Local originals not in the specified location, maybe cause for performance problems?

[Eurekaad]

This post dissapeared for some reason, blocked?  Here it is again with some info taken out.

I have a Windows 10 laptop with Lightroom (CC) installed.  I've imported about 20,000 photos and they have all uploaded to the cloud.  In Edit > Preferences > Local storage I checked the "Store a copy of all originals at the specified location".   I did not check the "Store a copy of all Smart previews on C:"  I set the cache size to 50% of free space.  It shows about 250Gb required space.  I did all this at least three months ago.  Cloud storage says "Synced and backed up" and shows about 219Gb used.

1) I want to backup my originals and other information (catalog?) to an external drive.  When I look at the "Storage location for originals:" and click the Browse button it opens a folder at the specified location: "C:\Users\[MyName]\AppData\Local\Adobe\Lightroom CC\Data".  But if I open Windows File Explorer and browse to that location there is no Lightroom CC folder.  (I have "Show hidden folders" and "Show system files" turned on in File Explorer.)  If I try to find it by copying and pasting the path from Lightroom to File Explorer I get an error saying it can't find it.  After a lot of looking I think I found it in C:\Users\[MyName]\AppData\Local\Packages\  ....   \LocalCache\Local\Adobe\Lightroom CC .  (I think this is the part that caused my post to be removed previously.  Sombody didn't like a folder name.)  The size of the folder matches the size shown in Lightroom Preferences; 250Gb.  Is this path confusion something caused by Windows 10 voodoo?  Is Adobe intentionally hiding the location?  It does not give me a good feeling about knowing where my stuff is all the time for backup purposes.

2) Will I get any performance improvement by moving the originals location to somewhere with a shorter path?  Assuming it will really move the photos.

3)  Will I get better performance if I turn on "Store a copy of all Smart previews on C:" even though I have the originals local?

4)  When I am in Lightroom scrolling through the photos in Detail view using the track pad it will stall for awhile and usually skip photos, this seems to be worse with raw photos.  If I scroll to a video it will stop scrolling completely with the track pad.  The arrow buttons and mouse wheel work ok.  I don't have a problem with the track pad in any other situation, only Lightroom.  Editing is responsive and quick enough but just browsing through the photos is a pain.

Thanks for your help.

[Jao vdL]

1) no the default location is just rather complex as it is a subfolder in the main structure. I don't think they try to hide it. That said, it should be in the first location you found by clicking the button, so something appears to be awry in your installation. The second location is where images are cached. It is almost as if they haven't been copied over yet to the local storage. Do you have "Store a copy of all originals at the specified location" turned on? If not, the folder will usually only have a few items in them and the button next to storage locations will not go to the actual local storage.

2)There will be no performance improvement except if you move it to a faster disk

3)This depends on how fast your internet access is. In most cases it won't make much difference.

4)That is unfortunately normal behavior. Lightroom scrolling is not the best.

[Eurekaad]

Thank you Vao_vdL for your reply.  Yes, I have "Store a copy of all originals at the specified location" turned on.  I agree it looks like the process, what ever it is, is not finished so the originals are in a cached area.  So I guess the question is how do I get the process to complete itself so the photos are in the specified location?  I hesitate to uninstall and reinstall Lightroom CC because I don't want to loose any of my photos.  I'm not sure I completely trust the Creative Cloud.  Also it would take a really long time to copy the originals back down from the cloud if it needed to.

[Jao vdL · Accepted solution]

Reinstalling will not do anything for this. You also will not lose any photos if you do. Check if the little cloud icon (top right) says "Synced and backed up". If so, just quitting and restarting Lightroom should make it copy over the orginals. You can also specify a different location specifically. One that is perhaps easier to find if you want to make backups of those images for example. It should then copy over all the orginals from cache to that location and you should fairly quickly see them show up. That is probably the best solution and fastest. Just specify another location manually.

[Eurekaad]

I made an extra backup of everything on the local drive.  Then I opened Lightroom CC, went to Edit > Preferences > Local storage and changed the location of the local originals to C:\Users\[MyName].  Lightroom restarted and when it came up it started moving all my originals and they really ended up in the new location I specified.  Problem resolved!  Thank you Jao_vdL!