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halmcm
Participant
August 24, 2020
Answered

Lightroom CC 3.4 taking up too much disk

  • August 24, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 636 views

I just installed Lightroom CC last week and have updated to 3.4 since then. I have added almost 30,000 images over the last few days and now Lightroom CC won't add more photos because it says I'm out of space on C drive. The Lightroom CC application says that I have photo cache of about 28GB, with approx 282 GB available on C:. But looking at the C: drive, it shows that Lightroom CC has stored 237GB of originals (not 28 GB) and I have less than 10GB free on C: drive.

See screen captures for details.

So why is Lightroom CC using so much more storage than it says it is using, and how to I get it to free up that disk space?

 

Thanks for any suggestions

 

 

 

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Jim Wilde

It doesn't matter if "Store a copy of the originals locally" is checked or unchecked at this stage. Lightroom initially needs to store a copy of newly imported files on the hard drive to allow the sync upload to complete, as the other Jim explained....but the point is that Lightroom does not immediately delete that local copy. Not unnaturally, Lightroom assumes that you'll want to work with those files (and editing them requires the original locally), so deletion of them is tied into some apparently complex rules which determines when a certain file can be deleted. It's not untypical to find them still on the local drive months after the initial upload was done, though because your drive is now low on disk space I would expect some of your local files to be deleted sooner than that. But I doubt they'd all be deleted quickly.

 

The point of the "Store a local copy" setting is for those people (and there are many) who want a complete copy of their cloud images on their own hard drive as well as in the cloud, as a form of backup. And by the way, you don't have to select that option in order to change the location, Lightroom will still move what is currently cached to the new location, and will use that new location for all new imports as well.

2 replies

Jim Wilde
Community Expert
Jim WildeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 24, 2020

An alternative approach would be to designate a different drive for the storing of those originals. At the moment you have left the preferences set to the default location, which is on your C drive. If you have a different drive to use, set the location accordingly and Lightroom should them move the existing originals from the C drive to the new drive.

H
halmcmAuthor
Participant
August 24, 2020

Hi Jim,

Thanks for replying. I do not have the 'Store a copy of all originals at the specified location' checked. I am loading the files into Lightroom from an external USB drive. I assumed that by not checking the box that I would be preventing Lightroom from storing the files on my C: drive after the upload/sync is complete. I can try changing the path, but if I don't have that box checked, do you think it will make a difference? If it does make a difference, then what is the point of that checkbox option? 

 

 

Jim Wilde
Community Expert
Jim WildeCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
August 24, 2020

It doesn't matter if "Store a copy of the originals locally" is checked or unchecked at this stage. Lightroom initially needs to store a copy of newly imported files on the hard drive to allow the sync upload to complete, as the other Jim explained....but the point is that Lightroom does not immediately delete that local copy. Not unnaturally, Lightroom assumes that you'll want to work with those files (and editing them requires the original locally), so deletion of them is tied into some apparently complex rules which determines when a certain file can be deleted. It's not untypical to find them still on the local drive months after the initial upload was done, though because your drive is now low on disk space I would expect some of your local files to be deleted sooner than that. But I doubt they'd all be deleted quickly.

 

The point of the "Store a local copy" setting is for those people (and there are many) who want a complete copy of their cloud images on their own hard drive as well as in the cloud, as a form of backup. And by the way, you don't have to select that option in order to change the location, Lightroom will still move what is currently cached to the new location, and will use that new location for all new imports as well.

JP Hess
JP Hess
Inspiring
August 24, 2020

Although the images will eventually be stored in the cloud, the upload procedure is designed to first cache them locally on the hard drive and then upload them to the cloud because upload speeds are not really stellar. So you are not going to be able to be quite so aggressive with your importing. You are going to have to allow time for the upload process to complete.

H
halmcmAuthor
Participant
August 24, 2020

Hi Jim

Thanks for your reply. However, I have been monitoring the upload status and I have been waiting for it to complete before moving on to my next folder. As you can see here, it says everything has been synced, and I do not see any network upload activity on my PC.

 

 

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