StevenG Loc: Long Island, NY

As some of you may recall, I recently subscribed to Lr/Ps, and have the following backup system in place:1. Lr Catalog is on my iMac hard drive. 2. All photos are located on an external hard drive and the Lr Catalog is backedup to this 4TB hard drive. 3. Everything backed up to time machine. 4. Everything backed up to Backblaze, a cloud storage system.

I have an "extra" 4TB HD which I would like to use as an extra external storage drive. I would like this drive to be an exact duplicate of the external drive that I now use to store photos and backup the catalog (No. 2 above) so that when I plug it in, it will be recognized by Lr and all of my photos will open. Do I just drag the catalog and photo folders from one disk to the other? And then, how do I make sure this disk has an updated catalog each time I exit Lr for the day, as well as all current photos and edits for the day? Knowing how finicky Lr Catalogs can be, I want to make sure I will not screw anything up before I move stuff around. I hope I didn't ramble on to much, and one of you Lr/Computer experts out there can help.
Thanks.
Steve

rwilson1942 Loc: Houston, TX

The best approach would be to use dedicated back-up software.
I use Synctoy, free from Microsoft. There are lots of others.

StevenG Loc: Long Island, NY

I have Carbon Copy Cloner, which I have used in the past. However, when I plug in that drive, the photos appear with a question mark.
Steve

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Using a dedicated backup software like Acronis or Vice Versa and including your photo folder as well as the LR Catalog and the backups would be best.

StevenG Loc: Long Island, NY

Thanks. Would I then be able to plug in the back up drive and use it as though it was my primary drive?
Steve

Just Fred Loc: Darwin's Waiting Room

Take a look at Carbon Copy Cloner (https://bombich.com/). It's so sophisticated it can make a bootable backup of your entire internal HD. Smart updates. Ready for Mojave.

StevenG Loc: Long Island, NY

Thank you. I have Carbon Copy Cloner. I used it on a previous computer. I copied my Lr catalog and files with CCC to a second hard drive. When I plugged it in, it opened up, but each file had a question mark next to it. How do I get it to boot up and locate each file of pictures?
Steve

skot917

Not sure about the boot up. But you have to change where LR is finding your files. If you select a question mark, it will ask you where to find the file, direct it to the appropriate file and all the other files should be located, too.

wrangler5 Loc: Missouri

To expand a bit on skot917's advice - you can copy the LR catalog and photos to a separate drive, but your catalog(s - both of 'em) will think the photos are on drive PHOTOS, or D if you use Windows (my name choices for drives.) When you want to use the images on the separate drive BACKUP PHOTOS you either have to rename the drive to PHOTOS (assuming the original drive with that name has been unmounted or disconnected), or redirect the LR catalog to the new drive name.

tomcat

LR will be looking for the photos on the primary external storage drive that you first put the photos on when you exported the jpegs after processing them. If you want to use another external drive, then when you export the photos, make certain that you export to the alternate external hard drive. If you just copy the photos to another hard drive (outside of LR), LR will not know that you have them there. This is not usually a major problem because if you ever need LR access from this second external, you will see the question mark beside each folder and you click on it and as ask LR to find the missing folder.

StevenG Loc: Long Island, NY

Thanks. Will that effect anything in my current catalog, which properly locates all files which are located on two external drives? I just don’t want to screw up anythythat is working well.
Steve

tomcat

It should not. So long as you initially set your storage location WITHIN LR and then keep it that way (i.e., DON'T change any locations outside of LR), LR should find the photos (and the emphasis is on "should")

LA Loc: Little Rock, AR

Although I've never tried exactly what you want to do, I am sure that if you have told LR to look for your photos on the backup drive (by clicking on the ? then locating the folder there) and then later mount the primary drive, you will again have to tell LR where your photos are (on the primary drive, this time). Otherwise LR will expect to find them on the backup drive. Each time you do the "locate" thing, you are telling the catalog where to find the photos. You won't corrupt the catalog by doing this but you will have to tell where the photos are if you have moved to a different drive.

StevenG Loc: Long Island, NY

Thanks.

StevenG Loc: Long Island, NY

Thanks. I’ll have to get up the courage to try this. I’m not a computer expert, as I think you can tell, and I don’t want to mess up my current Lr system, which works great.
Steve