a slightly longer strip, and curl that around the bottom end of the battery. You can then layer another strip around the tube overlapping your bottom cup.

Now when I have a newly charged battery, I slide it in with the contacts down and protected. When I swap it out for a spent battery, I slide the empty in with the contacts up and visible.

Of course, I can have this same issue with rechargeable batteries for my speedlights. In this case, the clamshell cases for them are usually exceedingly solid. So on the edge of a small strip of paper, I write “GOOD” and “BAD” side by side. I snip out the strip, fold it in half, and tape it into inside of the batteries’ clamshell case with a ‘T’ of transparent tape. This makes a flap that can go either way and is visible when there are batteries in the case.

I originally tried determining a “top” and “bottom” to the clamshell case and deciding that if the positive pointed up, then the batteries were good. However, I could never remember what I had decided was “up”. So, that’s why I went with this no-thinking method.

With Compact Flash cards, determining a top is much easier because their makers are eager to use a flashy logo on one side of the card. So in the clamshell case that holds CF cards, I put in a piece of colored tape or the sticky part of a Post-It note. Then I have little trouble remembering that if I can see the logo, the card is empty and ready for use. If the logo is covered, then it’s full of wonderful photos just waiting to be processed.

This is what works for me. Do you have your own methods to solve these problems?