On Monday I sent my old Intel MacBook Pro back to Apple to fulfill my trade-in agreement.

The first thing Apple tells you to do is back-up your data so you can transfer it all to your new machine. Well, I never do that any more because all my data is either in the cloud or on my local NAS drive array. I prefer to start fresh on a new machine, which easy to do because all I have to do is re-download all my apps (which is probably a good idea regardless since it assures you that you're running all the latest versions.

I had already been using my new M1 MacBook Pro for a week and nothing was amiss, so when it was time to pack up the old laptop, I just wiped the drive and that was that...

And then today I opened up Adobe Lightroom, which is where my tens of thousands of photos are catalogued.

Oops.

My original photos are all safe on my NAS. But the actual catalog with all my previews and corrections and such wasn't there. I had forgotten to transfer it to my new laptop. It could all be recreated no problem, but the previews alone would take many, many hours to regenerate. It would take days to get back to where I was.

I can't be certain, but I think I stopped breathing for a minute.

But before I shit a brick over being so stupid, I remembered that I transfered my Adobe Lightroom catalog to my new iMac when I got it (a process that I documented here).

So... crisis averted, apparently.

Until the next time I open an app and find something missing.

Next time I think I'll make that backup. Just in case.