Reclaiming space - huge backup folder - small primary folder!

[alanb2]

Hi,

Having realised that I need to do some housekeeping, I've reclaimed about 50% of the space on my main hard drive. Unfortunately the space consumed on my backup drive appears to have not reduced!

I'm clearly missing something very basic here - but can't work out why a permanent delete "Delete from disk" doesn't appear to reduce the space consumed on the backup drive...

All guidance welcomed...

Alan

[JP Hess]

It will be necessary for you to provide a lot more information. But from what you have indicated, if you used Lightroom to delete from your main hard drive, that would account for recovering the hard drive space there. Lightroom will not manage anything on your backup hard drive. If you have used Lightroom to automatically create a backup as you have downloaded your images that is good. But that is as far as Lightroom will go. It doesn't do any more management of the backup files.

[alanb2]

Ah, poor assumption on my part then... I *assumed* that as I'd configured Lightroom to automatically create a backup copy on transfer, then this would be deleted if I removed the main image. Rule #1: Assume nothing!

In that case, recommendations for removing unwanted files on the backup drive are very welcome!

[JP Hess · Accepted solution]

The only file that Lightroom opens and manages is the catalog. So all of those backup images are independent from Lightroom. It will be your responsibility to decide how you are going to manage those. That is why I don't use that option to create backups using Lightroom. But that is my personal choice. I have software that backs up my library of images on a weekly basis. If I delete images during the week then the next backup will reflect that.

[alanb2]

Thanks - all is clear! Reckon I need to get another drive, and migrate my master files to it, and then move to a backup regime as you have,