Lightroom 2-----Back up

Hey all....novice here.
Have LR2 on my C drive. all my imports from camera go to my C drive. When LR backs up, I back up to my D drive. I then back up this drive to my E drive. The D and E are storage only.
Question.....i am out of space on my C drive. I need to remove pictures. If I remove the pictures from my C drive, will they still be available via catalogs that I backed up?
(just got a 1TB storage drive for Christmas.....so I am moving files to clear up space)

1downfall wrote in post #11586299
Hey all....novice here.
Have LR2 on my C drive. all my imports from camera go to my C drive. When LR backs up, I back up to my D drive. I then back up this drive to my E drive. The D and E are storage only.
Question.....i am out of space on my C drive. I need to remove pictures. If I remove the pictures from my C drive, will they still be available via catalogs that I backed up?
(just got a 1TB storage drive for Christmas.....so I am moving files to clear up space)

I hope you have all your photo files backed up also, not just the catalog. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that when they imported the photos they were copied into the catalog. This is not true; the catalog is nothing more than a database, a searchable text file. The photos, jpgs or CR2s can be anywhere as long as LR knows where they are. Actually the catalog and previews folder can be anywhere also, but LR will run faster if they are on the C drive because LR is constantly revising them. So if you want to free up space, delete the photo files from C (after copying them to both externals) but leave the catalog there. Do the copying and deleting from within LR in order to save yourself the chore of locating them afterwards.

My own arrangement is that I have the current year's RAW files on my internal and all my photos, ten years worth, on two identical externals. This way I only need to fire up an external when I need to go to older stuff or, of course, to do backups. Since the externals are identical only one of them is cataloged in LR.

Let's get some clarity here: are your D and E drives both external, or is one internal, or what?

I'm asking because you get best performance by having an internal "data drive" in addition to your C: "system" drive. With a big data drive you can store both non-critical applications, data, and leave a lot of space open for the system and apps to use as "scratch disk" space.

If D: is an external drive, then I'd use the C drive for short-term photo work then actually move the folders into the D drive and back them up onto the E drive.

I would strongly advise, though, to get an internal "data drive" -- that way you can import your photos onto the D drive for short-term processing and then move them onto and external drive for your long-term library, and then you also want a separate external drive as a backup.

tonylong wrote in post #11587691
Let's get some clarity here: are your D and E drives both external, or is one internal, or what?

I'm asking because you get best performance by having an internal "data drive" in addition to your C: "system" drive. With a big data drive you can store both non-critical applications, data, and leave a lot of space open for the system and apps to use as "scratch disk" space. I need to look into this asap....

If D: is an external drive, then I'd use the C drive for short-term photo work then actually move the folders into the D drive and back them up onto the E drive. My D is internal but only for storage and I do back this drive up to my E.

I would strongly advise, though, to get an internal "data drive" -- that way you can import your photos onto the D drive for short-term processing and then move them onto and external drive for your long-term library, and then you also want a separate external drive as a backup.

Ok....all my drives are Internal. C drive is operating system that LR uses. D/E drives are both storage only.
I dont know if I follow you on the "internal data drive".
I now have my 1TB external drive hooked up for storage as well. I also tested my thinking before you guys responded....I painstakingly moved all my cr2 files into my storage drive. LR can acces them from there if I tell it to.
Any advice on an internal data drive?
and thank you for your help!

So what I do is I import new shoots into an internal drive. Pick one, set up your folder and file names, do your imports, and do your short term edits, keywords, etc.

Then, once your short-term work is done, you are free to move things onto an external drive if you want.

But your setup is somewhat different, with 3 internal drives and one big external drive. The good news is that you have a lot of drive space. The problem will be if your system goes down and you need quick access to your library. These are things we all face. Make sure your catalog backups go to your external drive and that you are diligent about backing up your library as well. I myself keep my main library on an external drive (actually two or three) and my backups on a separate external drive that is not connected until needed.

tonylong wrote in post #11590555
So what I do is I import new shoots into an internal drive. Pick one, set up your folder and file names, do your imports, and do your short term edits, keywords, etc.

Then, once your short-term work is done, you are free to move things onto an external drive if you want.

But your setup is somewhat different, with 3 internal drives and one big external drive. The good news is that you have a lot of drive space. The problem will be if your system goes down and you need quick access to your library. These are things we all face. Make sure your catalog backups go to your external drive and that you are diligent about backing up your library as well. I myself keep my main library on an external drive (actually two or three) and my backups on a separate external drive that is not connected until needed.

Thank you Tony.
I spent hours last night sorting through everything, copying my E back up drive to the external storage drive and then clearing out my C drive.
I went ahead and ordered another internal drive @ 2tb...it was on sale w/ a rbate for 79.00....WD. I should be ok now!