BIG SYNC issue

Hi, ​@cassid07 this is not “horrible,” but it is a tad busy. I encourage you to look at this video, it will simplify a lot of things.

 

Now, as far as adding an external HD. YES, do it, but do it wisely.
 

You’ve probably heard that there are two kinds of hard drive users. Those who've had a hard drive crash and those who've not had a hard drive crash YET.

Over the years (since the late 70s), I’ve had several hard drives crash and lost stuff. I’ve lost data only the first time. Here's what I now do:

I have a 4 TB drive that holds my images and many documents. I use a 2nd 4TB drive to back up my first drive. I manually do this at least once a week or more often if I've done a lot of work. (If you have a Mac system, I can strongly recommend Chronosync for this backup strategy. I’m sorry, I cannot make a similar recommendation for PCs. Regardless, look for backup software that can update your new data as opposed to constantly replacing all your data — it’s much faster.)

I use a 3rd 4TB drive for Apple's Time Machine. I do not know if PCs have such a process built in.

I also use a cloud service in case the house burns down. Am I paranoid? No, I’m just a realist. In a worst-case scenario, I would not lose much, at worst, sometimes a bit more than I'd like, but nothing horrendous.

[Note: the 4TB is entirely based on what I need. Your needs may demand more or less hard drive space. Whatever you think you need, double it. Oh, the backup drives, you do not need SSDs or anything fancy or fast, just reliable. Be aware that your first backup will take a long time.]

Oh, if your computer is barely functioning due to a lack of space, try moving a lot of data (not any of your images, keep them together with your catalog), just any other data, like music, especially videos (they take a lot of space), and move them into what will become one of your backup drives. Then you can move your images into the primary hard drive.

Oh, one other thing to be aware of: it’s much faster to transfer one document than a bunch of documents. So, if you can, take a folder of a lot of documents and compress them using ZIP (should be part of your operating system with a right-click). Then move that one file over to the new computer. And delete the files and the ZIP file to make room to do this over and over as needed.

I hope this helps. 

Classic needs a local copy of all images so if you sync down from a cloud library it always downloads the full image. Deleting the downloaded images is not a good idea as it severs the link and Classic will not redownload it as you experienced. If you want to redownload them, the best way is to create a new catalog and set that to sync. It is a good idea to first set the syncing file structure in Preferences->Lightroom sync so it neatly files them into folders by date. It will download all images after you designate a new catalog to sync and disconnect the old catalog from syncing.

so silly me, i had no idea that on lightroom classic all your RAWS save to a local hard drive so it was saving to my computer, normally this wouldn’t be an issue but it ended up taking all my storage so after countless searching of trying to find google articles or anything i resorted to asking chat gpt what i could do to get space back and keep editing. this is about 25000 pictures btw. long story short it told me that it was safe to delete the mobile downloads.lrdata file which deleted ALL THE RAWS on lightroom classic giving me just smart previews and not being able to export. i only use lightroom mobile to import pics and classic for everything else. unfortunately using chatgpt again i got about 2000 pics to sync back but not the rest and now its stuck saying that there’s 8 pics syncing. is there any possible way to fix this so i can still edit on lightroom classic until i get a external hard drive or do i have to basically export all of the pictures from lightroom mobile and re import them to sync? PLEASE HELP i need to get galleries out.