Copying files in lightroom

[pennicottlane]

Due to technical issues, I have only one copy of many of my images - on my laptop hard drive. I want to copy these onto 2 separate external hard drives (and ultimately remove them from my laptop). I do not want to risk losing the images completely by moving them without first copying them. What is the best way of doing this in lightroom please?

[gary_sc]

Hi, @bigal2, I "think" I understand your goal. However, if my suggestion below does not correctly satisfy your needs, may I suggest you let us know your actual goal instead of saying how you want to achieve your goal. That is, what are you trying to end up with.

Your desire to make copies of some of the images means that you'll not only have wasted space on your drive(s) but any update you do on one image will NOT be copied to any of the other copies. 

If the purpose of the workflow is to make sure you'll not lose your most important images, there are other ways to do that. You are using Collections, and that's great. But the desire to make actual copies as opposed to virtual copies may not be the best way for that goal (see previous paragraph).

Again, I'm not sure what your final goal is. If I am wrong about what I'm about to suggest to you, I apologize in advance. 

If your goal is to ensure you do not lose any of your images, especially the great ones, you should consider backup strategies. Here's what I do:

Over the years (since the late 70s), I’ve had several hard drives crash and lost stuff. Here's what I now do:

I have a 4 TB drive that holds my images and many documents. I use a 2nd 4TB drive to back up my first drive. I manually do this at least once a week or more often if I've done a lot of work. (If you have a Mac system, I can strongly recommend Chronosync for this backup strategy. I’m sorry, I cannot make a similar recommendation for PCs. Regardless, look for backup software that can update your data as opposed to constantly replacing your data.)

I use a 3rd 4TB drive for Apple's Time Machine.

I also use a cloud service in case the house burns down. Am I paranoid? No, I’m just a realist. In a worst-case scenario, I would not lose much, at worst, sometimes a bit more than I'd like, but nothing horrendous.  

[Note: the 4TB is entirely based on what I need. Your needs may demand more or less hard drive space. Whatever you think you need, double it. Oh, the backup drives, you do not need SSDs or anything fancy or fast, just reliable. Be aware that your first backup will take a long time.]

[bigal2]

Thank you, Gary for your reply

Sorry, I didn't make it clear—allow me to clarify. Over the years I have uploaded images to hard drives and SSDs, more than 50 HDs, generally none larger than 2TB, most 1TB or 500GB. It was all pretty messy with duplicates galore. A few months ago I decided to consolidate the images onto one HD if possible, a 12TB Enterprise NAS drive, with a second 12TB duplicate drive as backup, both of which are installed on a USB-C desktop dock rather than an enclosure, to allow them lots of air to run cooler; I also have a Synology 8-Drive NAS with 24TB of space for further redundancy.  And I also have two ProBox USB-C enclosures each with four 8TB NAS HDs. All the external drives except the Synology network storage are attached to a Mac Studio M1 Max with a 4TB internal drive and 64GB RAM, via Thunderbolt or USB-C (with Thunderbolt hubs).

Unfortunately, the various folders on all those various volumes were not really well organized, as over the past 20+ years I failed to standardize the way I organized images when I uploaded them, and often categorized them according to camera used resulting in dozens of different categories. These images also include thousands of scans from film and transparancies going back to the 1970s. So, my goal is simple, copy all of the existing images, the ones I've been able to find on all those old HDs, to an Archive according to subject matter, regardless of file type, date, etc. The nice thing about LR is of course you can view images according to metadata, sorting them by date, file type, camera, lens and so on. 

On the 12TB volume there are now 45 folders in a folder named ARCHIVE, all named according to subject, e.g., Landscapes, Nudes, Portraits, Seascapes, and so forth and so on. I'm talking about 88,916 images from all those other external drives that I am consolidating. Of course there is a lot of trash and duplicates amongst them, so I am also culling the more obvious worthless photos. I want to end up with all the best and most relevant images in those 45 folders, on that 12 TB HD, although I will add additional disk space as needed. That's my goal.

I think that somewhat answers part of your statement,

"Your desire to make copies of some of the images means that you'll not only have wasted space on your drive(s)... Essentially space is unlimited so that's not a problem. As to the other part of your statement:

...but any update you do on one image will NOT be copied to any of the other copies."

