jeffcisp

If the external is your primary backup, it should certainly be a RAID array in a mirror configuration; no other system provides assurance in case of a disk failure.

Hamltnblue Loc: Springfield PA

I'm sure you meant 4tb.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

You are right. I didn't notice that nonsensical typo ... argg

rambler Loc: Masssachusetts

Store them on more than one external drive. External drives do crash. Do not always leave an external hard drive attached to your computer. Eject it when not in use.

alandg46 Loc: Boerne, Texas

I am not a fan of external HDDs. I use Western Digital Black or Gold drives and use enclosures. They are far more reliable. Do buy a good enclosure.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Mirror, or RAID 1 are slow and grossly inefficient.

The safest/fastest is RAID 1+0 which is a mirrored (for redundancy and fault tolerance) and striped (wider data path for faster read/write times).

Mirroring a pair of drives has no practical advantage over buying two separate drives and connecting each to the computer on its own.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

You can do it either way. Leaving the LR cat files in their location , copy the parent folder to a new drive change the name of the existing parent folder (append .old to the folder name so LR can't see it), open LR and you'll see that it can't find the files, so you right click on the top level folder click "find missing files" and you just point it to the new location. This is without a doubt the fastest and safest way to do this. If you get messed up somehow, you still have all your original files in their original location so all you have to do is revert to the original name for the parent folder (delete the .old extension)

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

Sounds like an external HDD to me! I do agree in buying high quality drives and a superior enclosure to insure performance. LaCie was selling their 2Big systems as TB3 with Seagate HQ drives. Happy Holidays.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

I would, respectfully, disagree with Gene here. I would trust a RAID 1 (Mirror) before a RAID 10. When you use RAID 1, the hardware and software makes sure that both versions are exactly the same without any assistance from you. That's what gives me my big smile. Is raid 1+0 faster than RAID 1, I honestly don't know.

ronaldwrightdallas

consider a solution such as a drobo system with as much disk space as you need. then just expand it when you need more. costs a little more but you get security from drive failure. you need one other external drive to back it up to.
costs a little more but you get good stuff long term

alandg46 Loc: Boerne, Texas

I am, of course referring to those drives marketed as external.

smussler Loc: Land O Lakes, FL - Formerly Miller Place, NY

One thing to consider is temporary files. Delete them and you might pick up a lot of space. Do a google search "Delete Temp Files" for further info.
A while back, my system was leaving many files in c:\Windows\Temp You can safely delete everything in there. Some files may fail to delete as they are currently open - a message will be displayed. Just skip those.

You can Right Click on your C: drive in file explorer and select Properties from the display context menu.
On the General tab in the displayed dialog, you can use the Disk Cleanup tool to get rid of selected types of files. The dialog will display how much space those files are using.

With latest Windows 10 version, I'm not encountering the problem any longer, but it may show you where a lot of disk space MAY be wasted. Right now, thumbnails are using the most space according to the Disk Cleanup tool on my machine, but not enough to worry about. The recycle Bin sometimes may be configured to a very large size. Right click on your recycle bin to see how it is sized for all your drives.