Lightroom 3.3 Uses All System Hard Drive Space When Exporting - Even Though There is Plenty???

[Guest]

I'm having the problem as well.  I am a 30 year pro photographer, can write code, etc. etc. etc.  I know what I am doing.  What Lightroom 3.3 is doing upon export, from files on an external drive TO a file on an external drive with over 500 gigs on it, is eating up space on my desktop's hard drive as it exports.  I have the system profiler showing available disk space as I export.  I start out with 75 gigs on my system drive & export 300 raw files, againn from an external drive to an external drive.  I watch as my free disk space goes down from 75 gigs, to 50 megs, then I start getting warnings disk full.  Again I am not importing from or exporting to my system drive.  This is bizarre.  The main reason for using Lightroom, as a pro, is to deal with 10's of thousands of images on external drives quickly & efficiantly.  I won't even touch the folder issue, but, will mention that I have 10 years worth of jobs archived in 400+ main folders with 10-14 subfolders.  Can't access those as the "new" lightroom doesn't support folder structure.  Not sure what the "engineers" were thinking on either of these issues.  Bizzare.  Lightroom is basically unusable for large batches of images sorted into folders.

[dj_paige]

If you have Lightroom 3.3, you are in the wrong forum. This is the Lightroom Classic forum.

[Just Shoot Me]

I have branched your post to a new discussion, moved it from the LrC for to the Lr forum changed the title slightly.

[Guest]

It's not a memory issue.  It is a hard disk space issue.  Please change the title back, or to something that accurately states what the problem is.  Saying there isn't enough memory is a bonehead, amatuer mistake.  My problem is not that.

[Just Shoot Me]

I never said anything about memory and all I did was remove the RE: that is place before the title text when you Branch a post on this forum system.

[selondon]

What is the approx combined file size of those 300 RAWs?

I assume it has to have all those files locally in the Library (on the HD not the external) before it can perform the export operation.

[Guest]

Appreciate it Selondon.  Size of each file is 28 megs, times 300 = 8.4 gigs.  Still plenty of room w 75 gigs.  It's bizarre.  It runs down all my local, internal, drive space.  Then starts giving me disk full warnings.  When I quit Lightroom, a few minutes later & I'm back to 75 gigs.  I wonder if it is archiving something, or importing them to the internal drive.  Never had any problem like this before with Lightroom 5 (the old one).

[Rob_Cullen]

Deleted.

Thinking it was a Lr-Classic question.

[Guest]

Actually I think your point was relevant.  I have Photo Cache set to "5% or remaining disk space".  So that's weird.  And I have Store Copy of Originals... deselected.  Store Copy of Previews deselected as well.  And, the folder I have designated to accept these files is open.  It does put some images in there, god knows why, with the option deselected you would think it wouldn't?!?!?!?!  Nevertheless, I dump these images after every use & I'm only exporting 2-300 images at a time, still only 8.5 gigs if it were copying them.  That still leaves 65+- gigs filling up without explaination.  It would be great if someone from Adobe could explain this??????????????

[selondon]

The original files that are on the external drive that you want to export, I assumed you have already imported these in to Lightroom, and have synced to the Cloud previously?

I only ask I believe standard practice is to have 'Store a Copy of Originals' should be selected and pointing to the external where you want to store them.

So the two things don't add up, can you provide a screengrab of your preferences?

One last thing to ask is that this sounds like an initial import, where the files are imported and Lightroom creates a copy before uploading to the Cloud, thus taking up double the space. It isn't is it?