SSD drive nearly full need advise

[rduckw]

I only have my working files on a local SSD and the remainder are on a NAS with 5 drives set for RAID6. With a 10GB Ethernet connection between the NAS and my workstation there is no performance hit. At a bare minimum I would want a RAID1 device with two mirrored SSD drives and this can connect with a USB-C cable for good throughput.

With Windows I run Disk Cleanup weekly. Microsoft's operating systems are terrible at garbage collection. A Windows Update can leave behind 1.5GB of garbage and you need to manually initiate the cleanup application. Temp files are another problem and Adobe apps are great at leaving behind thousands of file fragments. Using a dedicated Scratch drive or partition fixes this problem.

thanks

 

[rduckw]

Do you empty the recycle bin regularly? It sits on the C drive and can quickly take up lots of space. You should move your download files to a different drive if it is also on your SSD.

Thanks, I do empty recycle bin every time I delete any thing an once a week for good measure. I down load photos to an external drive. I did discover that I am listed as a user twice: once as a nickname and once as my real name. I think I may have 2 sets of previews and smart previews which may be the drive hog. I just have to figure out which one to delete

 

[billklipp]

I can't believe that just the program files filled up your hard drives, (either of them). While programs take up space its image, video and music files that really take up space.

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

I'm chiming-in / adding my vote to "you must have more than OS / APPS on that drive", with a few more points:

• You already do not have the images there. Cool
• Also, don't store your Lightroom *anything* except the main application install. That means storing the catalog elsewhere, as well as the previews. I have a dedicated NVMe SSD for that (separate even from the images drive, but at least place all of this on the same external drive as the images if you can't have a dedicated drive for it).
• Note that if you have LR Catalog doing automatic periodic backups, that is also filling up your boot drive if you store all of that there.
• Move your LR "Scratch Disk" to a drive other than your boot drive
• Move your LR "ACR Cache" to a drive other than your boot drive
• Not just for your photo apps, do not store ANY documents on your boot drive (no word processing / spreadsheet / etc.)
• Yes, do the system drive clean up that others have recommended.

What works for me:

• Boot drive: OS and apps only, no data
• 1 drive for images (source and work files)
• 1 drive for LR catalog (plus catalog backups) and all scratch discs / ACR cache / previews (for performance, this one should be an m.2 NVMe SSD)
• 1 drive for all other documents (office docs, other docs that are not photo project related).

Chris

 

[rduckw]

I'm chiming-in / adding my vote to "you must have more than OS / APPS on that drive", with a few more points:

• You already do not have the images there. Cool
• Also, don't store your Lightroom *anything* except the main application install. That means storing the catalog elsewhere, as well as the previews. I have a dedicated NVMe SSD for that (separate even from the images drive, but at least place all of this on the same external drive as the images if you can't have a dedicated drive for it).
• Note that if you have LR Catalog doing automatic periodic backups, that is also filling up your boot drive if you store all of that there.
• Move your LR "Scratch Disk" to a drive other than your boot drive
• Move your LR "ACR Cache" to a drive other than your boot drive
• Not just for your photo apps, do not store ANY documents on your boot drive (no word processing / spreadsheet / etc.)
• Yes, do the system drive clean up that others have recommended.

What works for me:

• Boot drive: OS and apps only, no data
• 1 drive for images (source and work files)
• 1 drive for LR catalog (plus catalog backups) and all scratch discs / ACR cache / previews (for performance, this one should be an m.2 NVMe SSD)
• 1 drive for all other documents (office docs, other docs that are not photo project related).

Chris

Thanks for the advice

 

[rduckw]

I can't believe that just the program files filled up your hard drives, (either of them). While programs take up space its image, video and music files that really take up space.

I agree that the photo programs should not take up that much space. No video's or music on the C drive

 

[spamalot1950]

I am not a Windows person (I use Linux), and you did not mention if your computer was a desktop or laptop model. If it is a laptop, and the solutions suggested by all of the above (and they all seem solid advice to me) don't work, you have alternatives. Presumably, your SSD is an NVMe drive. You can switch this out quite easily yourself (there are computer model specific YouTube videos on how to do this). Most after market drives come with the necessary software to make the switch effortless. With my last laptop purchase, I immediately replaced the 250 GB drive with a 1 TB drive. I also installed a 1 TB 2.5" SATA SSD. 1 TB drives are available at Amazon for under $100. You can get 2 TB Sabrent Rocket NVMe for under $200 (I like the Sabrent Rocket and the SK Hynix NVMes.) Additionally, with SSDs, the larger the capacity, the longer the life expectancy of the drive, and the greater the speed, in most cases. Also, beware of NVMes with a "Q" designation, variation of it (QLC). They are usually less expensive, but have shorter life expectancy, and are slower. Lastly, it is worth remembering that files stored on an HDD can be retrieved if the drive fails. Most of the time. However, if an SSD fails, they're gone. Most of the time.

Also, there are ways to find what is being stored, and where it is located. In Windows 10, go to Settings>System>Storage. First, you can see the capacity of your C drive. If it is less than the SSD, you have a partition, which might explain some of this issue. Second, under the C drive listing, there are typically three categories listed. Below them is a line See More Categories. Click on that and you should be able to see where your storage issue lies.

 

[Replytoken]

How often is LR creating backups, and how many do you have?

--Ken

 

[Roy]

I bought a new Dell Windows computer 9 months ago with a 500 GB SSD drive as well as a 1 TB regular hard drive. I have put LR, Ps, Helicon Focus, and Topaz Denoise, Sharpen and Gigapixel on the SSD as well as the Windows operating system. This SSD is now 88% full although performance is still fast for my editing. Occasionally the computer will freeze. I wonder if compressing my SSD drive will adversely affect photo editing.

You risk everything if your only using one place to store for each file.
The freezing could be signs of a drive starting to fail - they do have a limited life span.
Compressed drives are a little slower and it can be noticeable on a slow computer.
If your computer is fairly recent then you probably wont notice the compression.
BUT: if most of your files are JPEG (jpg) then they are already compressed (lossy compressed) and a compressed drive wont help very much...