P: Import stuck on checking free space on disk

[adamDr]

When trying to import photos from my SD card Lightroom CC is stuck at the phase "Checking free space on disk". The local storage is on my LAN NAS (FreeNAS) with more than enough free space. Also local hard drive is full of free space. Windows can see the correct free space on both NAS and local drive.
Import of the same files from the same SD card to Lightroom 6.0 is working without any problems.
Update: after several minutes the import continued but was very slow.

Working with LR CC is becoming unacceptable, if those issues are not fixed in a month I'm giving up on the subscription. It's not worth it. I lose less time with moving my files via USB disk and sharing on Google Photos rather than relying on Adobe Cloud...

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Install 4.0 which was released today. It should fix your issue. 

[basb30586893]

Alright it's not showing up yet in Creative cloud... but i'll wait until it does. Thanks Rik. 

[adamDr]

@Rikk  thanks for coming back to it (although 2 years later 😉 I'll install it, luckily, I was not facing this issue anymore since a while. I hope that overall performance will be dramatically improved though.

[adamDr]

@Rikk

Wow, that is what I've been waiting for!

Improved user interface (e.g. albums box) and most importantly finally the performance is on par with Lightroom Classic! Many thanks! Now please add the print module and I can finally decommission the Classic 6.0 version 🙂 

[benrubin]

@Rikk I have been using the latest version of Lightroom CC (4.1) with great success, but today I just started having this same issue when adding items to my library.

Here's what's happening:

When adding photos to the library, I select the images to import, click "Review for Import." Here, it can take 20 minutes or longer for big folders (~6,000 items), but eventually it shows me the images for review, and I check "Select All" and click "Add Photos." After that, I see this message on the upper right corner of the screen:  "Checking free space on disk". This message stays up for ages -- 30-40 minutes, sometimes much longer -- before the images finally start getting added to the library. 

This slow performance just started; I've been doing a series of large imports (4-6,000 items) previously that had worked fine. Since the problem started, I've tried testing with much smaller imports (10 images). The review / select process is much faster (instantaneous instead of 20+ minutes), but then it gets stuck Checking free space on disk for ages. 

My setup: 

• iMac with 32 GB RAM
• Mac OS Big Sur 11.2
• Lightroom CC 4.1
• 72GB free space available on system drive
• 1.6 TB free space available on external USB3 drive
• My library contains just over 192,000 items, a mix of RAW, jpg, heic, png, etc., along with videos in various formats
• I store a copy of my originals on a 4GB external APFS-formatted USB3 hard drive (local, not a NAS). 

Are there any known issues using APFS formatted external drives to store originals? 

Or have I hit some threshold where my library has grown too large? It now contains over 192,000 items which take up about 1.7 TB on Lightroom's cloud storage (and on my external drive).

Do you have any workarounds or advice? I'm happy to try further testing or troubleshooting the problem. I appreciate your help with this!

-- br

[benrubin]

Update:

After about an hour of seeing the Checking free space on disk message, I just got this for the first time:

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Have you restarted your computer?

Have you reset preferences?

Reset Procedure:

1. Close Lightroom.

2. Hold down [Alt/Opt]+[Shift] while restarting Lightroom.

3. Overwrite the Preferences when prompted by the dialog.

4. Close Lightroom.

5. Restart Lightroom.

[benrubin]

Thanks @Deleted User --

Thank you for your advice. In brief, after I reset the LR preferences, the problem was gone; I imported several folders of photos, and import worked like a dream. 

But then as soon as I restored my "Storage location for originals" preference back to my external USB drive, the Checking free space on disk issue once again stopped any further imports.

Here are a few additional pieces of information that might point toward the cause of the problem:

After I reset LR's preferences and imports were working again, I noticed in Preferences / Local Storage that the "Available space on Logoplex" showed 62 GB available ("Logoplex" is my internal system drive). "Required Space" showed 25GB, I think, and "Photo Cache" was 23 GB. 

But then when I restored "Storage location for originals" preference to my external USB drive and imports stopped working, I saw that, "Available space on Logoplex" just shows "CALCULATING..." forever, while "Required Space" and "Photo Cache" show 0. Note that this is what I've been seeing in my Preferences for the past few days of problems, and it seems like it could be related to the "Checking for free space" message I get when trying to import. 

In case its relevant, note that I have not yet check the box for "Store a copy of all originals at the specified location," although that is what I will eventually need to do. The box had previously been checked, and there are currently nearly 200,000 items / 2TB in that folder. 

Finally, you asked:

Have you restarted your computer?

Yes, many times, and I've been closing background stuff (i.e. DropBox etc.) and all other apps before running LR.

