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Large previews folder

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BobT

BobT

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Joined
Apr 7, 2009
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643
Location
Australia
Lightroom Experience
Advanced
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
10.1.1
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
My preview folder has grown to a huge size despite setting 1:1 previews deleted after 30 days. It's causing long backup delays. Looking into the folder, I see there are some previews years old. Is it safe to simply delete them? What is a good maintenance strategy for the previews folder?
 
Solution
Johan Elzenga
BobT said:
My preview folder has grown to a huge size despite setting 1:1 previews deleted after 30 days. It's causing long backup delays. Looking into the folder, I see there are some previews years old. Is it safe to simply delete them? What is a good maintenance strategy for the previews folder?
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There is no compelling reason to backup previews. Lightroom can rebuild them if and when needed. So if the size of your previews causes long backup delays like you said, then exclude those previews from your backup application. Lightroom itself only makes a backup of the catalog file, by the way.
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If you have the disk space, keep it around. Otherwise, you can delete it, and the previews will be rebuilt "on demand." Accessing a photo will cause its preview to be created.

You could simply tell your backup app not to back the previews up, though.
 
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BobT said:
My preview folder has grown to a huge size despite setting 1:1 previews deleted after 30 days. It's causing long backup delays. Looking into the folder, I see there are some previews years old. Is it safe to simply delete them? What is a good maintenance strategy for the previews folder?
Click to expand...
There is no compelling reason to backup previews. Lightroom can rebuild them if and when needed. So if the size of your previews causes long backup delays like you said, then exclude those previews from your backup application. Lightroom itself only makes a backup of the catalog file, by the way.
 
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Solution
Have a good reason for generating 1:1 previews in the first place. Most people who do force them to be generated have no reason to do so other than a "bigger is better" general philosophy of life. If you can't answer the question "Why are you creating 1:1 previews and how often do you rely on them" then you probably don't need to force their creation - if that is what you're doing. LrC will build them automatically if and when needed.
 
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Califdan said:
Have a good reason for generating 1:1 previews in the first place. Most people who do force them to be generated have no reason to do so other than a "bigger is better" general philosophy of life. If you can't answer the question "Why are you creating 1:1 previews and how often do you rely on them" then you probably don't need to force their creation - if that is what you're doing. LrC will build them automatically if and when needed.
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It's not the 1:1 previews that's the problem. They supposedly get deleted automatically after whatever number of days one has set in Catalog Settings. I presume all the other older stuff in the previews folder are smaller previews created by LR.
 
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One thing you can do to reduce (a bit) the size of the previews folder is to remove it and ask LR to regenerate all previews. But this folder will continue to grow as soon as you will add new photos to the catalog.
 
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Philippe Coudé du Foresto said:
One thing you can do to reduce (a bit) the size of the previews folder is to remove it and ask LR to regenerate all previews. But this folder will continue to grow as soon as you will add new photos to the catalog.
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Could do but as suggested above, I've removed it from the backup list. The backup runs much faster now which was the main issue.
 
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