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zyghom
zyghom
Participant
December 1, 2017
Question

Lightroom Library.lrlibrary - getting bigger and bigger

  • December 1, 2017
  • 7 replies
  • 17618 views

Hi there,

I am in the phase of testing new LR CC.

My existing folders with pictures are close to 500GB on my HDD.

Although I set up 0% in "Target Available Disk Space Usage" in preferences of LR the file "Lightroom Library.lrlibrary" that is in Pictures folder is getting bigger and bigger during import of photos.

I don't want to end up in having 500GB photos in original folder as well as 500GB size of "Lightroom Library.lrlibrary" file.

What is wrong or where is my mistake?

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    7 replies

    O
    Onno5C47
    Participant
    August 23, 2021

    Four and a half years after this problem was first raised and itis still not fixed.

    Lightroom CC is eating up 171 GB of my 250 GB drive while I have set in preferences to store no originals locally.

    Come on, Adobe....

    D
    dracogamer
    Participant
    October 9, 2021

    Ive encountered the same issue with Lightroom desktop. My lightroom Library.lrlibrary file size is larger than my files in the cloud. Emptying the photos in the deleted folder within lightroom helped clear up a lot (thanks to earlier post - I had thousands of photos there). The other thing I noticed, which I haven't seen mentioned in any forum Ive looked at for this issue, is that all the photos in my original folder within the Library.lrlibrary package (Im on a mac) are ones that Ive flagged in lightroom. Seems to suggest these photos are kept whether they are synced or not. Although I haven't yet tried it, I expect unflagging these photos will eventually result in their removal within the library file. 

    Jordalen
    Jordalen
    Participant
    May 10, 2020

    I have the same issue. With 338 gb. in the cloud and 195 gb. stored locally. Does not seem like a cloud solution at all. The cache set to take up 10 %. I would suppose that the required space + cache is the amount of space that Lightroom should really take up? 

    scottwright87
    scottwright87
    Participant
    May 10, 2020

    I have no idea why this is still an issue. I'm probably going to wipe cc from all my devices except my phone and use Classic across all of my computers. Seems silly though. 

    Jordalen
    Jordalen
    Participant
    May 11, 2020

    Well, I tried to delete the library file and that actually seem to have solved the problem for me! The file went from 195 gb to only 10,65 gb., so I could definitely recommend at least trying that solution. 

    J
    Justin_Nyberg
    Participant
    May 1, 2020

    I'm writing this in April 2020 and this is still an issue. I'm on a MacBook Pro. Lightroom CC automatically syncs all of my online photos to a file called "Lightroom Library.lrv" in my "Pictures" folder on my hard drive. I have about 11,000 raw images uploaded to the cloud, and it appears that previews of these files sync to this Library.lrv file, causing it to become very, very large. Mine is 112Gb. That single files takes up almost half of my 250GB hard drive, and now Lightroom says I'm out of hard drive space and will not let me upload more files to the cloud. 

     

    I tried moving this file to an external hard drive, but Lightroom CC just recreates a new one in its place and begins syncing all of my online photos to it again! For the life of me, I can't figure out how to have Lightroom CC sync my online files to the "Lightroom Library.lrv" file on my external hard drive. 

     

    In Preferences, I have set my local photo cache to take up "0%" of my local hard drive space, but this does not help reduce the size of the .lrv file itself. 

     

    Is the solution just to upgrade to Lightroom Classic? 

     

     

      SVShooter
      SVShooter
      Participant
      July 9, 2018

      Thanks @Victoria.  Crazy thing is I dove in head first back in November of last year, and it has been OK.  It just started doing this.  I will report it.  I would love for it to function just like mobile on this machine which always has an internet connection.  Mobile for the same library is only using 6.29GB and everything runs fine. 

      Truth be told I would like to start using Classic again, but after being away from it for the last 9 months, when I try to get things back in Sync, it too tries to download my whole catalog again.  The lack of plugin support in CC is starting to hamper me, but I love the single look between it and LR Mobile.

