How do I back up my main external LrC working drive to a new backup external drive.

[NCSnapper]

Lightroom Version Number

15.5

Operating System

1. macOS 15 Sequoia

I am getting back to LrC after awhile and I forgot how to back up to a secondary external hard drive from my master (working) external hard drive. I want to duplicate what is on the master drive to the new drive. Thank you in advance for your assistance.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Use Apple Time Machine. Set it up to use that external drive. That’s it.

 

[clee01l]

I want to duplicate what is on the master drive to the new drive

Actually you want to do more than that. You want to preserve and accidental deletions or earlier versions of your critical user files. TimeMachine will do that for you automatically. Duplicating a volume onto another volume copies what is there mistakes and all

By default all external volumes are excluded from the backup. In TimeMachine, click on {Options} to remove the EHD from the Excluded list.

 

[Conrad Chavez]

Regardless of how you did it before, be aware that different backup methods will create different results on the second drive. Choose carefully based on how you want to use the external drive, and how you prefer to restore it in case the primary drive fails.

If your goal is to make the second drive an exact copy of the primary drive — a drive you could potentially use as an immediate drop-in replacement for re-linking a Lightroom Classic catalog to its referenced source files if the primary drive fails, use conventional backup software such as Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper!, or ChronoSync that can make an exact “clone” of a folder or volume. An exact duplicate preserves all file paths on the backup, which is precisely what you want in a drop-in replacement.

If you use Apple Time Machine, the second drive becomes a multi-versioned read-only backup, with folder versions stored as lots of virtual links to save space. The nice thing about this is that you can easily restore individual files and folders from your choice of past snapshots of backup dates and times. However, you cannot edit anything on a Time Machine backup because it’s strictly read-only…only Time Machine can alter it. In part this is to guard the backup against corruption by the user or by malware. But this also means a Time Machine backup can’t be used as a drop-in replacement for a failed drive. If your primary photo storage drive fails, a Lightroom Classic catalog won’t be able to relink to the originals until you tell Time Machine to restore a selected backup to a replacement volume. (I just tried relinking a catalog to a folder on a Time Machine backup, and the Update Folder Location command in Lightroom Classic won’t even list the folders in the Time Machine backup…which is correct behavior. The backup must be restored to a writable volume first.)

For these reasons, I use Time Machine to back up the Mac itself, but I use Carbon Copy Cloner to make an exact backup of the volume storing the source files that my primary Lightroom Classic catalog links to.

Also, if you value versioned backups, you can still have them even if you aren’t using Time Machine. Properly updated Mac backup software can also make and restore from APFS snapshots; for example Carbon Copy Cloner can restore from its own snapshots.

You can also copy a whole volume by dragging and dropping everything in the Finder, but that’s more error-prone and almost impossible to update precisely after you add more files later. Backup software keeps track of what happened with logs, and can easily do an incremental backup.

 

[NCSnapper]

Regardless of how you did it before, be aware that different backup methods will create different results on the second drive. Choose carefully based on how you want to use the external drive, and how you prefer to restore it in case the primary drive fails.

If your goal is to make the second drive an exact copy of the primary drive — a drive you could potentially use as an immediate drop-in replacement for re-linking a Lightroom Classic catalog to its referenced source files if the primary drive fails, use conventional backup software such as Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper!, or ChronoSync that can make an exact “clone” of a folder or volume. An exact duplicate preserves all file paths on the backup, which is precisely what you want in a drop-in replacement.

If you use Apple Time Machine, the second drive becomes a multi-versioned read-only backup, with folder versions stored as lots of virtual links to save space. The nice thing about this is that you can easily restore individual files and folders from your choice of past snapshots of backup dates and times. However, you cannot edit anything on a Time Machine backup because it’s strictly read-only…only Time Machine can alter it. In part this is to guard the backup against corruption by the user or by malware. But this also means a Time Machine backup can’t be used as a drop-in replacement for a failed drive. If your primary photo storage drive fails, a Lightroom Classic catalog won’t be able to relink to the originals until you tell Time Machine to restore a selected backup to a replacement volume. (I just tried relinking a catalog to a folder on a Time Machine backup, and the Update Folder Location command in Lightroom Classic won’t even list the folders in the Time Machine backup…which is correct behavior. The backup must be restored to a writable volume first.)

For these reasons, I use Time Machine to back up the Mac itself, but I use Carbon Copy Cloner to make an exact backup of the volume storing the source files that my primary Lightroom Classic catalog links to.

Also, if you value versioned backups, you can still have them even if you aren’t using Time Machine. Properly updated Mac backup software can also make and restore from APFS snapshots; for example Carbon Copy Cloner can restore from its own snapshots.

You can also copy a whole volume by dragging and dropping everything in the Finder, but that’s more error-prone and almost impossible to update precisely after you add more files later. Backup software keeps track of what happened with logs, and can easily do an incremental backup.

Thank you. I will investigate Carbon Copy Cloner. I do not want to save on Time Machine. I want the external back up drive to be an exact copy of my external working drive and it will only be used for that.

 

[clee01l]

Thank you. I will investigate Carbon Copy Cloner. I do not want to save on Time Machine. I want the external back up drive to be an exact copy of my external working drive and it will only be used for that.

This is fine as long as you understand the limitations. With an exact copy, if you accidentally delete a critical file, it is gone in both places.. If you overwrite a file with a newer version, you can't ever recover that older version. You should still make what Adobe calls "Lightroom Backups" on exit because when your master catalog file is corrupted it is likely so will be the one on the cloned drive.

 

[Conrad Chavez]

This is fine as long as you understand the limitations. With an exact copy, if you accidentally delete a critical file, it is gone in both places.

That can be addressed in at least two ways.

If the backup software supports APFS snapshotsand they’re enabled, then there should be multiple versions of the backup as space allows, so if a file was accidentally deleted and is not in the most recent backup, it may be present in an earlier backup snapshot. In this way it can work like Time Machine, with the serious advantage that it can work as an immediate drop-in replacement for a failed primary drive.

Some people say “one backup is not a backup” because if the backup volume fails there is no backup, so the other way to address this is to have more than one backup (local or cloud) and alternate backups among them. That way, if the most recent backup is missing a file, it might be on the other recent backup. I maintain multiple backups partly for the redundancy, but also so that one backup can always be stored off site to protect against a disaster that takes out both the computer and all on-site backups.

 

[clee01l]

Some people say “one backup is not a backup” because if the backup volume fails there is no backup, so the other way to address this is to have more than one backup (local or cloud) and alternate backups among them

I'm a "Belt and suspenders" kind of guy. I have TimeMachine backup alternating between my NAS and an EHD. This protects me locally if one of the three volumes fail. It does not protect me should there be a catastrophic event the wipes out my home (Fire, Flood or civil unrest). To that end I use Backblaze to have a third backup in the cloud.

No backup is really protection unless you can recover. You need to periodically test your recovery process from all of your backup destinations. There is no excuse when you need to recover if you don't know how recovery works. Whe you have a failure and need to recover, you will be stressed and under (your imposed) pressure. This is not to time to try to figure out the recovery process.