Help Backing Up and Moving LRC Photos from an old Thunderbay4 to a new ThunderBay 4

[Jay]

I have an 11-year old OWC Thunderbay4 with Thunderbolt 1 connectors attached to a 2021 Apple M1 Mac Pro Max as my main storage for 7 TB of LRC photos. I have bought a new OWC ThunderBay4 with Thunderbolt 3 connectors to get more storage. I would like to make a backup of everything on the old ThunderBay4 to an external hard drive to store at an offsite location and then migrate the LRC photos to the new and larger ThunderBay4. My question is, what is the best and fastest way to do this without losing any photos or the LRC organization? Should it be done within LRC, with Carbon Copy Cloner, or some other method?

As further information, I have purchased and watched Steve’s LRC how-to videos on setting up LRC folders and purchased Carbon Copy Cloner, but I am still unsure how to proceed. I can connect the new ThunderBay4 to the computer, and it shows my LRC folder structure, but only small previews of the photos with a “?” mark next to each folder indicating it does not know where the folder is located. This is not a surprise as the folder structure is linked to the old ThunderBay4, not the new one. But I cannot connect both the old and the new ThunderBay4 to the computer at the same time without the computer crashing. I cannot daisy chain the old ThunderBay4 to the new ThunderBay4 without without the computer crashing. I can, however, connect the old ThunderBay 4 and multiple other hard drives to computer without a problem. So I am going to buy a large enough external drive to copy the 7 TB currently on the old Thunderbay4 as a backup. And I have bought Carbon Copy Cloner as a possible option to copy the existing LRC photographs from a new backup drive to the new ThunderBay4 since I am unable to move them from the old to the new ThunderBay4 drives because both can be connected at once without crashing the computer.

I would appreciate advice on the best way to proceed.

 

[Anjin San]

CCC to backup to the external and move the images from within LR…but in stages. You could clone the old RAiD to the new one and repoint the images in LR…either way works. For me…I would probably clone and repoint since the original RAID folders won’t be touched that way. If you clone the RAiD and then rename the old one and rename the new one to the old one’s name…LR won’t need repointing As the drive name and folder structure it expects will already be there.


Jist realized you already cloned the drive so either the rename trick with LR not running or right click the highest folder with the question mark and Find Missing Files…depending on your structure you might need to do this more than once.

 

[Jay]

CCC to backup to the external and move the images from within LR…but in stages. You could clone the old RAiD to the new one and repoint the images in LR…either way works. For me…I would probably clone and repoint since the original RAID folders won’t be touched that way. If you clone the RAiD and then rename the old one and rename the new one to the old one’s name…LR won’t need repointing As the drive name and folder structure it expects will already be there.


Jist realized you already cloned the drive so either the rename trick with LR not running or right click the highest folder with the question mark and Find Missing Files…depending on your structure you might need to do this more than once.

Thank you Anjin. My concern about CCC is that I am a complete newly to that software. In my initial experiments with it, it wants to "move" not "copy" my folders from the old Thunderbay4 drive to the new external drive I bought to transition the photos to my new ThunderBay4 drive. I don't want to "move" because of my concern (not sure I am correct in how CCC works) that the move function will delete the copies from the old folder on the old ThundferBay 4 drive in the process of moving it to the new folder on the new external drive. If the photos are corrupted or the computer crashes during the transfer process, I am afraid of losing the photos. Perhaps there is a way to just "copy" and not "move" with CCC, but I have not found that feature yet. Any thoughts about this? Perhaps I am just missing an obvious feature in CCC. My alternative thought was to use the "finder" feature in MacOS to copy the folders to a new drive, and then use that new drive to copy the photos to my new ThunderBay 4 drive. (I am doing this because I cannot connect both Thunderbay drives to the computer to make the transfer directly). Any further thoughts?

 

[John Navitsky]

why not just go into lrc and move all the photos from the old to the new device, then set up your backups?

 

[Jay]

why not just go into lrc and move all the photos from the old to the new device, then set up your backups?

I cannot get the old Thunderbay4 that has my current LRC photos and the new ThunderBay4 I bought to connect to my Mac Pro at the same time. The computer crashes regardless whether the two drives are daisy chained or connected to separate ports on the computer. Otherwise, your suggestion was my game plan. I have purchased a Seagate 20TB external drive and I am moving pictures to that drive from the old Thunderbay4. Hopefully I will be able to move the pictures from the Seagate to the new Thunderbay4 drive and then sync it to LRC. Very slow process to move the pictures folder by folder twice!

 

[John Navitsky]

I cannot get the old Thunderbay4 that has my current LRC photos and the new ThunderBay4 I bought to connect to my Mac Pro at the same time. The computer crashes regardless whether the two drives are daisy chained or connected to separate ports on the computer. Otherwise, your suggestion was my game plan. I have purchased a Seagate 20TB external drive and I am moving pictures to that drive from the old Thunderbay4. Hopefully I will be able to move the pictures from the Seagate to the new Thunderbay4 drive and then sync it to LRC. Very slow process to move the pictures folder by folder twice!

yah, sounds like using an local, intermediate disk is the most reasonable workaround.

i think you can select multiple folders at once? i think you can use shift-click to click a range and ctrl-click to toggle a selection?

 

[Hooligans Imagery]

yah, sounds like using an local, intermediate disk is the most reasonable workaround.

i think you can select multiple folders at once? i think you can use shift-click to click a range and ctrl-click to toggle a selection?

