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1

"Insufficient disk space" error when migrating Lightroom Classic library

Explorer ,
Oct 29, 2017 Oct 29, 2017

I am attempting to migrate my Lightroom Classic library to Lightroom CC. I am getting the error about insufficient disk space. I have tried changing my storage location to a 2TB drive, but the migration tool still appears to  be looking for space on my internal drive even after making the change. Also, the error says I need 66GB  free, but macOS reports I have 70GB available. So I'm at an impasse.

I have researched a fair bit on the Adobe support articles and forums and have not found a solution. This thread linked below offers an "answer" but the steps provided do not resolve my issue.

Can a migration be performed using an external HD? 

Re: Library Migration needs too much Space?

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Expert , Oct 29, 2017 Oct 29, 2017

It appears that Lightroom CC does not take the purgeable space into account that Mac OS X tells you is available. This is quite a problem as it prevents it from doing it's job even though there really is enough space available. Read more about purgeable space here: Rocket Yard Guide: What Is Purgeable Space in macOS? | Other World Computing Blog.​ and here: When free space isn't free: Purgeable storage in macOS Sierra - Six Colors

You can see how much of the free space is actually "purgeable" sp

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Community Expert ,
Oct 29, 2017 Oct 29, 2017

You can't use an external for migration. This seems to be a big weakness in Adobe's design of this process. You can store local copies on an external but for the migration it still needs all this internal disk space. This leaves people with small internal SSD drives in the cold indeed. The only solution I have seen is to migrate the catalog in smaller pieces. Basically you export ew catalog files from Lightroom classic into several smaller catalogs taking care to in the end have everything and to migrate those one by one, overtime waiting until everything is uploaded before you do the next one.

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Explorer ,
Oct 29, 2017 Oct 29, 2017

Thanks Jao. I have since freed up the SSD so that there's over 90GB available according to macOS. However, I am still getting the same error, saying it needs 66 GB. How does Lightroom evaluate the disk's free space?

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Explorer ,
Oct 29, 2017 Oct 29, 2017

Update: I have since learned about macOS Sierra and its deceiving reporting of free space. macOS says my drive has 132 GB free, but 80 GB of it is "purgeable." There is apparently no way to force the system to purge, so my actual free disk space is 53 GB. Not enough to do the migration.

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Community Expert ,
Oct 29, 2017 Oct 29, 2017

It appears that Lightroom CC does not take the purgeable space into account that Mac OS X tells you is available. This is quite a problem as it prevents it from doing it's job even though there really is enough space available. Read more about purgeable space here: Rocket Yard Guide: What Is Purgeable Space in macOS? | Other World Computing Blog.​ and here: When free space isn't free: Purgeable storage in macOS Sierra - Six Colors

You can see how much of the free space is actually "purgeable" space that isn't really free if you do a get info on your hard drive.

I do not know how to solve this issue easily unfortunately.

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New Here ,
Jan 07, 2019 Jan 07, 2019
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This is probably due to APFS keeping "purgeable storage" around, and a bug in LR where it fails to access this perfectly usable space.

To hack around this, you can go into Terminal and do the following.

  1. $ df -h #shows 32G free 
  2. Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity iused               ifree %iused  Mounted on 
  3. /dev/disk1s1   932Gi  896Gi   32Gi    97%  812940 9223372036853962867    0%   / 
  4.  
  5. # this step takes a while -- monitor your disk space 
  6. $ dd if=/dev/zero of=zeros bs=9000 #and then hit CTRL-C once your disk is completely full 
  7. ^C17539950+0 records in 
  8. 17539949+0 records out 
  9. 350798980000 bytes transferred in 554.492292 secs (632648974 bytes/sec) 
  10.  
  11. $ rm zeros #delete the large temp file 
  12.  
  13. $ df -h #shows 328G free 
  14. Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity iused               ifree %iused  Mounted on 
  15. /dev/disk1s1   932Gi  600Gi  328Gi    65%  812842 9223372036853962965    0%   / 

Then retry your import. This worked for me.

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