So it seems like the problem is in some way related to storing my original files on an external drive. 

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Can you give me additional details on the EHD?
Total Space:

Total Free Space:

Format: 
How does it connect (USB port? Hub? Other)

[benrubin]

Hi @Deleted User,

I appreciate your help getting this solved! Per your questions, here's the info on the external hard drive:

• Total Space:  4 TB
• Total Free Space:  1.66 TB
• Format: APFS
• The drive is connected via USB3 cable directly to USB port on iMac (no hub)

Note that the external drive already contains copies of all LR originals (approx. 1.7 TB).

Other technical info:

• iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)
• 32 GB RAM
• System drive:  500 GB SSD (75 GB free)
• Mac OS Big Sur 11.2
• Lightroom CC 4.1
• My library contains just over 205,000 items

Drive details from system report:

Bucket:
  Free: 1.66 TB (1,662,273,335,296 bytes)
  Capacity: 4 TB (4,000,577,273,856 bytes)
  Mount Point: /Volumes/Bucket
  File System: APFS
  Writable: Yes
  Ignore Ownership: Yes
  BSD Name: disk7s1
  Volume UUID: 1FF82DC7-9D62-4481-ABEE-41FF24EE4B57
      Physical Drive:
      Device Name: USB
      Media Name: AppleAPFSMedia
      Protocol: USB
      Internal: No
      Partition Map Type: Unknown

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

I'd like to collect a diagnostic log from you.

Restart Lightroom. 

As soon as you see the message appear

For LrDesktop

• Go to Preferences
• Account Section
• Hold down the [Opt/Alt] key to make [Diagnostic Log] button appear

When you have the log message me here for instructions.

[benrubin]

Will do, but I'm not clear about your instructions:

As soon as you see the message appear

For LrDesktop

What message is that? Where would I look for that message?

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

After you are stuck on the Calculating for a while.

[benrubin]

Ah, got it. Will do!

[benrubin]

OK, I have the log file -- let me know how to get it to you?

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

I've emailed you with instructions

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Exact issue and versions but with iMac Pro with 258GB free on SSD system drive, 64 GB RAM, 6.8 TB Free on external APFS USB3 local drive, only 99,000 items in library..

[benrubin]

Hello Rikk -- any updates from the engineering staff since sending my logfiles?

I just saw the new post from @merc4a2 above, and I wonder if the ext. drive's APFS format could be a factor?

[Julie Kmoch]

Sorry for the delay. The logs have unfortunately not captured what's going wrong, but I'm going to order some bigger drives for the team to try and replicate here.

For those of you wrestling with this:
- Did it work OK at one point? Put another way, was there a release where suddenly the app tipped over at these points, or did it gradually get worse?

- Do you see a spinning beach ball cursor while it's struggling to draw the Preferences > Local storage panel with the drive plugged in?

Also, how long does it take for Finder to calculate the size of your external drive right after plugging it in?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Well over two years since this was posted and still not fixed. Why do I pay a subscription for software with problems that are never fixed?

I am trying to import a single photo and I have been waiting 15 minutes for Lightroom to finish "Checking free space on disk"

[Julie Kmoch]

snaotheus, how full is your hard drive? I am wondering if Lightroom is trying to free up space from its local cache in order to complete the import.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Yesterday I was using a different computer with a smaller SSD, but I frequently encounter the same problem on my Lenovo with a 2TB internal SSD that is about half full.

When this happens (about once a week), I usually have enough time to launch Luminar, import, edit, and export one or two photos before while I wait for Lightroom to be ready to actually import.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Greetings,

Updates to the Adobe Photography Products were released on June 13. The update contains a fix for this issue.  Please download and the latest version of your application via the Adobe Creative Cloud Application or your respective device app store.

If you do not see the update (Mac and Win) you can refresh your Creative Cloud App with the keyboard shortcut [Ctrl/Cmd]+[Alt/Opt]+[ R ]. 

Note: App store availability can take several days for the update to appear and be available. 

Thank you for your patience.

[ZachJW]

I was having the same issue.  I updated to the new version today, and still had the issue.  However, I went into settings->local storage, and re-selected the location for my local originals - the same location as was previously listed.  This apparently forced the storage subsystem in Adobe Lightroom to refresh, and now I have been able to import photos with no issues.

[kentarnold75]

This issue is back, years later.  I'm on an updated Mac, running LR (cloud) version 7.5.  Same symptoms:  wait several minutes or effectively forever for 15 MB of JPEG images to load from local storage to LR, though both local storage and Adobe cloud storage offer > 1 TB.  What is the cure?