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ryanl48076779
ryanl48076779
Participating Frequently
July 12, 2017
Answered

Lightroom Catalog Previews.lrdata Using All Computers Memory/Storage...?

  • July 12, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 1588 views

I recently was notified by my MacBook Pro that it was almost full (storage). I was shocked as I store all my LR/Photos on an external hard drive from day one. After looking into it further, it appears that the largest memory consumer was "Lightroom Catalog Previews.lrdata" - using 83GB of data. I did some reading up and found that my preview settings were defaulted at a "higher quality" setting and therefore large files. I corrected the setting. I understand that will prevent for the future, but what can be done now to the existing file/folder to free up some storage? What exactly is this "folder" and can it be deleted? Any advice is appreciated - thank you!

Correct answer 99jon

Yes it can be deleted. LR will generate previews as required. You may need to scroll through a few gray thumbnails when looking at an old folder but it saves a lot of space.

1 reply

99jon
99jonCorrect answer
Legend
July 12, 2017

Yes it can be deleted. LR will generate previews as required. You may need to scroll through a few gray thumbnails when looking at an old folder but it saves a lot of space.

    nicholasm94325142
    nicholasm94325142
    Participant
    January 8, 2025

    On this topic, I am having the problem you had (many years ago), but slightly different. I have 4 external hard drives with photos on them, and am using a desktop MAC with a 500GB hard drive. My  Lr Catalog...Previews.lrdata is 385+ GB counting the associated files. Do you know if and how to move all of those files to an exteral drive and still have all my edit previews available to ?

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