# Using multiple hard drives with the same photos



## Philip Willcocks (Aug 4, 2014)

Hello,

I am relatively new to Lightroom and have put all my photos on a primary external hard drive imported through Lightroom which works fine. My LR catalogue is stored on my Macbook internal hard drive but due to size of my RAW files I made the decision to store all photos on my primary external hard drive. 

My question is - I am copying all my photos from my primary external Hard drive onto two further portable hard drives for back up purposes which will leave me with 3 identical folder systems of photos - will Lightroom recognise the same photo of the 3 separate hard drives and update any changes on all 3 versions when connected? I appreciate I will initially need Lightroom to locate any particular photo on either of the back up hard drives, but once located will it remember all the locations and save back any changes to all 3 drives when next connected in due course. 

I would like to be able to work from all my photos whilst not at home where my primary hard drive is located which is my reason for asking this question. The back up drives are much more portable. I appreciate smart previews would enable me to work on photos whilst the external hard drive is not connected, however there may be times when I want to be able to export photos after having edited them whilst only having access to one of the portable drives.

One further question- At present I am manually copying photos to both back up drives after import onto the primary drive through LR. I understand there is sync software available to do this and would appreciate any recommendations of which to use for this purpose.

Thank you.


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## RonBoyd (Aug 4, 2014)

Here is what I do:

All of my Lightroom files are on an external HD -- that includes all image files as well as the catalog. (I use a single catalog for all my images and use Collections to separate them into groups.) This allows me to quickly and easily move between my Desktop and my Laptop (when going "on the road"). All that is needed is to keep the Drive letter the same for both machines -- then it is "plug and play."

What is NOT on the portable drive, BTW, is the Lightroom Program itself and the LR-generated Backup files -- they are on the main drive of each machine.

As far as syncing the files, I use "Compare Advance" (http://bauerapps.com/compare-folders-windows-compare-advance/). Since I am a paranoid pessimist, I use this program to place (synced) copies of the image and XMP files onto two other Hard Drives (as well as on the internal drive when using the Laptop). I do this syncing after each editing session in LR and it takes maybe two minutes. (I, also, utilize LR's Backup after EVERY editing session.)

As an aside, my image files are separated on the Hard Drive minimally. Because I use a number of different cameras, I had to place each camera's images in separate folders because of camera numbering conflicts. If it weren't for that I would place all the images in a single folder and let the metadata organize them.


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## clee01l (Aug 4, 2014)

Welcome to the forum.  Lightroom stores the path to the master image file copy in the catalog. The path includes the Volume name. The folder panel in LR shows a subset of the folders in your system, similar to the folder structure that you see in Finder.  If you look at the first entry in the Folder panel, it will be the name of the volume where your master image file copies reside. There can be several such Volume name entries if you store your master image file copies on several drives.  In your case you should see only one. 
You will not be able to substitute these 'backup drives' in LR even though the folder structure on them is identical to the master image file copy folder structure because the Volume names for each drive are different (unique). You can replace the master image file copies currently in the catalog with identical image file copies on another volume.  I'll describe how to do that in a minute. 

First, Lets talk about backup options. Your master image files and your LR catalog are not the only critical files that you store on your computer.  You probably also have financial data, music, video, spreadsheets, Word or Pages documents that you would not want to lose _when_ your HDD fails or your MBP is damaged, lost or stolen.  It is a sure thing that one of these 4 events will happen and as long as you let your data remain at risk, you are vulnerable. It is also certain that at some time you are going to delete something important or overwrite something that you later wish that you could recover by going back to an older version of the same file.
OSX comes with a built-in backup app called TimeMachine. It can run constantly in the background continually backing up critical files. It will back up critical user files on your local HDD and on any locally attached volume.  It is simple to setup.  I recommend this to anyone that uses OSX.  I only wish that Microsoft had something that was as functional.  So if you have a spare HDD large enough to store all of your critical user data, you should be using TimeMachine.  There are third party apps that function similar to TimeMachine though not as seamless and not as integrated with the OS.

One that I recommend is Crashplan. For local use, it is free. You can also use the free plan to backup your critical user files to another computer over the internet.  This kind of backup (including TimeMachine) is good for "Oops!" and when you HDD dies.  It does not protect your vulnerable data against fire, flood and pestilence that might wipe out your primary computer and you locally stored backup drives.  Crashplan also is available as a cloud subscription for ~$60USD per year for unlimited data back up.  I (having been bitten more than once) use all three. I use TimeMachine to backup my iMac to a Firewire attached EHD.  In addition to that I run Crashplan to backup to another firewire attached local drive and I have a subscription to the CrashPlan cloud service.  My backup is about 650GB and there are three versioned copies in addition to the master. 

Since your main EHD is not so portable, it might make the best TimeMachine or Crashplan target. Then you could use one of the portable EHDs to travel along with your MBP containing your master image copies and anything else that you want to have available but not store on the volume labeled "Macintosh HD". 

The way to point LR's catalog to another volume is simple.  If we assume that in your folder panel, the top most folder is named something like "LRpictures"  and that folder and all of the subfolders are duplicated on one of those more portable EHDs, we just tell LR where to go to find that replacement folder.

In the folder panel, right click on the top most folder ("LRpictures" in my example) to open  a context menu
From the context menu choose the menu item {Update Folder Location...}
This will open a Finder dialog window and you can then navigate to the equivalent folder on the more portable EHD and select it
When you complete the process, LR will update the pointers in the catalog and the image file copies on the portable EHD will become the  master image copies for LR.


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## Philip Willcocks (Aug 5, 2014)

Thanks Ron. I will look at the sync program you mention.


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## Philip Willcocks (Aug 5, 2014)

Thank you Cletus. I have been using time machine to my main EHD and have looked at a cloud facility called Backblaze which I think is similar to Crashplan, which I will also look at.

I think I may make one of my portable EHD's as the main LR storage facility as you suggest. I assume LR will pick up all original images from the main parent folder and match them to the catalogue in one action. If I needed to switch EHD again in the future I guess I would just repeat the process.

regards Phil


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## clee01l (Aug 5, 2014)

BackBlaze is indeed another cloud possibility. Carbonite is a third cloud choice but it does not back up attached drives on the Mac (although it will for an extra fee on Windows). 

The process that I described does work anytime you want to switch EHDs. All that is required is an identical file/folder structure on both EHDs. The reason that I do not suggest this as a solution to your travel problem is that it does require an identical file/folder structure on both EHDs and while traveling you will be adding new photos to the traveling EHD that require an extra step to resync on your return. 

If you just add your EHD containing your master image copies to your TimeMachine backup, you will have a complete backup solution. For many of us, that is all that is needed.  If your tolerance for risk is sufficiently high, you need not go further than with TimeMachine.  If you want the additional security of a second complete backup, then one of the cloud services mentioned would be my next recommendation.  If you want a second local backup, then CrashPlan will do that for you for free.


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