# Backing up the external drive



## conor20 (Nov 20, 2020)

I operate a MacBook Pro Laptop which is filling up with my sports pics. Thus to keep everything aligned in Lightroom, I moved a number of folders of images out of the laptop onto a Lacie external drive plus of course a copy of the Lightroom catalog. I simply don't know how I now make a further copy of that Lacie external drive so that it will keep it's alignment with Lightroom and thus provide me with a back-up of the original files (now on the first Lacie drive). Perhaps this is a bit basic but I'm not really a techie computer guy - any help gratefully received.


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## mcasan (Nov 20, 2020)

On my iMac, soon to be replaced by M1 Mini, the internal SSD is for boot, OS, apps, Lr catalog, email.....etc.     All my data folders of photos, documents, videos, and music sit on an external SSD RAID set connected via TB3.  The LrC catalog is backed up to the RAID set.    On the same TB3 bus is a G-drive 8TB HDD.   It is used by Time Machine to backup. the entire file system.   The next step in data security would be to do online backups (can be expensive) and/or swap backup drives to an offsite location such as a bank vault.   Those last two make great sense if you depend on the data files for your revenue.


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## conor20 (Nov 20, 2020)

mcasan said:


> On my iMac, soon to be replaced by M1 Mini, the internal SSD is for boot, OS, apps, Lr catalog, email.....etc.     All my data folders of photos, documents, videos, and music sit on an external SSD RAID set connected via TB3.  The LrC catalog is backed up to the RAID set.    On the same TB3 bus is a G-drive 8TB HDD.   It is used by Time Machine to backup. the entire file system.   The next step in data security would be to do online backups (can be expensive) and/or swap backup drives to an offsite location such as a bank vault.   Those last two make great sense if you depend on the data files for your revenue.


So am I right in thinking that your original photos are only in one place i.e SSA RAID ? Your Time Machine back-up will not be backing up your photos as they are not on your iMac ?


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## mcasan (Nov 21, 2020)

My raw original files are only at /Pictures on the external RAID set.   The external RAID drive set, just like the internal boot SSD, are backed up by Time Machine.   Remember I said the entire file system is backed up.   So any connected internal or external drives are included.


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## clee01l (Nov 21, 2020)

conor20 said:


> So am I right in thinking that your original photos are only in one place i.e SSA RAID ? Your Time Machine back-up will not be backing up your photos as they are not on your iMac ?


You need to add the external drives to Time Machine but it will back up any volume mounted to the computer.    If you have your images on a large EHD (Mine is an 8 TB LaCie), you need Time Machine to back up to a drive large enough to hold  MacIntosh HD and all of the other drives you want to include in the backup.   Open Time Machine preferences and click on Options.  There you will see all of the mounted volumes and folders in the "Excluded" list.  Remove the volume(s) that you no longer want to Exclude and Tim Machine will back these up too. 

Also it is possible to backup Time Machine to multiple volumes.  If you add additional destination volumes, TimeMachine will create two (or more) complete back ups and alternate between them.  Then when one of your backup volume disks fails, you will still have a TimeMachine Backup on the other backup volume(s)


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