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davidm30427738
davidm30427738
Participating Frequently
June 8, 2022
Question

C Drive Memory Issue after changing External Drive letters

  • June 8, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 1214 views

Hello

After encountering the issue whereby Lighroom would mix up my external hard drives for one time to many, I decided to fix the problem permanently by changing the letters in my drives to O and above. 

So I did this (changed my work drive to Z, personal to O) and very frustratingly I can't remember what I did next for solving the issues born from the intial mixing up... I'm pretty sure I mostly used re-importation... with occassional use of the Find Missing Folder option... (sorry I know that's not very unhelpful) 

My work drive got sorted issue free and then I moved onto my personal drive, which was in the process of creating/finding previews etc (I think this only happens during re-importation rather than Find Missing Folder?) and halfway through the process I started getting notifications that my C-Drive was running low on memory... and by the time everything was done, I went from having over 100GB of free space on my 475GB SSD C-Drive to less than 1GB. Prior to the aforementioned external drive mix-up issue both external drives were fully integrated with Lightroom and had no new content put into them before or after my changing the drive letters/reimporting/finding missing folders. Also, since all this happened my C-Drive space seems to be fluctuating, going up and down to up again with no clear reason. 

Any ideas? Very frustrating as I thought I had finally nailed a very annoying problem only to have created a new one that is much harder to solve. 

Thank You Everyone

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3 replies

GoldingD
GoldingD
Legend
June 11, 2022

 

Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom Classic
Library Path: C:\Users\david\Pictures\Lightroom\Lightroom Catalog-v10-v11.lrcat
Settings Folder: C:\Users\david\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom

 

So your catalog, and as such, the library previews are on your C drive.

The Application folder is on C by default, and the settings folder on C by default, those two are not of concern, and not worth the trouble pf changing.

 

Returning to the catalog location. LrC can take advantage of hard drive speed, by placing the catalog on your fastest hard drive (think SSD), the Camera RAW CACHE can also benefit from hard drive speed. The locations for photos does not matter in terms of hard drive speed. Note that Library previews must be on the same drive as the catalog.

 

Now, that is IF your fastest hard drive has space available. 

 

That all being said, if you have drive space issues on a SSD C drive, then perhaps the catalog should be moved to another drive. Note that you need to have at least 25% free space on the hard drive containing the catalog, or performance will degreat.

 

Another concern is the Camera RAW CACHE, yes that should get purged upon closure, but if hard drive space is at a premium on C, perhaps relocate that. Incidentally, I see you have Windows, the Camera RAW CACHE and the Windows paging file, if both on drive C, will compete for read/wright threads. You can move the paging file, but it is easier to move the CACHE.

Rob_Cullen
Community Expert
Rob_CullenCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 9, 2022

"I mostly used re-importation..."

Which was the totally wrong thing to do!

Relinking the Catalog to the new drive letter does NOT involve re-importing in any way.

This quote is from the Article by the Lightroom Queen which describes in Step#4 how to relink folder location to the changed drive letter (without Importing!)

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-photos-missing-fix/

"...right-click on the parent folder (rather than the individual subfolders) and select Find Missing Folder from the context-sensitive menu, then navigate to the new location of that parent folder. As long as the names and structure of the subfolders haven’t changed, all of the subfolders are fixed at the same time."

 

Having now re-imported images you have probably 'Copied' all the files and so filled up C-Drive. You may now have a real mess to clean up and we would need more information about the current locations of your image files and file system, BEFORE you do anything else..

 

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.0, Photoshop 27.0, ACR 18.0, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0 .
    davidm30427738
    davidm30427738Author
    Participating Frequently
    June 9, 2022

    Hi Rob

    Damn, I see. I think the reason I had to use some re-importation was because some of the folders on my drives had just disappeared entirely, leaving me no choice. What you said seems to be the most likely scenario I think, so perhaps the folders that I had to re-import have created doubles. 

    The majority of my Lightroom image files are located on my two external hard drives, with some on the laptop itself and I think as of now all images from both my work and personal external hard drives have Smart Previews of 1:1, 1920x size and of medium quality... something which I think wasn't the case before my mess up, rather, I think it was mostly my work images that had Smart Previews built rarther than everything on my personal drive. 

    I have noticed something which may help though. Lightroom says I have 22,054 images in total (desktop + both hard drives) but when I checked the properties of my Previews.lrdata, it says the it contains 30,062 files in total.... might this be an indication of copied files? I have attached screenshots of my descriptions. 



