Lightroom catalog is taking up 80GB of storage

[beates19675468]

So I work with Lightroom everyday at my job and edit and export really high high resolution photos. After exporting the versions I need, I keep the catalog but delete the raws off my laptop after copying to google drive. 

The problem is, my Lightroom catalog previews are taking up 80GB of storage and it's really slowing down my computer! (it says the back ups are only taking 700MB). 

I need to keep my Lightroom catalog so that if I need to then I can redownload the raw files and link them to the catalog then make adjustments in Lightroom from the point I previously edited them to. 

Can anyone help me find a way to free up storage and to just understand this whole process please? I'm nervous I'll accidentally delete the catalog and lose the work!

[JohanElzenga]

What is taking up so much space is 'catalogname previews.lrdata'. You can simply trash this file. Lightroom will rebuild the previews if and when needed. Just one word of warning. Lightroom can only rebuild a preview if that image is online. So if you delete the raw files and then the previews, then the offline raw files will not have a preview until you place them online again. That means you cannot search your catalog to find a certain offline raw file.

[dj_paige]

I'm nervous I'll accidentally delete the catalog and lose the work!

Make regular and automateed backups of the catalog file (use the built-in function to do this in Lightrrom Classic). Store the catalog on a different disk, or in the cloud.

No need to delete the originals, put them on an external disk straight out of the camera. Export these high resolution versions to an external disk. All of your photos (original and exported) can live on an external disk so they don't take up space on your internal hard disk.