Messed up file structure in backup hard drive

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Michael Heller MD

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Hi everyone: I save all of my files in a year/month/filename structure on an external WD pocket hard drive, and back up to a second hard drive. My catalogue resides on the computer (windows) internal drive. All of my files are on the 2 external hard drives, going back 12 years. Recently the backup hard drive has stopped using this file structure, and is only downloading by shoot. It doesn;t keep the file structure I have for the download hard drive. (Year, month, day and name of shoot). I;m left with a backup hard drive with a normal file structure through 2017 and individual shoots from 2018 onward. Tried to delete the individual shoots from the backup drive, and it wouldn;t let me do this. Don;t know what to do. Should I wipe the drive clean using the computer file system, and start over, buy a new drive, and recopy all the files month by month and year by year, or can I copy the entire contents of the download drive, hoping it will keep the same file structure. Again, my download WD external drive is fine, with the file structure I started with (Year/month/day and name of shoot). It;s the backup WD drive that;s screwed up, and lost the file structure after 2017. Up until then, its ok. Hope someone can help me!! I;m using LR classic. I have the Adobe photo plan. Thank you Mike Heller MD
 
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I'd buy a new drive and do a new back-up on that rive, using Allway Synch if you want. Then, you can do work on the original back-up drive to fix it without any risk of losing photos.

At present, how do you transfer the photos to the backup drive? Do you copy from the main photo drives? Or, copy the files directly from cards to both drives? Or something else. Its hard to see why a drive would have a partially different file structure unless you transferred the files to it without defining the directory structure first.
 
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Michael Heller MD said:
Thank you. I may try that, but I;ll need to wipe the backup drive and start over.
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You'd at least want to wipe all the new, incorrect directories. The simplest way with minimal risk to your files is to follow the suggestion above and buy a new, clean hard drive and use a tool like Allway Synch to clone the drive including all the directory structures. If you use a synch tool like that going forward your directories and all files should stay aligned.
 
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You didn't mention how the files get to the backup drive, are you using backup software, using a sync utility, or manually copying them? If you are using a backup utility it is probably creating it's own directory structure so the software can find files to restore. I have backup software running on my PC and I let it do it's thing to one of my backup drives. It backs up not only my photos but also documents and other files.

I also have a backup drive that I maintain for my photos using a file sync utility. I use FreeFileSync and it compares two drives or folders and tells me what is different in those locations. I then have options to update, mirror, or synchronize the folders. The backup folders will have the same file structure as the storage folders.

As others have said I would probably purchase a new backup drive and start fresh unless you have plenty of capacity on you backup drive to move the existing backups unto an "Old Backup" folder and still have room to create your new backups. However this will create a problem if you are using some type of backup utility.
 
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Thanks for suggestion. I use the SD card from the shoot, open the file from within LR, copy to the download WD drive, and then check the box to also download to the second WD drive, then hit ‘copy’ in LR. I choose the file structure I want on the right side of the LR interface before I click on Copy.
 
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I've been using Syncback for years for backups. There are various versions from IIRC a free one and a couple of ones with more options.

You can just opt to backup a whole drive, selected folders - even from different drives and more.
 
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I started many years ago copying images from my cards to my computer manually so that I could organize them into folders of my choosing. I would sync to a backup folder and then import them into Lightroom without having to copy the images. I have done this for years but after reading your post I decided to investigate your process a little.

In the latest version of LR, I can choose the folder to copy the images to and ask it to creat a folder when copying. I can choose a folder for the backup copy but I have to create the folder and it appears that LR will still copy the images into a dated folder it creates. I could not find a way to create a folder structure in the backup that would match my storage folder. I wonder if this has changed recently in LR.
 
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