Copying the photos and catalog from Lightroom 6 to an external hard drive

[Dr.SV]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom version: 6.14 [ 1149743 ]

Operating System

1. Windows 10

Hello friends,
I am having LR 6.14 perpetual licence.
At present I am having all my photos and a single catalog in an external hard drive.
Since I want to play safe, I want to have copy of the same (Photos & catalog) in a second external hard drive.
Can you help me the steps I have to take to copy photos and catalog from the original drive to a 2 nd external hard drive without moving the photos and catalog?
I tried various suggestions from YouTube and internet, sadly my confusion got multiplied.
I am scared that I may land in a total mess.
Hence this thread.
Thank you in advance.
( The present external hard drive has almost 99,000 photos along with the single catalog)

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Just use a backup utility to backup the first hard drive to the second one.

 

[Dr.SV]

Thank you Johan Elzenga for clearing the doubt.
But will the catalog accepts new external storage and work with LR?
IS there any provision for copying through LR?
I understand that whatever we do we should do through the LR
Apologies for my ignorance.

 

[clee01l]

It is my understanding that you want to replace the existing external hard drive with a duplicate copy should the need arrive. The master catalog and the images imported in the catalog are all on the EHD. The second drive duplicates the first so should the need arrive, you will simply open the copied master on the second drive and it will be as up to date as the last back up copy.

There are dedicated backup software apps for Windows. You probably want to use one of these rather than making a manual process each time you make a change to the master catalog file or add or delete image files.

The folder panel in Lightroom Classic only does a filesystem MOVE and a filesystem COPY is not permitted. Johan and I are recommending using dedicated backup software to create and maintain your backup copy.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Thank you Johan Elzenga for clearing the doubt.
But will the catalog accepts new external storage and work with LR?
IS there any provision for copying through LR?
I understand that whatever we do we should do through the LR
Apologies for my ignorance.

The idea of a backup is that you use it if and when that time comes. Yes, if and when that time comes, there are plenty of easy ways to make Lightroom aware of the backup. No need to worry about that now. And to answer the other questions: Making a backup of your images is the one thing you do not do through Lightroom. Like I said before: use a dedicated backup utility.

 

[Dr.SV]

The idea of a backup is that you use it if and when that time comes. Yes, if and when that time comes, there are plenty of easy ways to make Lightroom aware of the backup. No need to worry about that now. And to answer the other questions: Making a backup of your images is the one thing you do not do through Lightroom. Like I said before: use a dedicated backup utility.

Thank you so much.
No I get it.
Thanks for all the help JE

 

[Dr.SV]

It is my understanding that you want to replace the existing external hard drive with a duplicate copy should the need arrive. The master catalog and the images imported in the catalog are all on the EHD. The second drive duplicates the first so should the need arrive, you will simply open the copied master on the second drive and it will be as up to date as the last back up copy.

There are dedicated backup software apps for Windows. You probably want to use one of these rather than making a manual process each time you make a change to the master catalog file or add or delete image files.

The folder panel in Lightroom Classic only does a filesystem MOVE and a filesystem COPY is not permitted. Johan and I are recommending using dedicated backup software to create and maintain your backup copy.

Thank you so much.Clee01.
Now I fully understood that one can't copy images to another external drive via LR. Only 'MOVE' is allowed.