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As shown in the set-up diagram below, I would like to offload photos from an external hard drive A to external hard drive B so that if one fails, they're not all lost, since all moved photos aren't kept on the laptop.

enter image description here

  1. Any recommendations when backing up photos simultaneously to two hard drives, or a better storage process altogether? Especially given that moving files between external hard drives (HDD) is probably much slower than moving between an HDD and a laptop, given that the HDD A is probably temporarily transferring to the laptop and then to HDD B (2 transfers)
  2. How to go about this while making sure that each photo's creation date in Windows 10 isn't replaced with the date that the file transfer was conducted as what some Windows operations do?
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    \$\begingroup\$ On Windows creation date and modification date are two different things. Creation applies to the container, modification to the contents. Thus the creation date is technically when a file appears on the drive, and if you copy a file to another drive, the creation date on the new drive is the date when the file was copied, but the modification date is the same as the original. For pictures these are totally unimportant, what really counts is the date set in the Exif data. \$\endgroup\$
    – xenoid
    Dec 22, 2021 at 10:07
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    \$\begingroup\$ Don't confuse file creation date with image creation date. You can't preserve the file creation date when you copy a file. The new file will have a file creation date of the time the file was copied to the new drive. The image creation date is contained inside the image's EXIF information, and remains unchanged when copied. \$\endgroup\$
    – Michael C
    Dec 24, 2021 at 12:19
  • \$\begingroup\$ @MichaelC are you contradicting what xenoid said? Who is your comment directed to \$\endgroup\$
    – user610620
    Dec 24, 2021 at 15:22
  • \$\begingroup\$ @user610620 My comment is directed at the O.P., not the previous comment. (Attempts to use the "at" functionality to address the O.P. doesn't work in the comment section below a question until the O.P. has made a comment themselves.) \$\endgroup\$
    – Michael C
    Dec 24, 2021 at 23:37

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The standard copy operation in Windows preserve the filename attributes as file creation date and so on. Which mean you are OK about this.

About copy you can check robocopy tool which have some advantages over standard copy operation as multi-thread, resume and so on. And you can run two copies to copy simultaneously to the external disks.

P.S. Maybe will be better to ask your question here: https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com

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    \$\begingroup\$ Software recommendations is definitely a good shout. \$\endgroup\$
    – spikey_richie
    Dec 22, 2021 at 8:26

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