1:1 previews in Lightroom C drive overfilling issue

Forum|Forum|10 months ago
April 11, 2025
2 replies
1558 views

I have an issue while creating 1:1 previews in Lightroom Classic. The Disc C: is getting full when there are more than 1000 pictures generated at once. The disc is getting so full that there isn't any free space left and I have to restart the system. After restarting the system everything goes back to normal. I'm sending the screens in attachments.

I often have 8000 pictures from one wedding and I didn't have any problems like this a few months back. I haven't changed anything since then. I generate previews only, without any presets or adjustments.

I optimized the catalog, purged cache and deleted all the old previews (also the previews file) and it didn't help). Of course I also made all the updates.

Looking forward to your feedback, I can't work like this any longer! Thanks in advance

Ania

Windows

Earth Oliver

Legend

Well, you have 200GBs dedicated to your ACR cache and then you're trying to creating 1000s of 1:1 previews which take up many GBs as well... and your 😧 drive has only 110GBs of free space. This is clearly an issue with not having enough space for your requirements, so either decrease the ACR cache or get a larger drive.

A

annak13182495Author

Participating Frequently

Good point but as you can see on the screens I have 213 GB of free space. Nevertheless I've increased ACR cache recently, because I read it might help. Well, it didn't do any good so I can decrease it as well.

Earth Oliver

Legend

your cache is set to the 😧 drive, not the C: drive.

KR Seals

Community Expert

Are C: and 😧 separate physical drives? What type of computer? Laptop? Desktop? The real long term solution is to install much larger drives. SSDs preferably. Those drives seem very small for the type of professional operation you describe.

Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-14700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.

A

annak13182495Author

Participating Frequently

Are C: and 😧 separate physical drives?
Yes, they are seperated SSD's. Windows is on seperate drive, as well as special drive for Lightroom files only.
You can see the data in the pictures.

What type of computer?
Desktop.

The real long term solution is to install much larger drives. SSDs preferably.
So the only solution for faulty software is changing hardware? How much space do I need then, 8 TB or more?

Those drives seem very small for the type of professional operation you describe.
Drives with date have 4TB and they are RAID 1. There are 3x2x4TB. Is it small?

KR Seals

Community Expert

Filling up your relatively small SSDs (C and D) is NOT a fault of the Lightroom Classic program, it's a fault of having too small drives.

I'm assuming that your images are on the NAS and that is the way some users store them. However for your catalog and preview files, a larger SSD seems to be necessary. There is no indication in your post about what else may be on those drives.

In my Win11 system (see specs in my sig) I am using a 1TB SSD system drive and a 2TB SSD dedicated to only the LrC catalog and previews. I only used the 2TB drive because that is what I had available. A 1TB SSD would have been fine. The catalog folder referencing 170,000 photos is only 75GB including the previews and smart preview folders . I have the catalog set to delete 1:1 previews after 30 days. Because I cull with Photomechanic before ingesting a large job (8000 images from an airshow), I have far fewer to import. I don't know if that would work in your case or not. I generally look at most imported images 1:1, but still, I have plenty of space for that. All my image files are only on two 8TB spinners, internal in the computer. Backup is to a Win11 file server with a similar drive configuration.

My suggestion to you is to change your 😧 drive to a much larger (1TB or @2TB) SSD and devote that solely to the catalog and preview folders.

PS, The ACR cache should be fine with 50GB.

Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-14700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.

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