saving raw photos

thank you guys for all your help.

In Adobe raw converters, raw is treated as read-only. You edit instructions for the rendering of new pixels from the raw which isn't touched. 

See: https://www.dpbestflow.org/image-editing/parametric-image-editing

i have been using lightroom classic for a couple of months and i know this is such a simple question but im a bit confused.

  i have noticed when i exposure blend , my photo is no longer a raw photo, i get that. what i am wanting to do is save all my raw photos " as shot" to a folder on a second drive.

this way i always have a out of camera file saved. 

 i keep seeing people saying save the raw but no one really says how to do this. any help would be great and thatnk you in advance.

By @Sean27091200zo38

You misunderstand what happens when you edit a raw file in Lightroom Classic. LrC is a "non-destructive editor", which means that it does not change the image data of a raw file in any way. Basically, what happens when you open an image into the Develop module is that LrC creates a special preview of the raw file, and it is that preview that is used to show you the effects of the edits that you apply. Those edits are NEVER applied to the raw file itself, they are simply stored as a series of edit settings in the LrC catalog. If you subsequently export or print that raw file then the edits are read from the catalog and used in combination with the actual raw file to render the derivative file.

It is possible to optionally save the edit details into a special XMP "sidecar" file (for proprietary raw files) or into the XMP block in the file header of other file-types (such as DNG, Tiff, Jpeg), and that XMP data can then be used when importing the file into another Adobe application......but the important thing to understand is that the actual image data of the original file is never changed by LrC. Thus there is no need to "save" it, but of course you'll still want to backup both the original files and the catalog.

People telling you that you should "save" the raw files either mean "backup the raw files" (which is good advice), but if that's not what they mean then they probably just don't understand how LrC works.

The Raw is not altered in any way by adjustments that you may make to that. To draw an analogy, the Raw is the author's script for a play, and the adjustments are different ways of performing FROM that script. Any possible performance might happen, and a recording made perhaps (in Lightroom terms, an export). But the author does not also need to keep back an "unperformed" copy of the script. The words of the author's score are not in any way changed by being performed FROM.

It is always possible to be performed again "as if" for the very first time. By a director with no knowledge of what other performances have already happened, say. The Lightroom equivalent of that, is that all the adjustments can be Reset and this Raw is going to be treated again, just the same as it was when first imported.

It's true that merging multiple images to HDR or to a Pano creates a fresh image file (DNG file type). But the contributing Raws still stay there too. 

The only destructive things that can happen to a Raw are to be deleted or otherwise corrupted; to be renamed in some confusing and unintended way; to be converted to DNG format (and the original removed) if you later came to regret that conversion. As a protection against all of those, if you want, when copy-importing from camera card you can - in the import settings - choose for a second copy to be made into another disk storage location as a safety backup. However, most people find it better to concentrate on having good backups of the main storage location where not only their imported Raws, but also e.g. merged DNGs and externally Photoshop edited files, will live - and thus, all get backed up together on a regular basis. That is aside from backups of the Catalog itself.  

Lightroom Classic never changes your raw image. It's right there on your hard disk, wherever you put it or wherever you told Lightroom Classic to put it, unchanged. In LrC, you can get back to the original raw image in the Develop Module by going to the History panel on the left and clicking on the bottom entry. So no need to specifically do a SAVE (in fact, you can't specifically instruct LrC to do a save).

You MUST (in other words, it is not optional) make regular and automated backups of your original photos on a different disk than the originals, and your Lightroom Classic catalog file.

You need to ask program questions in the forum for the program you are using
To ask in the forum for your program please start at https://community.adobe.com/
Moving from Using the Community (which is about the forums) to the correct forum