Local storage when using LRCC and Classic

michaelj60284726  wrote That makes sense. I gave it a couple days after setting the percentage to zero, but my Lightroom library remains on my hard drive. I really don't want two copies on my HD! Any other ideas? What would happen if I manually trashed the files in the finder? It doesn't sound like a good idea, but I would still have the Classic library, unless the app decided that because it doesn't see the CC library it should delete them also.

Your Lightroom Library will always remain. It contains more than just locally stored originals. It is a local cache with previews, to make sure that all your images are visible right after you start the program. If you didn't have any local library at all, Lightroom CC would become very slow and even unusable when there was any problem with your internet connection.

When you migrate an LR Classic catalog into LRCC, LRCC copies all of the Classic cataloged images to its own location, i.e. migration requires available disk drive space at least equal to the amount of disk space currently in use by LR Classic. Even if the LRCC option to store a copy of originals locally is unchecked, that will not affect this particular behaviour. LRCC must have its own copy of the images whilst the (probably very lengthy) upload to the cloud process completes. Once that upload is done, "smart space management" will be done, which effectively means that the local copies are deleted only as and when required, even if a 25% limit is in force (I would guess that as the free hard drive space comes under pressure, the deletion of the LRCC originals will increase in pace to bring the amount used within that threshold).

The same applies to new imports, e.g. importing existing hard drive images, or importing new images from camera/memory cards. The new imports are copied to the LRCC "space", from where they are uploaded to the cloud, and they will only be deleted as necessary. So yes, even with that option unchecked, it's still possible for the amount of local hard drive space used by LRCC to increase at some points. I don't have that option checked either, but I can see that I still have some local originals from imports that were done months ago. This doesn't concern me at all as the drive itself is large with tons of free space, so from a performance perspective it's to my advantage if some originals are held locally when I choose to open them (I won't have to wait for the original to be downloaded).

A similar process exists on phones and tablets, and so far I haven't yet reached the point where I think that LRCC's "smart space management" has failed me.