basic question about catalogues

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bluebird

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I have a very basic question. When you import a folder of files that exist somewhere on a hard drive I think LR creates a catalogue of those file. Are the files in the catalogue also taking up space on the hard drive. And where are the catalogues stored. When I installed light room I used the default location for on a PC. When I go to that location I see a bunch of folders in the LightRoom folder labeled '-9 and A- F but there are no images in here. I think I am missing some basic understanding of how this all works. Thanks in advance for any help that you fine folks can provide.
 
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bluebird.

1) Your image files are stored in the directories where they were located when you imported them into LR.
2) In addition, there is a file in your LR catalog folder called 'Catalogname'.lrcat. Where 'catalogname is whatever you named your catalog. By default, it's something like 'Lightroom 2 Catalog.lrcat'. This is fundamentally a SQLite database file, which keeps track of where your image files are located on your hard drives. It also keeps track of all the changes you make to your images.
3) Also, as you've discovered, is a folder (package on the Mac) called 'Catalogname'.lrdata. This strange arrangement of folders is the LR preview cache. Here is where LR stores fully rendered previews of your images; and is intended to make LR more quick and responsive in navigating images. The strange folder arrangement is a by-product of attempting to stream line the disk access into that tree.

That's the basics, feel free to ask to dig deeper.
 
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thanks for the link to the podcast but I need some help here. How do you download the podcasts? I have a PC with vista but have xp on my laptop. I have looked around and see information about the idisk utility. Do I need this? and it also looks like it isn't available for vists.
 
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