What is the best way to transfer all photos, LR, and PS to external HD?

What is the best way to transfer all photos, Lightroom, and Photoshop to exernal HD? I want to run my LR and PS, along with all folder containing the pictures I edit from an external drive. So when the day comes that my computer has a hardware failure. I can hook up my external hard drive to another computer and keep working while I send off my main computer to get fixed.

I did a copy/paste of all my albums containing pictures to the new external hard drive but I haven't done the Lightroom and Photoshop. I want to make sure I don't lose any of the global adjustments I have done to my RAW files that Lightroom saves.

At least in Windows, you can't do that with software. Sure, you could install it to the external drive, but you can't just plug that drive into another computer and have it run.

Keep Lightroom and Photoshop installed on your internal hard drive. Backup your Lightroom catalog to an external drive. Backup the external drive with your raw files to something else, either another external drive or an online backup like Crashplan. If your computer goes down, you'll need to have LR and PS installed on your backup computer.

Running lightroom and PS from an external drive is probably not a good idea. You would have to uninstall and reinstall to the removable drive but I suspect you would have problems, even with USB 3.

WhidbeyHiker wrote in post #17234038
Running lightroom and PS from an external drive is probably not a good idea. You would have to uninstall and reinstall to the removable drive but I suspect you would have problems, even with USB 3.

?? Let's re-look at this!!

tonylong wrote in post #17234153
?? Let's re-look at this!!

Not sure what you mean, I have installed programs to removable drives. Sometimes the installers will allow it, sometimes not. However performance has always been a hit. Even with USB 3 being fast you may still run into problems if the drive is turned off, disconnected, windows may scream for non-existent files when it starts up.

Keep PS and LR on your internal drive. If you plug the drive into another computer LR and PS won't run from that hard drive anyway. Plus PS should be deactivated and activated again when you uninstall and reinstall.

I keep all my photos in the C:\users\myname\my documents\ folder. LR works from there, too.

I have a backup hard disk installed in my computer. I use batch files to manage backups but it is easy from the command line. Enter the following on a command line:

cd \users\myname
xcopy /d /s /y *.* e:\users\myname


This will copy all user files (photos, LR settings) to drive E:\.
If you want to be more specific (photos only?), add \directoryname\ to the xcopy command.
The first time you run this it will copy everything. Next time it will only copy new/modified files.
To run it to an external drive, just change E:\ to the proper drive letter.
It doesn't get any easier. I run this on my internal backup drive a few times a day, and on my external drive at least once a week. My HDD died in May. I lost nothing. I was back up and running in less than an hour. OK, I do keep a spare, blank HDD on hand for just such occasions. Learned that from experience. A new, blank $59 hard disk, safely stored away, has saved my bacon more than once.

Retail backup software is several things: expensive, confusing, sometimes proprietary, not supported by the time you need it, inefficient, slow.... the list goes on. Running this kind of stuff is completely free, updates everything in a format you already know, and is completely free. On top of that, you can update and modify it yourself if it doesn't suit your current needs.

The downside to xcopy is that it doesn't do versioning. If you overwrite a good backup with a corrupted file, you're screwed.

mike_d wrote in post #17234538
The downside to xcopy is that it doesn't do versioning. If you overwrite a good backup with a corrupted file, you're screwed.

True. I've done that. But if you work in LR, you are safe. It never messes your raws anyway. Certainly, there are other ways to mess up a file, though.

I used Beyond Compare to mirror Photos and associated folders to external drive then copied the the LR Catalog and associated preview files to the external drive. I needed mine on external drive not for backup but for easy access from different computers in different locations. LR and Photoshop need to stay installed on the internal hard drive (as others already said). To run LR I open the catalogue folder on the external drive and double click the catalogue file. First time you do this LR may not find the photographs as you are using a different source, this can be resolved easily within LR by pointing the cat. to correct location. I then use Beyond Compare to make regular backups/copies of my external drive to my main desktop computer/NAS Drive. This solution has its drawbacks but it works for me as I need access from different locations, if you are only looking for a backup solution then you may want to consider some other ideas as have already been mentioned in previous posts to this thread.
HTH

birderman wrote in post #17235415
I used Beyond Compare to mirror Photos and associated folders to external drive then copied the the LR Catalog and associated preview files to the external drive. I needed mine on external drive not for backup but for easy access from different computers in different locations. LR and Photoshop need to stay installed on the internal hard drive (as others already said). To run LR I open the catalogue folder on the external drive and double click the catalogue file. First time you do this LR may not find the photographs as you are using a different source, this can be resolved easily within LR by pointing the cat. to correct location. I then use Beyond Compare to make regular backups/copies of my external drive to my main desktop computer/NAS Drive. This solution has its drawbacks but it works for me as I need access from different locations, if you are only looking for a backup solution then you may want to consider some other ideas as have already been mentioned in previous posts to this thread.
HTH

Thanks! That's very helpful. I guess I'll keep all my pictures on the external and still keep PS & LR on the internal drive. I also want to buy a another external HD to back-up the external drive that holds alll my pictures. So you're suggesting the "Beyond Conpare" program to do that. I will look into that.

birdman, would you say that Beyond Compare is user friendly? Because i'm a photographer and not a computer guy. lol

I find Beyond Compare easy to use, I believe there are many other programs that do similar tasks, but I do have a lot of computing experience so its difficult for me to say how user friendly and intuitive it maybe for someone that is approaching it from cold. I probably only use a small percentage of what it is capable of doing and only use primarily because it was the first program of this type that I was introduced to several years ago. It does what I want without a need to change. You can view local drive (or source folder) on left hand window and remote drive (or destination folder) on right hand and get a comparison of difference in content. The difference are normally marked in different colours. You can have options then to copy individual files from onside to other, synchronise both sides or create a mirror image from one side to other. I also use this program as means to backup files in my office to the network drive and then compare and sync the backup with a remote drive. It may take a little getting used to but once it is set up up it works quite well, it also has the advantage that if there is power failure or some other interruption that stops the copy/syncing from being completed its easy to do a refresh and continue copying the files that didn't get copied first time.