Increasing Disk Space usage on C:Drive as I move photos out to a portable HDD

[timhking]

Hi,

I am a Window user. I am trying to reorganise my photos and move my part of my photos from D:drive to my portable HDD. However, when I move more and more photos across, I notice this action used up disk space in C drive. For example, if I move 10GB across to my portable HDD, C:drive would have 10GB less space.

My question is, why Adobe requires to store a copy of the files in C:drive again. Is it possible to remove the disk space in C:drive because I am kind of running out as I am planning to move almost 100GB of photos across to my portable HDD. (I don't have 100GB spare on my C:drive for this) I try to trace where did Lr save the data and it isn't under "C:\Users\xxxx\Pictures". Would anyone have any suggestion?

Thanks a lot!

Cheers,

Tim

[F. McLion]

LR does not store a copy of the images in C - all it temporarily stores are previews.

Please describe exactly how you are moving the images.

What is the exact version of LR you are using and the OS version?

[timhking]

Hi McLion,

I am using CC 2015 version 6.3 on Windows 8.1.

I dragged and moved the photos in Library Module.

At first I thought it was just temporary storage when I copied my photos, but after a few restarts of the OS. The "missing storage" was still there. Any idea?

Thanks a lot!

Tim

[F. McLion · Accepted solution]

You are using LR CC2015 (suscription) or LR6 (perpetual standalone license).

Any reason you are not updated to the latest 2015.8 / 6.8 ?

Did you check with Explorer if the images really are removed on the old location?

If you have a lot of images to move and they are a whole 'tree', not single files, it may be advised to use Explorer to move the files and then re-link the top-level folder in LR afterwards. This way you can copy first, then relink in LR to the new location and if OK delete the old ones - which is more secure.

You need to observe folder sizes and check which one is growing. If it's the LR preview folder, this can be safely deleted. However, they will be re-created if needed.

[dj_paige]

timhking wrote:

Hi McLion,

I am using CC 2015 version 6.3 on Windows 8.1.

I dragged and moved the photos in Library Module.

At first I thought it was just temporary storage when I copied my photos, but after a few restarts of the OS. The "missing storage" was still there. Any idea?

Are the photos themselves now located on the external disk now? Please look for them. Are the photos still located on the C: drive? Please look for them. Let us know what you find.

why Adobe requires to store a copy of the files in C:drive again.

Adobe does not require this, my photos are never on my C: drive. They go directly to my D: drive straight out of the camera, never once do they appear on my C: drive.

[bhousto90]

Do you have a cloud service like Dropbox, One Drive or Google Drive etc. setup for a folder on the external drive?

The files may be all syncing back to a 'sync' folder for one of these services back onto your laptop's C drive.

Or some incorrectly configured auto backup software?

[Theresa J]

What you describe sounds odd. Adobe does not require a copy of images on the C drive as several people here have already explained. I wrote a simple article explaining how to move images to an external drive. Maybe this will help. With this method, you have control over what gets moved, and what gets deleted. You won't have to rely on the application to do it for you.

Can I move my Lightroom photos to a new hard drive. | Orchard View Color