Finally ready to work off external drives.. Now I just need some more guidance!

if both ssd's will be connected at the same time, raid level 1 provides automatic mirroring and is easily configured using disk utility (if on mac) and probably very easily using disk manager on windows. this means other than initial configuration, you don't have to mess with manually running file syncing.

if you are keeping the drives separated and will only be bringing them together whenever you want to backup drive 1 to drive 2, rsync will be your very best friend. if you are interested in this option i can offer more specific guidance.

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@Tom_brown3 wrote:

I also would like to know if I need some sort of cloning program so the backup drive stays updated. Any help is GREATLY appreciated!!!

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The others did great answering the moving question. With the cloning program, on the Mac some reliable, respected choices are Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper!, and Chronosync. The first two are generally better for what I call “blind” incremental backups, where you just run a backup job, it compare and figures out the file changes, you come back in a few minutes and it’s done. I think this makes them better for whole volume backups involving system files, including bootable backups.

I’m currently using Chronosync to keep my photo archive backups up to date, and the reason is unlike the other two, Chronosync has a Trial Sync feature where you run a job as a simulation, then it shows you a list of all the files it’s going to add, replace, and delete and I can then approve it to go on and do it for real. I like to take a quick look at that simulation in case it’s going to do something unexpected or time-consuming. For example, one time I changed the name of a folder, and the Trial Sync told me I was going to have to wait like 40 minutes for the backup because now there was no matching named folder on the backup, and that folder contained many GB of subfolders to copy. I realized I could just rename the same folder on the backup to match and then run the job; that time it noticed no changes to that folder and subfolders, and the rest of the incremental backup was just a couple minutes.

So if you just want a quick set-and-forget, pick any of them, but if you want more control consider Chronosync. Also, all three will let you schedule your backups.

I want to do a shoot, dump from the card onto computer into lightroom, then reject or edit accordingly. Once Im done, I want to put the raws and pics with edits onto an external drive, than back that drive up to a second for redundancy.

Make your life simpler. When the photos come out of the camera and are imported into Lightroom Classic, put them on the external disk directly. Don't bother putting them on the internal disk and moving them later, its an extra step, extra manual work, and there is no real benefit to having photos on the internal drive. Extra work for no benefit, I don't like the sound of that. In my opinion, the best workflow involves moving photos as few times as possible.

Transferrnig all my lightroom stuff to the drive from my computer SSD.

Good advice here-

MOVING PHOTOS- 2 Methods

See Option #2 in the article for using the OS to COPY the files.  This method has been shown to be more reliable for LARGE folder/file moves. (delete from the SSD later after success in updating folder location to the new external drive.)

Many "Cloning" programs out there to Backup. (I use SyncBackFree)

I want to do a shoot, dump from the card onto computer into lightroom, then reject or edit accordingly. Once Im done, I want to put the raws and pics with edits onto an external drive,...I need some guidance...

(After you 'Move' to the new external drives) Import ("dump") directly to the External Drive where the files will be stored. You will never need to move them again and risk corruption.