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Question

Deleting older versions of light room from my external drives

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
December 31, 2023
3 replies
987 views

Happy almost new year, everybody! I have a question for you all. Yesterday, I wrapped up a fairly large commercial gig, and I transferred the catalogs from that photo shoot from my main working drive onto my storage HDD. I deleted over 1000 photos that were shot on my Z9 full-size raw. Needless to say, I was disheartened to see that it only made a tiny bit of free space on my 2 TB SSD.

Even though I've noticed it every time I plug my drive in, I have Lightroom version 12, and then I have Lightroom Version 13 LRCT or some acronyms like that. Can I delete version 12 from the hard drive? When I clicked on the V12, a message popped up, asking me if I wanted to make that my current catalog. I quickly backed out of the screen and decided to seek help from you Wonderful people! Thanks in advance and happy new year!

macOS

This topic has been closed for replies.

GoldingD

Legend

See:

https://mastering-lightroom.com/lightroom-space-part-1/

https://mastering-lightroom.com/lightroom-space-part-2/

dj_paige

Legend

Even though I've noticed it every time I plug my drive in, I have Lightroom version 12, and then I have Lightroom Version 13 LRCT or some acronyms like that.

These are most likely Lightroom Catalog files, ending with .LRCAT (probably in lower case), but you need to confirm this, don't accept my guess that these are .LRCAT files. You can move catalogs to any disk you want to store them on, using your operating system. However, it is very wise (and in my opinion mandatory) to have backups of all your work, which means TWO (or more) copies of each and every catalog file, and the two copies MUST be (in my opinion, not optional) on different physical disks.

T

Tom_brown3Author

Known Participant

.LRCAT files are associated with version 13.

T

Tom_brown3Author

Known Participant

So does that mean I can delete version 12?

Sean McCormack

Community Expert

Hi Tom,

Did you empty trash?

Can you screenshot the Applications folder showing what you see? Shift + Command + 4 will give a cross hair to click and drag a screenshot. Use the photo icon in the text editor to embed it in the post.

Sean McCormack. Author of 'Essential Development 3'. Magazine Writer. Former Official Fuji X-Photographer.

T

Tom_brown3Author

Known Participant

Here's a screenshot

Sean McCormack

Community Expert

Files with -v13 in the name are upated catalogs and should be kept. Because these have the same base name in the same location, they look like a Lightroom 12 catalog and a Lightroom 13 (-v13) catalog, so once you're satisified you're seeing everything you expect in the -v13 catalog, you can delete the other one. If you want to be on the safe side, you can zip up the 12 catalog to make it smaller before deleteing the .lrcat file.

Sean McCormack. Author of 'Essential Development 3'. Magazine Writer. Former Official Fuji X-Photographer.

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