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pinoguin
Known Participant
October 20, 2017
Answered

Lightroom CC migration requires too much disk space

  • October 20, 2017
  • 7 replies
  • 5073 views

I've got thousands of photos and raws around 3 drives in my pc. When I try to migrate to LR CC it's asking me 3tb of space to continue, but none of my disks has that amount of space. I can't even combine them because those were my backups...

What exactly is LR CC doing? was that 3tb it's asking for are duplicates of my photos and to be copied locally? Why can't it just reference those files like the old Lightroom?

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Victoria Bampton LR Queen

    Yes, it moves them into its own space while it uploads them to the cloud.

    Just to double check, it is the new cloud-native version 1.0 app that you intended to install? I only ask because lots of people have been accidentally installing that when they actually wanted the latest version of the folder-based Lightroom, which is now called Lightroom Classic.

    7 replies

    Blackbus76
    Blackbus76
    Participant
    October 25, 2017

    I had similar disk space issues. I worked round the problem by using Smart collections in Classic to break down my Catalog into a number of smaller collections based on date ranges. Then exported these smaller collections as catalogs one at a time and imported to CC using the catalog migration wizard. You can run this migration wizard multiple times for each collection.

    O
    originalmule
    Participating Frequently
    October 23, 2017

    figured it out. I made a copy of my library file before migration and moved saved it to an external hd. I now just copied it back from the external to my hd, and boom 324gb of free space. back to where i was a week ago.

    Whatever you do, do not migrate files to CC unless you're planning on just using CC and deleting all the local files you were using in Classic.

    O
    originalmule
    Participating Frequently
    October 23, 2017

    I have local storage set to zero...So nothing should be stored locally.

    O
    originalmule
    Participating Frequently
    October 23, 2017

    Theres zero files in CC, so i don't understand. I only want to use Classic and get my disc space back.

    J
    Community Expert
    Jao vdLCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 23, 2017

    It’s probably the local copy of the files it copied in order to upload them all. It appears Lightroom CC is very sluggish in deleting files it no longer need

    Sent from my iPhone

    O
    originalmule
    Participating Frequently
    October 23, 2017

    so i deleted everything that i migrated to CC, but i still only have 56gb of space left, before the migration it was about 300gb. I tried finding files regarding CC specifically and cant locate them. I'm tempted to move all files over to my external, delete the lightroom files and start over with bringing each folder back into lightroom classic.

    mike

    J
    Community Expert
    Jao vdLCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 23, 2017

    Space on your local disk? If you now open Lightroom CC it should delete all that

    Squidy666
    Squidy666
    Known Participant
    October 21, 2017

    I tried it as well, I have 2 4tb drives but my main drive is a 512gb SSD. It wants to copy all photos (800gb) to the 512gb and giving me the error. What ever happened to "import at current location" and then uploading them?

    It seems to mean that people who upgraded to SSD don't have the full functionality available to them?

    Also, if I'm using LightroomCC on the go is it going to try to download all files to my Macbook Pro as previews etc? Because that's also going to wipe out my storage

    J
    Community Expert
    Jao vdLCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 21, 2017

    What ever happened to "import at current location" and then uploading them?

    For whatever reason they did not implement this in Lightroom CC. You could first set your local storage folder to one of your externals before migrating.

    It seems to mean that people who upgraded to SSD don't have the full functionality available to them?

    It really is mostly about the size of your original catalog. Most laptops that people use have 512 GB or so as an internal drive nowadays. I also guess that the majority of Lightroom catalogs out there only has a few thousand images in it.

    Also, if I'm using LightroomCC on the go is it going to try to download all files to my Macbook Pro as previews etc? Because that's also going to wipe out my storage

    It is quite efficient at that stage. There is a setting in Lightroom CC that sets how much of the storage it can maximally use. It will then only download what it needs and throw away from local storage if it no longer needs an image right away.

    Victoria Bampton LR Queen
    Community Expert
    Victoria Bampton LR QueenCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    October 20, 2017

    Yes, it moves them into its own space while it uploads them to the cloud.

    Just to double check, it is the new cloud-native version 1.0 app that you intended to install? I only ask because lots of people have been accidentally installing that when they actually wanted the latest version of the folder-based Lightroom, which is now called Lightroom Classic.

    Victoria - The Lightroom Queen
    P
    pinoguinAuthor
    Known Participant
    October 21, 2017

    But why must it do that... I simply have no space left..

    @ cloud native: yes, I want to try both

    J
    Community Expert
    Jao vdLCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 21, 2017

    They copy all images at the same time and THEN upload to the servers?  That's really inefficient and taxing on the users machine, not to mention uses a ridiculous amount of drive space to handle.  I could see maybe doing 3 or 5 files at a time to a temp folder, but many users of Lightroom have been using backup drives as normal laptops only have 500GB to 1TB drives in them normally.  Adobe needs to sort this out.  I'm not going to buy yet another backup drive to use as a temp directory just so I can get files into Adobe's cloud.


    They copy all images at the same time and THEN upload to the servers?  That's really inefficient and taxing on the users machine, not to mention uses a ridiculous amount of drive space to handle.

    I don't know what they were thinking but I would guess that the rationale is that they need the images to be available for upload all the time and uploads can take a long time so copying everything into local storage is a safeguard against the images going offline before they are uploaded. They might also figure that people with large catalogs are not going to want to migrate their catalogs to Lightroom CC anyway and that this product is not for people with long Lightroom histories that shoot large amounts of images on DSLRs. Again, I have no clue on Adobe's rationale here - just guessing.

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