Removing deleted photos from hard drive in Lightroom, not Lightroom Classic

[Jonah26767428r5ir]

I'm frustrated by the fact that after I delete photos from Lightroom it doesn't appear to delete those files from my hard drive. All of the faqs on this online point to Lightroom Classic to do this. I don't understand why Lightroom Classic would have this functionality but Lightroom doesn't. Can someone clarify what I'm doing wrong?

Windows 11 - Lightroom 6.5

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

The short answer is it is likely there is nothing to delete...

Lightroom Desktop adds your images to the catalog and then syncs them to the cloud. After this, the files are then purged from your local drive as time and system resources allow. Unless you've specifically marked a folder as "Store Locally, there are likely only light-weight previews residing on your machine. So, when you delete an item from your catalog, it goes into a special place called "Deleted", where it is held for 60 days and then purged or can be purged, by you manually.  In any case, the photo, whether in "Deleted" or hard purged by you, is not really a large original but rather a collection of low-resolution previews.  

Unless you've marked large numbers of folders "Store Locally", there is no significant space to really recover.

[Jonah26767428r5ir]

Thank you for your quick reply! When I'm looking in the folder on the hard drive, as shown in the screenshot, those files are still remaining even though I've removed them from deleted photos in Lightroom. I want to be clear that I'm not using Classic.  

[Jonah26767428r5ir]

I move my files to my SD card to the hard drive because the images won't show up in add photos unless I do that. I don't know if that's a factor or not.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

There is no context for this folder. You need to supply more information about the full path of this folder. 

[Jonah26767428r5ir]

The path is f:\Jonah-Personal\a7rIII\selects\2023\10831004 it's a folder on an internal hard drive which is where I added the photos from. Is that what you are asking? These Screenshots compare how it looks in the folder vs how it looks in lightroom. 

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Those 'folders' have nothing to do with one another.  At one time, one may have been the reference folder for your Add Photos, but once those photos are in the cloud, it is no longer needed. 

One screenshot shows a folder full of files on a drive.

The other screenshot shows a date-based collection of files in your Cloud account. 

As a test, if you rename the folder on your drive using Windows Explorer, you will see that Lightroom Desktop doesn't lose the pictures. That is your indicator that, unless you have another compelling reason, those files are discardable - based upon your backup tolerance 😉.

If you import a file (Add) to Lightroom Desktop and sync completes, it is no longer needed in its original location, but that is up to you to manage - not Lightroom. 

[Jonah26767428r5ir]

I understand, thank you. I was hoping that it would be like Lightroom Classic where I could select delete from disk when I deleted photos, which helped me to both clear disk space and keep backups of selects. Thank you for your help.