Deleting files but still no space on harddrive

[jamie-68182628]

I was told by Apple to contact Adobe regarding my issue. I have been deleting photos out of lightroom and yet it is not making a difference on my space on my hard drive.

[SeanMcCormack]

You need to restart Lightroom to have files delete fully. Lightroom tends to hold on to them just in case you need to undo. Empty Trash/Recyle Bin as well.

[jamie-68182628]

I close LR completely so that's not the issue.

[ManiacJoe]

Your photo files are not "in" Lightroom.

The photo files are on your hard drive, just like your documents and spreadsheets.

The photo files are referenced by Lightroom using the path and file names.

The references inside the catalog to your files takes up little space, so removing the photos from the catalog does not buy you much.

The things that take up the space on your hard drive(s):

The catalog (*.LrCat) file that contains all your edits.

The preview files used by LR to speed up the display of your files.

The optional smart preview files, used when your original image files are not available.

Your original image files.

The new image files created by exporting your edits.

The preview files can be deleted and LR will recreate them as needed.

Your original image files are important and should not be deleted. You can move them to a different hard drive if needed.

[jamie-68182628]

I guess I wasn't clear. When deleting from my catalogue, I am deleting from the disk, so the files should be gone. Apple stated that sometimes LR creates hidden files and are not easy to locate and that's why my "other" file is taking so much space on my hard drive.

[Bob Somrak]

Empty your Trash.

[Just Shoot Me]

It's not LR. You need to Empty the Trash to completely remove the files from the hard drive and free up space.

Not sure what the other are talking about but when you "Remove Photos" from LR and select delete from Disk in the Remove Photo/s pop up dialog those images are move to the Trash, Mac OS X, or the Recycle Bin, Windows.

LR doesn't create or save backups of them in any hidden folder and you do not need to Restart LR for them to be moved to the trash/recycle bin

To fully remove them and free up the space they where taking up you need to Empty the Trash/Recycle Bin.

Also if this is on a Mac Notebook and you have Time Machine enabled but no external drive connected Time Machine will take hourly snapshots of your hard drive that will fill up your drive. Supposedly they get deleted when space is needed but that doesn't always happen.

Turn Off Time Machine in the OS X System Preferences and those snapshots will be deleted.

[richardplondon]

Your ACR cache can absorb a certain amount of disk space, from which info for deleted images may not be cleaned out immediately. You can purge the cache altogether for a quick if temporary fix, or else trim its size limit. This doesn't need to be set very big, as of recent LR versions - I have mine set to 1GB.

If you have LR do a catalog backup on a regular basis, e.g. each time you exit LR - these won't overwrite each other, and each is a full catalog copy rather than incremental, so they can accumulate without limit. They can likely be all cleaned out apart from the latest one or two, assuming regular independent backups of catalog and images of course (ahem).

If you have at some point upgraded LR version, there may still be the earlier version installed. Likely not needed any more.

Otherwise, images can be moved (within LR) to a new storage location on another drive, including a network drive, or on removable media even, rather than needing to be deleted out of LR altogether. That retains not only all latest edits (though those could be written out alongside the file), but also some organisational stuff, virtual copies and your edit history which cannot be written out alongside the images. The same Catalog can refer to images across multiple storage volumes, even volumes which may from time to time be disconnected.

Lastly, if short of onboard disk space, the Catalog itself can be housed on an external drive instead of within the computer (but cannot be used from a network drive).