Backing up LR Classic Question

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Jbear

Jbear

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If you saw/see this post elsewhere...feel free to ignore it.
Hey All,
I hate post but I know it's gotta happen. I'd much rather be outside shooting (or doing anything actually), but just setting up my question explaining why after decades of use...I still don't know my way around catalogs, storage, and such. So...

My C drive is low on space, and apparently much of this is due to LR catalog backups. I have done the delete 1:1 previews "thing," and I deleted several older LR catalogs (anything before 2024). I have also become aware that it's a better idea to have your catalogs on a different drive than C just in case it fails. So...questions...

1-Can I change the storage location to any drive I want?
2-Can I just cut and paste that LR cat folder from C to another drive?
3-Can it be an external HD?

I don't want to just do "stuff" and find out that LR can't find anything anymore.
Thanks all for being luddite-tolerant.
 
Here is a fact some folks are not aware of: the lightroom catalog does not contain your images. It is just a database linking to your images that also stores a record of your lightroom edits. So it doesn't really take up that much space. I personally keep it on my c drive because it a SSD and so faster. I keep the folder with this years images on D. Previous years are stored on the backup drive but the catalog on C still links to the images. Of course everything has backups on external drives.

This link should answer your questions, check out the copy or move a catalog section.

 
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Not sure which version of Classic you are using, but yes, you can move your catalog. For the most part, the catalog and all of the related catalog files (and sometimes backups) are located in one folder. If that is the case, just pick up and move the folder to your desired drive (hopefully a somewhat fast drive). Now, LRC will not know where this file is now located, so you have two options. Open the catalog itself and LRC will now register it in its new location. Or, open LRC and then locate the catalog in the dialog box and LRC will now know its new location.

Good luck,

--Ken
 
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I'm assuming you are asking about the catalog, not image storage. When you close LrC, the desktop version, it asks you if you want to back up and also asks you where you want to back up to. Direct the software to back up to another disk. You can delete other copies, maybe leaving just one until you've done a few more backups to the other disk. I generally rename the newest BU each time. You can also set when you want the catalog to back up on a routine basis as you close the software, click on Catalog settings top left for that. In the screen shot below you can see that my Backup Folder is on a Seagate drive, this is not the same drive that my images are on. If you have a Mac and have the desktop backed up you can save to the Pictures folder in the mac and then the BU will be BU'd up when the desktop is BU'd up. It's not a bad idea to save a catalog BU in two different places.


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Screenshot 2024-11-19 at 2.56.49 PM.png
 
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Hey all...thanks for the responses.
Yes...images are stored on ext. HDs, and what is stumping me is that I can't really see what is taking up all of my C drive space. I have a D drive with nothing on it, but my C is almost full. I never put anything on it and I don't use the computer for anything but photo editing/printing/posting. When I look in Explorer, I don't see the offending files. I know the Cats and BU's are not huge, but it's all I can see to work with.
If I knew someone local who was good at this stuff...I'd pay them to teach me. I know there are vids and tutorials everywhere (I even have Steve's LR vids), but...my particular brand of learning disability makes that really difficult for me. I just don't want to end up losing everything...either for good or just by being buried in my screw-ups. To top it off...I need to replace this machine as it's pretty old at this point. Denoising a D850 file takes about an hour. Not sure if that's due to disk space, or just the age of the processor/graphics card. I know just enough to do damage:oops:.
Anyway...I do appreciate all of your help.
 
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I'm a Mac person so I am no help on a Windows OS. It does sound like you need to upgrade, it makes a huge difference in processing if you keep current. A catalog can take up a bit of space so that could be it. BU on the D drive and somewhere else, then simply delete the catalog BUs from the C drive and that's a start to figuring it out. Also, I'd keep the catalog on the computer, not an external drive, that generally creates a faster working process.
 
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I have about 500,000 images in my Lightroom Catalog. The catalog is on my C drive, my catalog backup is on my E drive, and the catalog backup are copied to a cloud drive. My images are on three different drives depending on the age and nature of the photo. I shoot a lot of sports images so my catalog grows considerably each year and I keep the images in my catalog in case I need to reproduce a photo from years past.

My LrC catalog is about 6GB, the LrC catalog backups are each about 2GB after they are compressed, as others have mentioned the catalog only contains information about the photos and the edits on those photos. What grows large is a folder in the LrC directory with the name Previews.lrdata, this is the folder containing all of the preview created by LrC. My previews folder is about 500GB and when the sports year is over for me I will delete the folder and rebuild the previews for collections I am still working on or rebuild each photo preview as needed. LrC allows you to discard the 1:1 previews and the smart previews for collections but not the standard preview.

Do a little web research on how to delete the Previews.lrdata folder and the impact is has on working in LrC but his may take care of your disk storage issue.
 
There is a setting in preferences where it will automatically delete previews after 30 days of not being used.
 
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Jbear said:
My C drive is low on space, and apparently much of this is due to LR catalog backups. I have done the delete 1:1 previews "thing," and I deleted several older LR catalogs (anything before 2024). I have also become aware that it's a better idea to have your catalogs on a different drive than C just in case it fails. So...questions...

1-Can I change the storage location to any drive I want?
2-Can I just cut and paste that LR cat folder from C to another drive?
3-Can it be an external HD?
Click to expand...
The answer to all three questions is yes.

Jbear said:
Hey all...thanks for the responses.
Yes...images are stored on ext. HDs, and what is stumping me is that I can't really see what is taking up all of my C drive space. I have a D drive with nothing on it, but my C is almost full. I never put anything on it and I don't use the computer for anything but photo editing/printing/posting. When I look in Explorer, I don't see the offending files.
Click to expand...
In the olden days on Windows versions up to 10, if a computer had one hard drive, it was often formatted with a C: drive containing the operating system and the software apps, and a D: drive for the user’s files. The C: drive was usually formatted to be smaller, about 25% of the total hard drive space, with D: using about 75%. By default your LrC catalog should have gone to the D: drive, but it’s easy to inadvertently have changed its location.

You can move your catalog to the D: drive. When LrC starts up next, it should ask for the location of the catalog because you moved it. Point it to the new location on D: Any backups should go there by default now. You can delete all but the last two or three backups on C: Move those to the folder on D: where your catalog was moved.

Might be time for a new computer, given the denoise time you mentioned. 😬
 
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Jbear said:
what is stumping me is that I can't really see what is taking up all of my C drive space. I have a D drive with nothing on it, but my C is almost full. I never put anything on it and I don't use the computer for anything but photo editing/printing/posting. When I look in Explorer, I don't see the offending files. I know the Cats and BU's are not huge, but it's all I can see to work with.
Click to expand...
Your C: drive being full may or may not be related to LRC. You can still move your catalog to an external drive, and that will free up some space, but you probably have other files that may be taking up space and that could possibly be removed. I am assuming that you checked your Recycle Bin to see if that contains any large files that could be deleted manually. And you might have some install files taking up space if the install did not go according to plan and they were not properly deleted. There are programs that can help you identify what is taking up most of your space, but you need to be careful as some can also cause issues if they want to "fix the problem" for you.

--Ken
 
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