Size of current LRC catalog?

[bruceb76700895]

I haven't used LRC for several months but updated through those months.  I just returned to LRC, making some imports to catch up.  I understand the catalog is larger now after the last few months of updates but I had no idea it would be 135mB and take a while to load (I can't get high speed internet where I live just yet).

That said, however, I wonder if there is a way to reduce the size by eliminating some of the folders in my catalog. 

This is the catalog as in LRC: label cat.jpg

This is the catalog in OneDrive where it is stored: cat2.jpg

The catalog looks quite different: cat3.jpg.  Is this correct?

Thanks for your time!

Bruce

[dj_paige]

What is the real problem here? Slowness? Running out of disk space on the drive? A catalog file of 135MB is not overly large and not the cause of any problems.

[bruceb76700895]

I felt the same way, as that's not a huge file size; but it seemed to take
an inordinate amount of time to load. Either that, or OneDrive is slow to
load, which I also doubt. Earlier LRC catalogs were much smaller. Looking
at the elements in the catalog itself don't seem much different than
earlier. So I'm wondering if the catalog components that loaded are
correct for the new catalog; and also can the catalog itself be
simplified. (I'll also check with my internet supplier to see if I'm still
on the highest download rate, but even there why would it take 45 minutes
to load 135mB?)

Thanks,


--
Bruce Bartrug
Nobleboro, Maine, USA
bbartrug@gmail.com

•The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but
because of those who look on and do nothing. - Albert Einstein
•In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence
of our friends. -Martin Luther King
•Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder
respectable, and give the appearance of solidity to pure wind. -Orson
Welles

[dj_paige]

I'll agree with the others, having your catalog in a OneDrive folder is not a good thing. There are many places where this causes problems. Its much more likely this is the problem rather than some issue regarding size of the catalog. A simple experiment of moving the catalog file to a non-OneDrive folder will determine if this is the cause or not.

[bruceb76700895]

Thank you, I wondered if that could be the difficulty. I'll use a folder
in my photo stream as I did before acquiring Win 11.

Thanks to all,


--
Bruce Bartrug
Nobleboro, Maine, USA
bbartrug@gmail.com

•The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but
because of those who look on and do nothing. - Albert Einstein
•In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence
of our friends. -Martin Luther King
•Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder
respectable, and give the appearance of solidity to pure wind. -Orson
Welles

[Conrad_C · Accepted solution]

There are potentially different sizes being discussed, with different importance:

The size of the Lightroom Classic catalog file (the one that has the filename extension .lrcat)

The size of the Lightroom Classic previews cache file (the one that has the filename extension .lrpreviews)

If the size of the catalog file is literally 135MB, that is tiny, and of no concern. Many of us have catalogs that are several GB in size. (A gigabyte, or GB, is 1000 megabytes or MB.)

Keep in mind that catalog loading time, even with a very large catalog, should not be an issue on a recent computer. It should be quick. But there is one thing about your installation that’s different: You have put the catalog folder on OneDrive. That means OneDrive is probably constantly syncing any changes to it with its copy on the cloud server. And that means, every time you do anything that changes the catalog database or the previews file, OneDrive will want to sync it to the cloud. This is sort of OK on a fast Internet connection, some people do it and it works most of the time (but is not recommended). But if you’re combining OneDrive sync with a slow Internet connection, and it’s going to keep trying to sync all of this data back and forth all the time, the demands it makes on your slow Internet connection might be an impractical way to store your catalog.

The size of the previews cache is not listed, it’s missing from the screen shots. But it can typically become many times the size of the catalog file. If we’re looking for a file that’s too large and causing delays, it could be the previews cache. Fortunately, the previews cache is expendable., so if its size is intolerably large, just delete it and Lightroom Classic will automatically start rebuilding it, so it will start out small again. You can also use the new option in Catalog Settings that limits how large the previews cache is allowed to be.

When Lightroom Classic is used normally, with a catalog folder on local storage (not relying on the Internet), the catalog folder (because it contains the previews cache) is performance-critical and best stored on the fastest local storage you have. But if it’s always having to wait to be cloud-synced over a slow connection, well, that is the opposite of ideal.

If the Internet connection is slow, it will be most practical and reliable to use Lightroom Classic as designed: Storing the catalog on a fast local volume, such as your computer’s internal storage, or if there isn’t room, on a fast external volume (over fast USB or Thunderbolt) like I do. Lightrom Classic was designed as a local application so has almost no performance optimizations for cloud-synced use (except for its own Lightroom cloud sync feature).

For context, Adobe has other services that are better optimized for cloud sync, such as Lightroom (the non-Classic, cloud-based one), and Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign cloud documents. The reason cloud documents work well is because when you make a change, they can sync only the changed bits — they don’t have to re-sync entire huge documents.

[GoldingD]

 (I can't get high speed internet where I live just yet).

Two of those screenshots show that you are auto sync to OneDrive. That will effect LrC performance when your Internet access sucks.

While one member thinks LrC and OneDrive are made in heaven, many if us think in Hell.

I blame this on Microsoft as they strong arm you into using an MS account when setting up Windows, and that by default forces OneDrive upon your user system library's, such as the location your catalog is in.

What is occurring is your LrC catalog is syncing to the cloud. And by that, I mean each and every edit you make causes a sync. This means the communication between your computer and the Cloud is busy busy busy. LrC does not like that. This will slow you down, this may rarely corrupt your catalog.

Recommend that you disassociate LrC from OneDrive. Or perhaps move that catalog to a different root level folder not connected to OneDrive. Make a new folder, name it something like MyPhtography, MyLightroom, GrumpyFart, anything other any of the user system folders