Backing Up Raw Photographs

Any photos or video cataloged by Lightroom Classic are just out in the same file system folders as all other normal files you use. So to back up your raw files, you should use any backup system that you already use to back up any other files that you think must never be lost.

For example, your computer probably has many other files you can’t lose, such as important family documents, financial/tax statements, and so on. Or maybe you already have a way to back up the entire computer in case the hardware or OS fails. Just back up your raw files in the same way.

That’s what I do. I have a backup drive for my entire laptop, and a backup drive for the volume containing all of my raw photos and video. I use a popular backup application, which I’m not naming only because any reliable, trustworthy backup application you have will do. Because again, raw files cataloged by Lightroom Classic are just regular image files that any backup program can handle.

So I never really have to think about backing up the raw files specifically, because they are part of my overall system-wide backup routine that always backs up everything important. They will get backed up as part of that routine anyway.

The catalog contains a list of your photos and each photos metadata (including collection membership), it never contains the actual photos.

The photos in collections, and all photos imported into LrC, are still stored on your hard disk somewhere, wherever you put them or wherever you told Lightroom Classic to put them. So you can back them up using whatever 3rd party backup program you want.