Ceil Loc: St. Paul, MN

I am attempting to set up a system for the storage of images. I shoot in Raw. I use Lightroom CC. I have several external drives. My largest external drive is a 2 terabyte. I use this drive for Lightroom rather than my C drive. I also have a second copy of imported images stored on this drive. I would like to change this process of storage, but I have concerns about what I do not understand before making any attempts to do this.

This is how I would like to see the organization.
A) 1 External Drive for completed High Quality Jpeg Images.
B) 1 External Drive for copies of original raw images imported into lightroom.
C) 1 External Drive for Lightroom Use Only.
D) 1 External Drive for Images that have not been imported to Lightroom.

I believe that for A I could do a copy/paste or export from LR to the A ext. drive.

I believe that I could simply select ext dr. B for the second copy of the original import. Question: Can I do a copy/paste from the ext drive where the 2nd copies are currently to a new ext drive B?

External Drive C I don't know how to do this from where it currently resides on an external drive.

External drive D for images that have not been imported. Copy them to that drive.

I would like a reference for how to move images/catalogs that are currently in Lightroom to the appropriate Lightroom drive. I don't know how to do this and it makes be very nervous.

I would sincerely appreciate some help. Images I have in Lightroom total around 15,000, if that helps any. Ceil

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Why all the external drives? I can see A and B on external drives, or better yet on a dual disk NAS or USB connected Drobo with RAID realtime backup, but why C ? Lightroom only stores edits in the Catalog, not the actual photos themselves; when you import images into LR, they remain where you imported them, not moved to another folder. So this function is provided by A or B.
D would make sense as a photo dump for images that you have not yet worked on but why not leave them on your system's HD, since you're going to work on them anyway?

Better yet, use a Cloud backup service like Dropbox, iCloud, iDrive or whatever as a realtime backup of the critical folders containing your "D" images.

It is important to remember, that once you drink the Lighroom Kool-Aid, it's an all or nothing thing. Lighroom is excellent at keeping track of your images, and orginizing them into a coherent workflow. What you cannot do is move files that are "controlled" by Lightroom into other folders. It gets very pissy when you do that.

Ceil Loc: St. Paul, MN

I appreciate your quick reply, and I thank you. I do not know what some of the options you are suggest are, but will check them out on the internet. I do know I can rent storage space, but for personal reasons I do not want to do this. I currently do have the external drives and would like to use the resources I have. Given that format I am looking for the easiest and best solution to safeguard and backup my images.

Regarding your comment about the catalogs in Lightroom. I believe there is a way to move either the catalogs or files to a new location and then snyc them together again. Perhaps that is not an accurate assumption on my part.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Yes, but why? Lightroom leaves your images where it "finds" them, and when the program closes, you can set up catalog backup to whatever external disk you choose. What would you gain by moving the catalog and then resynching? Also, keeping your images on external drives is just another single point of failure. Any HD can fail and you will loose everything if it is in an single device.

Consider something like a Western Digital My Cloud 4 Tb external drive with RAID

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-my-cloud-4tb-external-hard-drive-nas-white/2832018.p?skuId=2832018

Your data is stored on one drive and a real time backup is made on the other. So you are protected.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

First I do not store High Res JPEGs I create them from the developed file in LR. I have an external SSD drive that contains my LR catalog and settings. LR backup files are on my Internal D drive. I store my back-up of images on BackBlaze. My images are stored on external HDs

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

If one of those drives fails, you're lost! I backup seven folders to two external drives and a NAS. Two TB is a good size, and you should be able to fit everything onto that one drive. Then you can use another one as a duplicate backup. Searching among several drives would not work for me. I prefer to have all pics in one place - the My Pictures folder on multiple drives. Still whatever system works for you is good for you.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

But what drive does WD put inside that case? I prefer buying a high quality drive and putting it my own case. I bought a similar product from WD three years ago, although I don't recall what drive is in the case. According to CrystalDiskInfo, it is starting to go bad. The price in 2014 was $170, delivered.

Bullfrog Bill Loc: CT

I think you are making this too complicated. I use LR CC which is on my laptop (MacBookPro, my only computer) and I have two external drives. I import raw files onto my laptop and process them in LR. Periodically (3-6 months) I drag and drop, within the LR Library module, to my main photo storage external hard drive freeing up space on my laptop hard drive. LR recognizes the external drive and it is part of my catalog. My entire system, laptop and photo storage external drive is backed up with Time Machine on the second external drive. To insure against flood or fire I use a cloud based system (Crash Plan) to backup the whole kit and caboodle. If I feel the need to access certain files on the external drive when traveling. I make virtual copies and drag then onto a portable drive also within the LR catalog.

As long as you only move files within LR, your catalog will always know where to find them.
I don't understand the need to store jpegs of all photos, what is the point? If I need to send a file to someone, I simply export it and make a jpeg or tiff depending on the expected use.

