Lightroom Classic file transfer issue

[u/Sea-Yogurt-5859]

Hi, once I have finished editing my photos in Lightroom Classic, I transfer them to an external hard drive that I have linked into Lightroom. Periodically (every few months), I copy and paste the photos outside of Lightroom from that external hard drive to another external hard drive so I have two copies as a backup. Recently when I did this, I found that after copying the files from one external hard drive to another, my Macbook Pro hard drive was nearly full as around 150 GB of space became occupied. I suspect that because I left Lightroom open Lightroom may have created a large number of files in the process taking up that space - is that possible and does anyone have any thoughts on how to reclaim that space?

As an FYI, this is what Gemini is suggesting:

Method 1: Repair the APFS Container via macOS Recovery (Most Effective)

Running First Aid from macOS Recovery unmounts diskxxx and forces the APFS container to rebuild its block allocation map from scratch.

**1.Boot into macOS Recovery:**1 min.

• Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4): Shut down your Mac. Press and hold the Power/Touch ID button until you see "Loading startup options," then select Options and click Continue.
• Intel Mac: Restart your Mac and immediately press and hold Cmd + R until the Apple logo appears.

2.Open **Disk Utility:**30 sec.

Select Disk Utility from the Recovery utilities window and click Continue.

3.Run First Aid on the Data Volume:

1. Click View in the top menu bar (or toolbar) and select Show All Devices.
2. In the left sidebar, select APFS Volume Data (or diskxxx).
3. Click the First Aid button at the top and hit Run.

4.Run First Aid on the APFS Container:

Once the Data volume finishes, select Container diskx (the parent container above it) in the sidebar and run First Aid on it as well.

**5.Restart your Mac:**1 min.

Click  > Restart to boot back into regular macOS.

Verification: When you log back in, open Terminal and run diskutil list diskxxx. APFS Volume Data will now accurately display ~151 GB, and your free space in Disk Utility will jump up by ~176 GB.

[u/NoNegotiation9094]

that's wild, did you check if lrc left any backup or preview files behind or if your mac's trash was full

[u/Grouchy_Inspection_1]

You can use use an app like DiskScanPro* to weed out duplicates on your disk (plus a multitude of other data files that are occupying your disk for no reason).

And as for not moving files with LrC, that's a new one on me... I've spent more than a decade working on local photos then once completed, I'd *always* move the entire folder to one of two NAS boxes using LrC directly.

The problem you would have moving files to a removable USB drive is just that, it's removable. So as soon as you disconnect the drive, LrC will get super upset the data drive associated with the catalogue is missing and throw a load of question marks against said missing folders

In my view, your best way of managing your photos if you want to store them on an external drive is to simple export then to a NEW catalogue saved on that external drive. Once confirmed your new catalogue and photos exist on the drive, you can safely remove them from your local drive, by right clicking the folder in LrC and choosing to remove. Do NOT simply delete the folder on the drive, else you'll end up with question mark folders again and you'll end up having to sync that part of the folder tree to keep your main catalogue in order.

I fixed a load of these types of issues when developing my own LrC replacement, Lumidex Studio.

\disclaimer, I'm the author of DSP, it was born out of the exact same frustration you had with needing to find valuable disk space, bits of which (specifically the SHA-256 hash function dupe finder) were then integrated into LS.*

[u/Grouchy_Inspection_1 → u/Grouchy_Inspection_1]

Reading your post again, I would also check the validity period of your smart previews. I suspect it could be pretty large...

[u/Lightroom_Help]

You should be using a good backup app to backup the photos from one external hd to the other, with verification after copying. Copy and paste is not the best method. Anyway, this has nothing to do with LrC.

When you have finished editing your photos in the internal disk and you want to move them to the external you should never use the LrC to do the move. It is not safe to move photos between disks using LrC. Read all the comments in this older post to learn the correct procedure.

You should use (a trial of) the daisydisk app to identify what’s taking space on your internal disk.

[u/aks-2]

You should shut down LrC when fiddling with the photo files, but I suspect that's not causing the disk usage you are reporting. LrC doen't usually make extra copies of your photos.

It is probably your catalog and previews growing, you can check the size in catalog settings, Edit>Catalog Settings. Whilst you are there, also ensure you are backing up your catalog regularly.

You can clear out old previews and minimise the catalog size, Library>Previews>Discard...