      SVShooter
      SVShooter
      Participant
      July 7, 2018

      Yep, this is a bit of a problem for me as well.  I have a Macbook Air with a 250Gb SSD drive in it.   Light room is set to Not store files or smartpreviews locally.   And it is taking up 80Gb of my HDD.  I am out of space now.   All was running fine and it was using 5GB until a few days ago, then something happened.  I opened it up, and I hadn't added any new pictures, and it started sycning a couple thousand photos.   I had assumed it was doing some type of house cleaning.   But I came back the next day and the sync stopped and said the harddrive was full.  Now I only have < 1GB left.

      What I'd like to know is can I just delete the LightRoom CC file and start fresh.   I am not sure what that will do to my online library, and finding that answer seems to be impossible because the only thing I find on it is for LR Classic CC.

      FWIW, I opened Classic on my desktop for the first time in a few months as I wanted to try and pull out some of my older files so that I don't go over a TB.   It started downloading my whole online catalog, all 850GB of it.  I went in and changed the online sync location to an external drive, shutdown LR Classic, deleted the local file, and restarted.   It continues to try and download the whole online catalog to my local drive, even though I specified a valid external drive.    It seems like Adobe has some sync issues.

      Victoria Bampton LR Queen
      Community Expert
      Victoria Bampton LR QueenCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      July 8, 2018

      Yes, you can delete the Lightroom Library.lrlibrary. That'll just delete the local cache, and then download it afresh.

      Victoria - The Lightroom Queen
      SVShooter
      SVShooter
      Participant
      July 8, 2018

      Thanks.  Unfortunately that did not fix my issue either.  LR CC is set to cache 0% of my free hard disk space at this point.   I deleted the file and have 80GB free.  As soon a I turned on LR CC it created a new file and synced down 80GB worth of stuff until the HDD was full again.  

      Im hoping this is a bug they address with a future release. 

      B
      breeoxd
      Participating Frequently
      April 25, 2018

      I have 80 gigs in the cloud and my CC library is over 100 gigs, so yes, something is not right with how this installs.

      Victoria Bampton LR Queen
      Community Expert
      Victoria Bampton LR QueenCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      April 25, 2018

      Do you have it set to store a copy of all originals locally?  The other 20GB would be smart previews, used for performance and when the originals aren't available.

      Victoria - The Lightroom Queen
      B
      breeoxd
      Participating Frequently
      April 25, 2018

      I do not believe so. I haven’t changed any settings other than when the other tech changed it to only take 0% of my drive in settings. Can you tell me where to find that setting, just to be sure?

      Also, when I edit something in CC it is saving a full size copy locally even though I’m not exporting anything.

      Additionally still having the issue of it having to resync the whole library each tome I open, even with this massive library taking up hard drive space. Shouldn’t it just be able to regency its library and open? The program is unusable if it has to wait to sync 144k photos every time I benthough I haven’t changed my library.

      Thanks!

      Sent from my iPhone

      Victoria Bampton LR Queen
      Community Expert
      Victoria Bampton LR QueenCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      December 1, 2017

      Has it finished syncing to the cloud? It can't delete them locally until it's done so.

      Victoria - The Lightroom Queen
      zyghom
      zyghomAuthor
      Participant
      December 2, 2017

      so I am testing still

      the results:

      1- synchronize folder size: 11GB

      2- Lightroom Library.lrlibrary file size: 830MB

      that is 7.5% of the initial size of pictures, and 830MB is far from 0% disk space usage

      is this normal?

      why does LR need close to 1GB stored info in the home folder?

      Victoria Bampton LR Queen
      Community Expert
      Victoria Bampton LR QueenCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      December 2, 2017

      "Synchronize folder size" ? Where are you seeing that?

      Lightroom will never actually be 0%. It's a target disk space (use as little as possible) rather than a limit. It needs to keep a local copy of the cloud database and some previews because otherwise you'd have nothing to look at.

      Victoria - The Lightroom Queen
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