Ceil Loc: St. Paul, MN

You all have been very generous with suggestions and it has helped me to make some decisions. First: I have downloaded Back Blaze Cloud Storage which solves the problem of One Safe Storage for Everything. Also it is a reasonable expense that I can live with. Now for the last part of this storage mystery to be solved.

Specifically what I am having trouble with figuring out involves the what/how Lightroom is saving photos...Lightroom catalogues are confusing to me.

When I import an image from a camera card, I use Lightroom. A raw (NEF) file of the image is saved to an external drive. A second copy of the image is saved to a different folder, but also on the same external drive. Lightroom has the image in a catalogue. What I do not understand is the relationship between the LR image catalogue - the original raw image and the second copy raw image.

I have read that I should never move an image outside of Lightroom. Does that mean that I could not move the original image import through the use of explorer?
Does that mean that I could not move the Second Copy through the use of Explorer?
I do not know how to "move" catalogs within LightRoom.

It seems to me, now, that I may not need to move the catalog anywhere and I can leave it where it is. But, how about the Original Raw Images and the Second Copy of the Raw Images?

It feels to me like there is something simple that hasn't clicked for me as yet, and I do appreciate your patience in trying to explain this. Learning disabilities are a bitch which it comes to this kind of information for me, not to mention my ignorance about the availability of other options. Certainly I know more now than when I started asking questions. From the bottom of my little frustrated mind I thank each and every one of you. Ceil

Erik_H Loc: Denham Springs, Louisiana

Running LR on an external drive is bound to cause performance issues, even if it's USB3.0 or better. I keep my OS and programs including LR and its catalog on a solid state drive C:\ and my photos on an internal standard drive, with multiple external back ups.

romanticf16 Loc: Commerce Twp, MI

Keep the Lr cat on your computer. It only holds thumbnail images and metadata.in preferences you can tell Lr to store RAW files on one or two external drives. It'll do this on Import. You'll have to set and label drives to store modified jpegs.

jodo4138 Loc: Long Island NY

Well this is what I do not saying it's the right way but, I import my photos into Lightroom CC from the SD card I just use for my shoot, then scan which ones I don't want then delete them. When I'm done with that on a XHD labeled My Photo's and drag my keepers into a folder I just created. When I'm done editing or done for the day I backup My Photo's XHD to a second XHD named My Photo's Backup, using a Program called GoodSync. Once the photos are on my 2 XHD's I can delete them off my SD card, but usually don't, I keep the SD cards for a while (three months) and rotate them out. I also backup my Mac Notebook once a month with an additional 4TB. Paranoid I guess. One other thing when exiting Lightroom CC I save the catalog info to my externals also.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

(1) How many images are in your Lightroom catalog?
(2) How many images do you add to it annually?

If these numbers are not too large, you are making your system more complex than it needs to be.

LR should be on a SSD drive or a fast hard drive on your computer. That will allow it to work rapidly.
Your photos can be on an external hard drive, but it will slow access to them depending on your system. I keep my current photos on my computer (plus backup drives) so I can work on them with minimal access delays. Older photos that I use infrequently are stored on external hard drives.

When I download files from the camera card I do it outside of LR, and I change the name to something meaningful at that time. http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/user-page?upnum=1595 describes my download and naming system. My workflow can be seen at http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/user-page?upnum=1584

I use 3 drives for backup: one resides on my computer, one is stored elsewhere in the house and synchronized occasionally, and one is stored off-site and synchronized occasionallly.

As far as moving files around, I generally just copy the folders containing individual shoots to my backup drives. If I need space on the computer I can just delete older folders. If I need to work on an older file I can just copy the older folders back to the computer and as long as I preserve the folder structure LR can find the files just fine.

I generally use one LR catalog for current work, and a separate monster master catalog for everything. It takes some time for the catalog to back up so I do most of my work on the small current file (generally for one year's work). When it gets to the point where the current catalog gets too large (at the end of the year) I start a new one and merge the previous one with the master catalog.

Ceil Loc: St. Paul, MN

Dirtfarmer, you have come the closes to describing what I am looking for. I did read the references you had written and that was very, very useful. You have described a very simple method for storage and you provided me with what I call a BFO (A Blinding Flash of the Obvious.) :-) Simply copy the folders and paste to another drive rather than trying to figure out how to move a folder. Such a simple, simple, answer. I have downloaded the Back Blaze storage for their free trial offer, but as I continue to research, I think there are some drawbacks that I do question. It is cheap, but very, very slow and downloading from there might be a nightmare. They will fed ex jump drives and external drive to a customer, for a fee. I think that for right now I am going to use much of how you file and track your images. The reason for my saving high quality JPG images on a separate external drive is so that my daughter has access to them at her art studio. She does not use lightroom. I'm 76 and may have only another 30 years to play around with my passion.

Truly everyone has been very generous in attempting to help me understand. Thank you, very, very, much. Ceil

Ceil Loc: St. Paul, MN

Oh, I forgot to answer your questions. I have about 25,000 images and right now I am shooting about 6,000 images a year. Of course, a lot of that is bracketed images. Ceil