# Question on backing up on external drive (Lightroom)



## Leftyplayer (Apr 20, 2012)

I apologize in advance as I suspect this question has probably been asked before.  Tried search function, but didn't do a good job finding my answer.

I did "export as catalog" for my whole lightroom catalog onto an external hard drive.  Since then, I have done two additional photo shoots.  Is it possible for me to now add just those photos onto the catalog that I previously exported onto the external hard drive, or would I need to export this new set of photos as their own catalog?  The latter seems like it could get messy, as I would then have multiple catalogs floating around and, ideally, I want just the one ... but would like to keep updating the photos I have onto it.


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## Big Mike (Apr 20, 2012)

You don't need to 'Export' as Catalog for your backup scheme.  

Firstly, make sure that you backup your image files.  When you import the images (from a card, for example) you can set it to copy the files to a new location, you can also set it to make an additional copy to a second location.
This is the most important part...backing up your image files.

You can (Should) also back up your LR catalog.  It will usually ask you about this when you close, depending on your settings.  Mine will ask me once a week, if I want to backup the catalog.  When you do this, it backs up the catalog (all the work you've done to the image etc.) but doesn't back up the files themselves.  
So again, you don't need to 'export' a catalog as a backup...you can just backup the catalog directly.


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## KmH (Apr 20, 2012)

You should get the The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers 

 A lot of people that have and use Lightroom, don't understand how it works.

Your photos do not get uploaded to Lightroom. Lightroom just keeps track of the path to where the photos are on your hard drive.

Consequently, you have to be sure you only move your photo files by using Lightrooms Library module.


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## Leftyplayer (May 17, 2012)

Still struggling with this.  I'm not sure that the book is helping (using Kelby's)  or maybe the way I'm thinking is not helping me find my own answer.  Could someone help?

I know the photos themselves are not in lightroom.  That Lightroom basically keeps track of my edits in the catalog, so that it can be a lossless process.   I have the program backing up weekly (but this is a backup right on my desktop).  I also do not move files outside of Lightroom as I know the program needs to keep track of their location.

My question is: I backed up the original files and the lightroom catalog onto an external drive (using the export as catalog method and selecting the external drive as the location to export to).  I've had some shoots since doing that (and, at the time, did not have Lightroom set up to copy the original to the external drive on import - will change that, as I see the usefulness of having copies of new images go straight there and then I can just back up the catalog to that external drive as well as my desktop on its regular schedule).  At this point in time, however, that wasn't already done.  So I have an external drive with most of my images and the catalog as it was 1-2 months ago.  So *how do I tell Lightroom to back up to the same external drive all the new images and changes to the catalog that have occurred since that last back up?  Or, at this point, do I need to just back up the whole thing from scratch? *

As for not needing to export as a catalog, I know that I can just grab and copy the original images and copy the catalog file - but isn't is okay to also just export as a catalog (and check export negative files and previews) - this should include both a copy of the original images (DNG, raw, jpg, Tiff, etc) as well as the lightroom catalog information?  Or am I mistaken as to how that works?  Obviously, if I change my backup methods to what I mentioned above, I won't need to do this - but when needing to copy the whole thing as a start, why not export as catalog?


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## msandersen (May 25, 2012)

I'm on a Mac and use a backup utility called Carbon Copy Cloner to automatically do an incremental backup of my photos to another external drive once a week, meaning only what has changed gets copied over, and older files since modified gets archived. There are plenty of other backup utilities for all the other platforms, but am not too familiar with them. The catalog of either Aperture or Lightroom gets backed up separately to the same volume. Some may be happy to use OSX's inbuilt backup Time Machine to do it, but I wanted to backup to a dedicated photo-backup drive.


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