    Rob_Cullen
    Community Expert
    Rob_CullenCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 10, 2022

    I had to use some re-importation was because some of the folders on my drives had just disappeared entirely, leaving me no choice.

    Possibly you opened an old catalog that did not contain those folders.

    If you used the [Copy] option when you re-imported then you now have two versions of those imported images in your system, and LrC will only be referencing one version that is in the new import location (the files in the source location could be deleted with care!).

    I notice you still have older {Lightroom Catalog.lrcat} and {Lightroom Catalog-v10.lrcat} in the folder with {Lightroom Catalog-v10-v11.lrcat}.

     

    both my work and personal external hard drives have Smart Previews of 1:1,

    Why? If you work with both external drives attached- you do not need smart previews at all. 1:1 Previews will be quite satisfactory- and you can set preferences to delete 1:1s after a set time (eg. 30 days)- thus keeping the preview folder smaller.

    If you work with the drives not connected, then, yes, you need SPs.

     

    my Previews.lrdata, it says the it contains 30,062 files in total...

    Ignore! Previews.lrdata is a constantly changing cache that does not reflect the image count. It merely provides alll the views (thumbnails, 1:1, etc) that you see on screen. And it may still have old data that has not updated with your recent imports.

     

     

    Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.0, Photoshop 27.0, ACR 18.0, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0 .
      GoldingD
      GoldingD
      Legend
      June 9, 2022

      Please post your System Information as Lightroom Classic (LrC) reports it. In LrC click on Help, then System Info, then Copy. Paste that information into a reply. Please present all information from first line down to and including Plug-in Info. Info after Plug-in info can be cut as that is just so much dead space to us non-Techs.

      davidm30427738
      davidm30427738Author
      Participating Frequently
      June 9, 2022

      Hello GoldingD

      Thank you for replying. Here is my System Information, as requested.

      Lightroom Classic version: 11.3.1 [ 202204181225-f90ebff5 ]
      License: Creative Cloud
      Language setting: en
      Operating system: Windows 10 - Home Premium Edition
      Version: 10.0.22000
      Application architecture: x64
      System architecture: x64
      Logical processor count: 8
      Processor speed: 2.2GHz
      SqLite Version: 3.36.0
      Built-in memory: 14249.6 MB
      Real memory available to Lightroom: 14249.6 MB
      Real memory used by Lightroom: 1135.9 MB (7.9%)
      Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 1254.8 MB
      GDI objects count: 617
      USER objects count: 2044
      Process handles count: 3046
      Memory cache size: 522.9MB
      Internal Camera Raw version: 14.3 [ 1072 ]
      Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 5
      Camera Raw SIMD optimization: SSE2,AVX,AVX2
      Camera Raw virtual memory: 93MB / 7124MB (1%)
      Camera Raw real memory: 94MB / 14249MB (0%)
      System DPI setting: 120 DPI
      Desktop composition enabled: Yes
      Displays: 1) 1920x1080
      Input types: Multitouch: No, Integrated touch: No, Integrated pen: Yes, External touch: No, External pen: No, Keyboard: Yes

      Graphics Processor Info:
      DirectX: AMD Radeon(TM) RX Vega 10 Graphics (30.0.13023.4001)

       

      Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom Classic
      Library Path: C:\Users\david\Pictures\Lightroom\Lightroom Catalog-v10-v11.lrcat
      Settings Folder: C:\Users\david\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom

      Installed Plugins:
      1) AdobeStock
      2) Facebook
      3) Flickr
      4) Nikon Tether Plugin

      Config.lua flags: None

      Adapter #1: Vendor : 1002
      Device : 15d8
      Subsystem : 8615103c
      Revision : c1
      Video Memory : 2033
      Adapter #2: Vendor : 1414
      Device : 8c
      Subsystem : 0
      Revision : 0
      Video Memory : 0
      AudioDeviceIOBlockSize: 1024
      AudioDeviceName: $$$/dvaaudiodevice/SystemDefaultAndEffectiveDeviceName=System Default - Speaker/Headphone (Realtek(R) Audio)#{comment}DVAAU-4201250: Open the audio hardware preferences page.
      AudioDeviceNumberOfChannels: 2
      AudioDeviceSampleRate: 48000
      Build: Uninitialized
      Direct2DEnabled: false

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