If you are using the external drive for your catalog, I would suggest that you set the Default Catalog parameter in Preferences to "Prompt me when starting Lightroom." This way you can make sure the drive is connected.

Has anyone had experience with full-spectrum compact fluorescent lights? If so, I have several questions:

Are they really full-spectrum?
Which do you recommend for photo editing, 5000K or 6500K?
Any experience with dimmable full-spectrum CFLs?

Thanks.

Patrick

A cautionary tail about using online photo sites such as Flickr:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/flickr-too-big-to-fail-we-hope/15761

Patrick

I don't use SyncBack Pro, but generally the advantage of versioning is that if you accidentally delete or corrupt a file you have the previous version available. With mirroring corrupted or damaged files can be mirrored (assuming the problem isn't a disk error) and deleted files are deleted from the mirrored drive as well.

Patrick

Personally I would still consider an initial backup of all images to optical as well as backing up your "high value" images this way. It is all too easy to accidentally delete something and not find out for months or years that you did so. Having that initial optical backup gives you one more chance at recovery.

Disclaimer: I have no direct knowledge of this issue. I am passing it along to encourage Mac/Time Machine users to exercise caution.

This person experienced data loss on his Time Machine backup drive (of which he did not have a backup) after installing Sophos Free AV for Mac:

http://recoveringphysicist.com/17/did-sophos-free-a-v-for-mac-kill-my-time-machine-backups

Patrick

Thanks. I found the initial problem and it was (surprise!) Operator Error. I had somehow imported my original RAW files, which were in a similar directory structure, instead of my DNGs.

Thanks John. Is there a way to make this the default behavior?

My standard import procedure is to first use the standalone DNG converter to convert images to DNG and to place them into my standard directory structure. I then import them into LR using the "add" option, which leaves them in place. With LR 2 the entire directory path was displayed in the LR catalog. Those images imported with LR 2 still display this way in LR 3. Images imported with LR 3, however, only display the immediate parent directory in the catalog instead of the entire path. Does anyone know how to change this behaviour?

Thanks.

It is a balancing act, isn't it?

One problem with this technology is its proprietary nature. If Millenniata doesn't get too greedy on their licensing fees, assuming they are willing to license manufacturing to other vendors, the costs of burners and media should drop. If not, this will just be a small niche product until something more cost-effective comes along.

I'm post this because I thought some of you might find this interesting.

Millenniata, Inc. (http://www.millenniata.com) claims 1,000 year storage life on their special CD/DVD compatible media. I don't know about 1,000 years, but the study they reference from Naval Air Warfare Center at least seems to indicate that their proprietary media is probably much longer-lived than CDs or DVDs and less affected by environmental conditions. It does require their proprietary burner (about $2500 USD), but the disks can be read by standard CD/DVD readers.

The interesting thing about the Navy study (there is a download link on the web site) is that it showed great variation in CD/DVD writers, even within brands. It also showed great variation in CD/DVD media and that the most expensive brands were not necessarily the best. (To me this indicates a problem with "brand loyalty," since name-brand vendors are not necessarily the media manufacturers.) The study also said that different writers worked better with different brands of media.

Also, the results of the study reinforced the necessity to store your media in locations with proper environmental conditions.

Yes, I forgot about the CD safe markers.

I'm looking at Blu-Ray but have not yet bitten the bullet. One of the issues with CD/DVD/BL media life is, according to sources I have read, how you label the disks. Both stick-on labels and Sanford Sharpie apparently negatively affect disk life. Inkjet and Lightscribe printing appearsto be the safest methods.

Newegg.com has RiDATA 25-pack inkjet printable BL disks for $39.99 pluss $4.99 shipping. Here is the link:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817132071

Thanks for all your help. I'm posting this for people who may be using different types of external drives.

I finally got a reply from Econ Technologies about this. Their approach, which takes longer than yours, works if the drive technologies are not the same. I don't know why I didn't figure this out on my own, but you just sync from the external bootable drive to the new or reformatted internal drive.

Here are their instructions:

To restore the internal drive from the bootable backup do the following:

1.  Boot your mac from the bootable backup volume.
2.  Format/erase the internal/replaced startup volume.
3.  Launch CS and create a new bootable backup sync document, syncing from the
backup boot volume to the new internal/replaced startup volume.  Follow our tip at:
http://www.econtechnologies.com/pages/cs/chrono_tips14.html

This new sync document will restore the backup volume to the new internal startup volume.  When complete, change your startup disk to the internal volume and boot. All should be back to normal.

Interesting. That's a good approach if you are using the same types of drives. One question, and please pardon my ignorance since I don't have a Mac: I know ChronoSync allows you to maintain multiple file versions. Is this an issue when you swap the drives?

Thanks.