Backing up Lightroom 2 library file

[willdoak]

I’m new to Lightroom, and have this question about backup.

I store my image files on one external drive (let's call it 1), and to back them up I copy the whole folder to a second external drive (let's call it 2) weekly. I now have my Lightroom library file on drive 1.

If I copy the Lightroom library file to disk 2, will it be looking for the files on disk 1? How can I make the Lightroom library file on disk 2 look for (all the same) image files on disk 2? Of course, I want to preserve all the tags and other metadata I’ve added to the library on disk 1.

Thanks!

Will

[willdoak]

After some experimentation, I can answer my own question. The answer is that if the catalog file and all the image files are copied to a different disk, and you use Lightroom to open the copied catalog, it will use the copied images.

In my case, the catalog and all the images are in a single folder, with various subfolders (and sub-subfolders, etc.) for the images. Apparently Lightroom uses a relative path, rather than an absolute path, to find the images.

Yesterday, I imported some images and manipulated them with Lightroom, then added the images to my backup directory structure and backed up the catalog, and everything worked on the backup. That's quicker than backing up the entire folder of images along with the catalog.

Will