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Hard Drive is full

P

pmkPE

New Member
Premium Classic Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2019
Messages
9
Lightroom Version Number
15.2.1
Operating System
  1. Windows 11
- what to do? What can I delete and what can I relocate without damage to existing files.
 
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With regard to Lightroom. Here are the following things in the Lightroom folder that are either redundant or should be relocated to another volume.
  1. The backup folder needs to be on another volume. Leaving it in the same folder as the master catalog file puts everything at risk when the drive fails.
  2. Only if you use Lightroom remotely without the master images files (on another removable volume) do you need the Smart Previews folder. You can delete it and not create Smart previews on import
  3. Previous version of the Lightroom catalog were left in the Lightroom folder and may have names that end in-2.lrcat or similar. You can use the Edit menu to rename the master catalog to something unique. Then any files and folders in the Lightroom folder with "old" names can safely be deleted.
  4. If you are storing the master image files locally on the same C:\ drive, consider moving them to a different volume.
  5. The Previews folder can contain lots of Previres that you may never access again Lightroom can always recreate these if thay are needed. Consider deleting the Previews folder and let Lightroom recreate it the next time it starts. Many user do this on a regular basis.
Without details on what your particular situation is, the above is just a guess based on the many forum posts that are similar.
 
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pmkPE said:
- what to do? What can I delete and what can I relocate without damage to existing files.
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How big of a drive, and how much room is LRC and your photos taking up? And is this an internal or external drive?

You can purchase an additional drive and move files there, because at some point there will not be much more you can delete. And storage prices are expected to continue to rise, so now may be a better time than later this year or even possibly next year.

Good luck,

--Ken
 
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Yes you can easily relocate files safely. First before trying this as requested is this your internal or external drive? If internal LrC requires 20% of free hard drive space. Unofficial rule of thumb is 100 GB.
 
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