ANSWER: No that's not a problem either, in fact I'm kinda surprised at that statement. 1) I have a Synology NAS that synchs with the volumes that have images that will be edited, as well as that Archive folder. 2) Because I actually work on 3 Macs (a Mac Studio in my home office, a MBP in my living room, and a Mac Mini in my remote office—all M1 or M2 Max models) all three are synched with Resilio Synch Pro version, synching the main folders that I use for editing as well as many other folders for documents and so on. Everything is kept up to date almost instantly regardless of which Mac I'm working on. Adobe apps and the LR Catalogs are synched on all three so I can move fromn one to the other and continue working. That's not to say there are occasional glitches.

So I need to explain a little more about my workflow. Current images are now uploaded to an external 4TB PCIe SSD connected with Thunderbolt called 01 PHOTOS 2024 PLUS on the Studio or the MBP—either one works. I don't upload to the Mac Mini from the cameras. That same volume is duplicated and synched with 4TB external PCIe Thunderbolt SSDs on the other two Macs. So any edits I do on one Mac will almost instantly be updated on the other two. I have a gigabit network at home and at my remote office with internet download speeds around 900 Mbps and upload around 23 Mbps. However, I also use Carbon Copy Cloner (paid version) one the Studio Mac to also synch those same folders to duplicates on that 12TB external HD, that also contains that Archive folder with all the 45 subject folders. The redundancy is almost insane and the setup for all of it is extremely complex, sometimes hard to remember what is going on. 

After culling the crap, I edit in LR, possibly using LR Enhance or PureRAW 4 or Topaz Photo AI, but mostly just LR Enhance. On that same 4TB drive and in the LR Catalog is a folder called Final Sets; within that folder are folders with the same names as the ones in the Archive folder on the 12TB, i.e., according to subject—Birds, Portraits and so on, for example. Now, when I edit the RAW image and use Enhance or one of the plugins it is saved as a DNG. At that point I will then create a new folder in the Final Sets > Subject folder given a name that includes the file name. Here's what that structure looks like: FINAL SETS (folder) > BIRDS (folder) > HAWK Z9C_8901 (folder) > Files (.NEF + .DNG) Those two images, the .NEF and the .DNG are MOVED to that FINAL SETS folder but are instantly synched to the same folders on the 12TB. Next I'll edit the DNG in Photoshop. After I apply edits there, I save a .PSD to that same folder in FINAL SETS. Then I create two more images in PS, both JPEGS reduced for the Web, both with rounded corners and a drop shadow (just a personal touch), one with only my signature/logo, and a second one with a caption that states the specs of the image, which is generally only for my own use not the web. That sounds like a lot of work, but I use Actions extensively and Adobe Library for the signature/logo. Here's what that final JPEG looks like: 

By the way, I highly recommend ACASIS Thunderbolt enclosures for PCIe SSDs; I use mostly Crucial SSDs but have some Intel and WD drives as well. I also use USB-C enclosures for 2 1/2" SSDs, mostly 1TB drives.

I know that was a bit of a long-winded answer but I hope it may help others who may be dealing with the same issues.

[bigal2]

One thing I should note, Carbon Copy Cloner is a fantastic application for backing up and/or synching volumes or folders. You can set it to always save files in a Safety Net folder that have been changed, or make exact duplicates without a safety net. You can choose which folders on a volume to backup to another volume, and you can synch volumes or folders on a running basis as files change. 

Resilio Sync is also a great application for synching volumes, folders and files from one computer to another, Mac or PC, over the internet. Both are reasonbly priced and well worth the money.

[dj_paige]

"...but any update you do on one image will NOT be copied to any of the other copies."

ANSWER: No that's not a problem either, in fact I'm kinda surprised at that statement. 1) I have a Synology NAS that synchs with the volumes that have images that will be edited, as well as that Archive folder. 2) Because I actually work on 3 Macs (a Mac Studio in my home office, a MBP in my living room, and a Mac Mini in my remote office—all M1 or M2 Max models) all three are synched with Resilio Synch Pro version, synching the main folders that I use for editing as well as many other folders for documents and so on. Everything is kept up to date almost instantly regardless of which Mac I'm working on. Adobe apps and the LR Catalogs are synched on all three so I can move fromn one to the other and continue working. That's not to say there are occasional glitches.

This has nothing to do with any external synch. The edits are not stored in the files, they are stored in the catalog file. However, if you truly multiple copies of the same photo in LrC, the edits for one copy are unrelated to the edits for the other copies. Change one of the copies and the others remain unchanged. That's how LrC works.