3 Replies Latest reply: Aug 20, 2010 12:45 AM by Bent Nielsen RSS

    LR3 not writing metadata to xmp

    Bent Nielsen Community Member

      Preferences set to automatically write changes to xmp file.  LR3 has stopped writing changes to xmp. 

       

      When I choose a thumbnail and click the "!" in upper right corner + click "Retry Metadata Export", I get this message: "Could not write metadata.  Your disk has less than 1 gigabyte of space left".

       

      This is correct, as there is 200mb free space on the particular disk, but I would think this would be sufficient.  So question is: how much free disk space do I need for LR3 to continue to automatically write metadata to xmp?

        • 1. Re: LR3 not writing metadata to xmp
          Pete Marshall Community Member

          From the message you have received and the statement made in the requirements for running LR on the Lightroom home page

          minimum1GB of available hard-disk space

          it would seem likely that 1 GB is the minimum. However I would suggest rather a great amount of free hard disk space is required in order for LR to function efficiently. But the minimum is pretty clear.Once you go below this you will experience problems and not just with writing metadata to file, but writing changes to the catalog itself if that is located on a disk with less than the minimum requirements The metadata once written takes up very little space, but the process of writing it can require space on disk for temporary files etc. Just make sure you have lots of spare capacity on any drive you use with LR.

          • 2. Re: LR3 not writing metadata to xmp
            clvrmnky Community Member

            It probably doesn't have enough free space (somewhere) to make a full copy of the XMP file (I suspect changes are written to a copy and then renamed to the original in a safe three-way copy.)

             

            200Mb is not enough free disk for any modern OS.  I'd expect all sorts of problems.

             

            However, that being said, at the time of the failure, the only information Lr has is regarding the specific IO operation that failed.  So it is hard to know where you can free stuff up.  Check the usual suspects, like temporary space (which depends on your platform.)

             

            Free up some disk space and retry.

            • 3. Re: LR3 not writing metadata to xmp
              Bent Nielsen Community Member

              @ Pete Marshall, clvmnky: thank you all.  I have made 15GB space available on disk, so now there is a free flow of info.