P: Automatically Discard 1:1 Previews: Would like additional options beyond 30 days

[RussGifford]

I would like to see a few addtional options on when to discard the 1:1 preview data, such as 90 or 120 days.

I have a very large LR Catalog (1.85+ million images) which is currently housed on a 15 TB U.2 SSD locally on my desktop. Right now I have about 4 TB of free space on that drive but am looking ahead to when I will run out of disk space on that drive and options are limited on for getting a larger SSD.

In my particular case I mainly touch photos throughout the school year, for various newspapers and/or schools, but once the school year is over I don't go back to those photos very often, and usually would only be working on a single or smaller number of photos which would minimize the pain to rebuild them if I did go back to them.

Alternatively, if there is a way that I can identify the "age" of the preview files I would not be opposed to a tool to do that, or the information that would allow me to create a script to remove files that were beyond a year old (for example.)

[DClark064]

LR Classic offers the options to delete 1:1 Previews based on their age.  The maximum is 30 days.  I want to use a larger time period.  Does anyone have suggestions for how to manage deletion of previews based on other time periods than what is offered by LR?

[Rob_Cullen]

No other suggestions, sorry.

You would be aware I presume that you could set the option to "Never", and then 'Discard' the 1:1 previews for selected photos (MENU: Library > Discard 1:1 Previews...) when no longer desired.

[DClark064]

Thanks Rob.

I am aware of that option, but I am managing a few hundred thousand images so I am seeking a more efficient method. 

[Conrad_C]

Are you intending for the time periods to be based on when the images were last edited? If so, see if something like this might do it: Create a Smart Collection that displays images where the Edit Date has criteria that you choose. My example below uses an arbitrary date of “not in the last 17 days” meaning all files that were edited more than 17 days ago. You would then choose Edit > Select All, then Library > Previews > Discard 1:1 Previews. All of that would take only a few seconds.

You could customize that by setting the Edit Date criterion to be between a specific date range (an “is after” date rule combined with an “is before” date rule), an “is in the last week” rule, or whatever you want.

And if you are good at writing scripts, you could convert those three steps into a script.

[DClark064]

Conrad, Thanks for the suggestion.  That should work well. I'll give it a try.

[RussGifford]

I didn't see this when I searched, but this might be acceptable to me as well, I will look into this: https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/managing-1-1-previews/td-p/13892116