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external hard drives

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MargieGJ

MargieGJ

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Joined
Dec 18, 2016
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6
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Intermediate
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Lightroom Version Number
LRC
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.14 Mojave
I use Lightroom on a MacBook and keep all my photos on an external drive. My external drive is being finicky which I now know means it is dying. I've decided that I want two local external drives (I also use Backblaze for cloud based backup.). What's the best way to set this up? All my photos are in one folder and then within the overall folder with the LR default set up of year and date. I know that I can drag the overall folder from the old drive to the new drive but how do I connect the second external drive ? I know I can plug in both new external drives directly into the laptop and drag from one to the other to make an identical copy. Is there a way to automate this process so that I don't have to rely on doing this manually every day, week, or month?

Thanks!
 
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I have exactly the same setup as yourself, and there are easy ways to accomplish what you're looking for. For copying files, the best thing is to use good software, and, on the recommendation of Peter Krogh, I use ChronoSync for copying and verifying data (critical), which has been completely reliable and is pretty easy to use. You can set up standard syncs, and also set it up to automatically synchronize on a schedule. I synch two backups to each of my main data drives. I also have my backup catalog copied to my main data drive, so when it's backed up, so is my backup catalog.
 
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Just copy all the images to the new drive and rename that drive so it has the exact same name as the old one. Disconnect the old one or rename it and you're good to go.

To make a backup, use a backup utility like Carbon Copy Cloner. Pretty much all of them have options to automate backups.
 
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Thank you! While I was waiting for a response, I discovered ChronoSync. I’m happy to hear it works and will check out Carbon Copy Cloner as well.
 
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Johan Elzenga said:
Just copy all the images to the new drive and rename that drive so it has the exact same name as the old one. Disconnect the old one or rename it and you're good to go.

To make a backup, use a backup utility like Carbon Copy Cloner. Pretty much all of them have options to automate backups.
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To elaborate on Johan's point, make sure that the new drive has the same name and the exact same path names to the image files. When done correctly (as Johan described), LR is totally fine with a substitution of drives.

--Ken
 
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Me too. Main drive is a little older. The newer drive backs up the old one using CCC. About every 6 months I copy all the latest files to two portable drives and one lives in my banks safety deposit box.
 
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