jbmauser Loc: Roanoke, VA

I run a laptop and the drive is getting full. I have a backup on a USB palm sized drive. It is the compressed kind of back up which in my brain means it is crap as I can not open it and see a single image. I am getting ready in my frustration to get a small 1 TB drive and velcro it to the lid of my laptop and run a cable to the USB port and create a full image backup of the laptop and leave it attached and off load all of the uncompressed original images to that velcro drive and then back it up to another freestanding drive.

My frustration is compounded by the fact that I have thousands of images that I am trying to key word, move into folders and subfolders using LR as the management software. what my drive structure looks like in May is not what it will look like June (hopefully it will be done by then) so I will erase what I have on backup and start over.

I feel I am going about this all wrong. Ideas? Gaffer tape instead of velcro?

Rongnongno Loc: FL

How about a docking station of you laptop has this option?

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

Why don't you get a larger external drive and transfer your photos to it and only keep you catalog on the laptop. do the transfer within LR

jbmauser Loc: Roanoke, VA

this low end laptop does not have a port for a docking station.

The larger hard drive is kind of what I thought I would strap on the laptop to load the images to. I as looking for recommendations on software that does incremental backups and
hardware solutions that do not involve a RAID system.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

In my opinion, keeping an external Velcroed to your laptop to do backups of the internal drive is not good thinking.... lose the laptop and you have lost both your originals AND your backup....

Better advice - by two externals.... keep one with your laptop and keep your entire image library on the external, freeing up space on your internal drive.... the second external gets connected to do your backups of your laptop AND your images, and is kept safely NOT with your laptop.

BTW - As was mentioned, use Lightroom to move all your photos, that way your catalog stays current as to where your images are located.

There are many options for back up software - depending on your operating system.

FWIW - you can also add a cloud based backup service like Backblaze, Crashplan or Carbonite as a second or third backup stored off site.

I myself keep my images on an external drive, backup to ANOTHER external drive using Time Machine (Mac) and then run a monthly mirror of my image library to ANOTHER external kept in a fire proof box, plus backup my images to Crashplan off site 24x7.

If I lose something I have multiple methods of restoring in the event one or more fails.

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

JB, I would recommend getting backup software that simply does a "copy" of your images, as opposed to compressing/packing all your photos into a single file. Consider the scenario where your hard drive has crashed. The catalog for the backup is on that drive that just crashed, so there is nothing to tell the software what to restore. I use SyncBackSE. It provides the functionality to compress everything into a single file, but I don't use it. I do a simple copy of all files.

It isn't easy to expand hard disk space on a laptop, so you are relegated to the use of external drives. As has been suggested, move all of your images into a single folder on an external drive. Title it something like "Photography", then under that folder, create the folder structure you desire. When time comes to backup, it's easy to tell the backup software to back up the folder "Photography".

Hope this helps. Good luck.

jbmauser Loc: Roanoke, VA

I guess I may not understand LR library and catalog. I was thinking that only the catalog would reside on the laptop drive and the actual RAW images would reside on the 1 TB palm size USB external (velcro) and that in turn would be backed up to another USB drive uncompressed using some sort of Windows incremental back up software to a drive I have connected to my wireless router.

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

That's a viable setup. You could even put the catalog on the external drive, if you choose.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

The LIBRARY is all your images, regardless of how many drives they may be stored on, the CATALOG is the database of where they are and what adjustments have been done to them.

If you lose your catalog you will not lose your images, but may lose some of the edits, if you elect to write xmp data to the images then the last edit is stored in the image file, but the history of edits is in the catalog.

If you lose your library, your images are gone.

jbmauser Loc: Roanoke, VA

So, If I use an external USB drive to store the actual RAW files (library) and the catalog is on the internal hard drive then the backup drive has to have an image backup of the library and a copy of the catalog so LR can sync the image file with the catalog file with all of the adjustments?

Do you ever actually do anything with the actual RAW file again once it is copied by LR?

WayneT Loc: Paris, TN

I have a couple of these:

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Passport-Ultra-Portable-External/dp/B00W8XXYSM?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00

I use one on my desktop computer and one I keep with me with my laptop. They work well and will do incremental backups. Plus if you want there is an option for secondary cloud backup.

BudsOwl Loc: Upstate NY and New England

I don't think you will be happy with 1 TB. Strongly suggest you go to at least 2 TB. I am currently looking for something even larger.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

IMHO:

The raw file is your original shot, all the data that came out of the camera before any post processing.... in many cases after you edit and export a finished photo from your raw, years later as your post processing skills improve you may go back and start from scratch again and end up with a totally different better export, so you always want to hang onto the originals - raw or jpg.

And yes, your backup procedure should be to backup all your images, and the Lightroom catalog, or at least a catalog backup (Lightroom will automatically create backups on a schedule you set of your catalog, but it would be wise to also back up either the current live version or the latest backup when you do your library backups.

jimmya Loc: Phoenix

I don't know if this will work for you or not. I save all my photos to folders under extension names in the folder to indicate what group of shots as in "family", "friends", etc.
When the full folder reaches about 4gb I burn to a DVD and store them that way. I also keep them on my ED for quick reference. I do all this with Windows Explore. For me it works very well.

alandg46 Loc: Boerne, Texas

This ought to do it. Just buy an enclosure.
http://www.geek.com/chips/seagate-now-shipping-its-mammoth-10tb-helium-filled-hard-drive-1653775/