Managing lack of storage space on machine running Lightroom

[Jordan26437343lemp]

First of all, please understand that other than photography (which is obviously both technology and art), my tech skills are knowledge are actually pretty minimal. With that out of the way, my problem is that my laptop is just about completely out of space. I used the Windows storage tool to see where this space was being used, and not surprisinlgy the Pictures folder was over half. If not for Lightroom, I would just back those pictures up to an external hard drive and delete them from my machine, but the problem is that I know that Lightroom is dependant on the original files being accessible to it. I've even moved some images in the past and that alone removed them from Lightroom, because I guess the path was no longer the same. 

I would hate to essentially lose those images from my Catalog and therefore the ability to refer back to them in the future and even apply future edits to them. But, again, my laptop is essentially useless if it's out of space. 

How do you think I should handle this? Thank you!

[GoldingD]

Some links:

• How do I move only my photos to another hard drive, leaving the catalog where it is? | The Lightroom...
• How To Move Your Lightroom Photos To Another Drive | YouTube Video| Terry White
• How do I find and move or rename my catalog?| The Lightroom Queen
• Why Does Lightroom Classic Take Up So Much Space On My Hard Drive? | Part 1 | Mastering Lightroom
• Why Does Lightroom Classic Take Up So Much Space On My Hard Drive? | Part 1 | Mastering Lightroom
• Want to improve Adobe Lightroom Classic performance? Try some of these suggestions. |Optimize LrC | ...
• Lightroom Classic Find Moved or Missing Files and Folders | Ian Lyons
• You're Probably Not Backing Up All of Your Lightroom Classic Data | Fstoppers.

Oh, and some cautions:

• Do not locate your working catalog on a Network Share, be that an actual Server, a NAS, or the Cloud. Adobe does not support that and the catalog will preform poorly and eventually fail. The catalog must be on a local hard drive, internal or external. LrC can take advantage of having the catalog on your fastest hard drive. A network share is fine for a backup, but not for the working catalog.
• Avoid locating photos on a Network Share be that an actual Server, a NAS, or the Cloud, Adobe does support that at least in part, but it looks like that eventually fails. Photos can happily exist on any hard drive including external with little or no impact upon LrC performance. A Network Share is fine for backup location.
• Avoid any automatic sync of the catalog or photos to OneDrive. While strictly speaking that is not placing the working catalog on the Cloud, the automatic syncing slows LrC down, and on a bad Internet day, can fail even corrupt.
• Whatever hard drive your catalog is on, make sure it does not run out of space. Adobe recommends at least 20% free. Many state more like at least 25% free. Go below that and LrC performance degrades.
• Do not forget to backup your photos. The backup feature when you close LrC only backups the catalog (mostly)

[Jordan26437343lemp]

Just a quick follow-up to my initial question. All of these, if I'm not mistaken, seem to pertain to an external drive. Which, to be fair, is what I asked about. But what about if I wanted to transfer/upload them to Dropbox instead. Do you have any links pertaning to that specific scenario? Thanks again. 

[Ricky336]

As @GoldingD said:

• Avoid locating photos on a Network Share be that an actual Server, a NAS, or the Cloud, Adobe does support that at least in part, but it looks like that eventually fails. Photos can happily exist on any hard drive including external with little or no impact upon LrC performance. A Network Share is fine for backup location.

Dropbox would be fine as a backup location, but not a working location. Therefore, I would get an external drive and store your photos on that, and link it to your catalogue. If you don't always want the external drive attached to your computer, then you can use 'Smart Previews':

How to use Smart Previews to view and edit photos in Photoshop Lightroom Classic

And:

Can I store photos in Dropbox or iCloud that I wil... - Adobe Community - 13023172

[dj_paige]

But what about if I wanted to transfer/upload them to Dropbox instead. Do you have any links pertaning to that specific scenario? Thanks again. 

By @Jordan26437343lemp

Repeating for emphasis and to add my agreement to the other posts: Do not put photos in a cloud drive. Which has already been explained to you by @GoldingD .

[Jordan26437343lemp]

Just for the record, I saw @GoldingD's comment about not using "Network Share." But I didn't know that Dropbox = Network Share. To me, that's called "cloud storage" or "online storage." Hey, I said right at the top of my original post that I'm really not a tech guy. 

Okay, if that's what it is. Truth be told, from a monetary perspective, Dropbox would probably be more efficient because I already have 2TB of space there for other purposes. But if that's not going to work properly I guess it's a moot point. Thanks. 

[Ricky336]

Just for the record, I saw @GoldingD's comment about not using "Network Share." But I didn't know that Dropbox = Network Share. To me, that's called "cloud storage" or "online storage." Hey, I said right at the top of my original post that I'm really not a tech guy. 

By @Jordan26437343lemp

The point is that NAS is local but needs an internet connection, while cloud storage is on remote servers somewhere in the world but still requires the internet. So, if you want to use Lightroom, where the original pics are stored, either on NAS or the cloud, you need the internet. This can be slow as it needs to upload/download through the net.

If the pics are stored locally - e.g. external HDD/SSD - then the connection is obviously much faster as it is more direct. That's why it is recommended to store your original files on an SSD/HDD. Lightroom Classic is therefore more efficient.

Lightroom and not Lightroom Classic is designed more for the cloud!

But, you could use Smart Previews, so read about this:

How to use Smart Previews to view and edit photos in Photoshop Lightroom Classic

[Jordan26437343lemp]

Okay, it seems like I might have a much greater problem on my hands. It might be too late for this -- almost all of my images (and presets) are missing! Maybe it's just coincidence, but I clicked on my Lighroom Classic icon as usual, and some kind of box popped up about saving the catelog and how it would not be compatible with older versions of Lightroom, something like that (in retrospect, I seriously wish I screenshoted this). But the bottom line is that when Lightroom loaded, it was like it was brand new installation! It gave me little introductory tour as if I was using it for the first time, etc.

The good news for me, if you want to call it that, is that ALL of these files ARE still on my machine. In fact, I'm still maxed out on space (so right now I'm still maxed out on space AND I can't access any of these images in Lightroom, so kind of the worst of both worlds). So it's like the 2024 folder is still there, but that entire folder is missing from my Catelog.

No matter what, it's not like the images are totally gone because, again, they're still on my hard drive. And many of them were never worked on in the first place, but some of them were, and I would hate to lose all of those edits. The question is therefore, is there any way to restore Lightroom to its status before this happened so that I can THEN finally complete the process of moving them to an external drive while still preserving them?

By the way, if I should just start an entirely new thread for this instead, please let me know. Admittedly the topic has changed dramatically.