Why not use his CCC for that; it's a great reliable program and also very efficient. I would set up one back up task with it; run it and run it again. I would then take the Seagate as the original destination and copy it to the new OWC. I think with the right settings you can get a very high level of reliance check in CCC.

OP have you asked OWC why they think having them both connected crashes the computer?

 

[Jay]

Yes, I can select multiple folders, but many are very large (one well over 1TB by itself) so I can do other projects while waiting. I will save the big folder for overnight to see how it goes. Thanks.

 

[John Navitsky]

Why not use his CCC for that; it's a great reliable program and also very efficient. I would set up one back up task with it; run it and run it again. I would then take the Seagate as the original destination and copy it to the new OWC. I think with the right settings you can get a very high level of reliance check in CCC.

OP have you asked OWC why they think having them both connected crashes the computer?

copying them in lr makes sure the catalog has corrected the location of the files.

yah, you can take the leap of using something else to move the files, then trying to correct the location, but imo that's a bit anxiety inducing, and there are some ways you can screw it up and make it hard to recover.

basically, doing it in lr is the safe(ish), easy(ish) way

 

[Jay]

Why not use his CCC for that; it's a great reliable program and also very efficient. I would set up one back up task with it; run it and run it again. I would then take the Seagate as the original destination and copy it to the new OWC. I think with the right settings you can get a very high level of reliance check in CCC.

OP have you asked OWC why they think having them both connected crashes the computer?

I talked to OWC before the purchase about daisy chaining the two drives. The tech said they are designed to work that way, but cautioned that because my 11-year old Thunderbay4 used Thunderbolt 1 versus Thunderbolt 3, and further because the Thunderbolt 1 had to connect thru a converter Thunderbolt 1 to USB to USB-C, there could be compatibility problems. I thought his comments only applied to daisy chain operation, as the Thunderbolt 1 to USB to USB-C has worked for years on my Mac without a problem with other external drives. OWC service was closed by the time my new ThunderBay 4 arrived later Friday afternoon, so I have not talked to them about both drives not connecting at the same time. Lightroom Classic recognizes the new ThunderBay 4 when plugged in by itself and shows the LRC catalog with the “?” next to the folders, so I have every reason to think the new Thunderbay will work when I can get the photos resident on it. I did not expect to have to do a double copy job, once to a new Seagate drive and then to the ThunderBay4!!

 

[John Navitsky]

it makes you wonder if plugging in your tb1 device force all the tb connections to 1 or something yucky like that. probably it's good you are moving on.

 

[Hooligans Imagery]

copying them in lr makes sure the catalog has corrected the location of the files.

yah, you can take the leap of using something else to move the files, then trying to correct the location, but imo that's a bit anxiety inducing, and there are some ways you can screw it up and make it hard to recover.

basically, doing it in lr is the safe(ish), easy(ish) way

I think that is generally true, however when there is an organized structure, and a top level folder with the same name, I think it works. OP if you are member at The Lightroom Queen ask there for more input.

 

[Anjin San]

Thank you Anjin. My concern about CCC is that I am a complete newly to that software. In my initial experiments with it, it wants to "move" not "copy" my folders from the old Thunderbay4 drive to the new external drive I bought to transition the photos to my new ThunderBay4 drive. I don't want to "move" because of my concern (not sure I am correct in how CCC works) that the move function will delete the copies from the old folder on the old ThundferBay 4 drive in the process of moving it to the new folder on the new external drive. If the photos are corrupted or the computer crashes during the transfer process, I am afraid of losing the photos. Perhaps there is a way to just "copy" and not "move" with CCC, but I have not found that feature yet. Any thoughts about this? Perhaps I am just missing an obvious feature in CCC. My alternative thought was to use the "finder" feature in MacOS to copy the folders to a new drive, and then use that new drive to copy the photos to my new ThunderBay 4 drive. (I am doing this because I cannot connect both Thunderbay drives to the computer to make the transfer directly). Any further thoughts?

CCC doesn’t delete from the source…it clones to the destination. You can setup your tasks so that a file that is deleted from the source between runs of the task either gets deleted from the destination or put in the SafetyNet which keeps older versions. But the source remains untouched by the app. You’re misunderstanding something in the setup or I’m misunderstanding what you’re telling me. Make sure you have Standard Mode selected in the menu and not Simple mode. Once you select a source you can specify in Task details what will be cloned and what to do after the task runs…and once destination is set you can enable (or not) SafetyNet. There’s a protect root items in the destination…but that’s for destination items, not the source.

I just opened my laptop and poked through all the settings to verify…I can find nothing that talks about deleting from the source…after all Clone is part of the name.

It’s weird that you can’t connect both drives at the same time on different ports…have you tried both booting with both attached and booting with one attached and then connecting the other. While I don’t have both flavors of TB…different ports are different ports. However…doing the double clone via the spinning drive works as well…and even a bunch of TB will easily copy overnight. Also make sure you have the latest version of SoftRAID installed…an older version could be the cause of the crash with both connected.

While there are pros and cons to both moving them in LR and moving in Finder and then reconnecting…I personally would take the latter approach, especially if all the images were in 1 or just a few folders and then just disconnect the old drive after the clone/copy and repoint…although just renaming the old drive to something else and renaming the new one the old one‘s name then launch LR and it will find them because it only cares about the volume name. I’ve done it both ways and using CCC o move the images and repointing was faster…and IMO safer as LR is physically moving them and an issue during the transfer will likely corrupt some files and a clone with disconnect of the old drive won’t do that as no move is happening, just a copy.