File madness

[sniper]

What gives with the insane file structure of Lightroom, does it really need 15,961 folders and 2,560 files to work? other software seems to work fine without this huge waste of space (1+ GB) it's the ONLY software I have ever come across that works like this.  Is it safe to delete this stuff?   Wayne

[michael]

Huh? What are you talking about?

Lightroom has just two files, a .lrcat and a .lrdata, for its catalog and its preview database. That's it, other than then the program file itself and a few small hidden support files.

Any other files and folders that you may have are yours, and contain your photographs.

Michael

[CatOne]

Huh? What are you talking about?

Lightroom has just two files, a .lrcat and a .lrdata, for its catalog and its preview database. That's it, other than then the program file itself and a few small hidden support files.

Any other files and folders that you may have are yours, and contain your photographers.

Michael
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Perhaps he's talking about the .lrdata file -- it's a package file which contains the previews, which can be thousands of files.

On OS X this is nicely contained as a package.  Perhaps on Windows this looks like a plain old directory and thus the user thinks it makes sense to go in there and root around?

Still... deleting them is a horrible idea.  Well, if you want the program to WORK that is.

[TMcCulley]

Perhaps he's talking about the .lrdata file -- it's a package file which contains the previews, which can be thousands of files.

On OS X this is nicely contained as a package.  Perhaps on Windows this looks like a plain old directory and thus the user thinks it makes sense to go in there and root around?

Still... deleting them is a horrible idea.  Well, if you want the program to WORK that is.
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CatOne
You are correct the lrdata "file" is actually a file composed of directories each with a hex number for a name and about two levels down is a file that I suspect is the preview.  These files vary in size but average 500k each which is what uses up all of the disk space not the directory structure.  My directory is call Lightroom Catalog Previews.lrdata has 4069 files stored in 4304 folders and uses 1.77GB of disk space.

Sniper
Why do you care how the files are stored?  These are not files that you manipulate directly but should only access them from LR. Of course you might want to copy the contents of "...\Backups\..." directory to another media.  Other programs may use a different structure but the result will be roughly the same especially if you use 1 to 1 previews.

Tom

[sniper]

Thanks guys, yes it is the

[sniper]

Thanks guys, yes it is the irdata and the backup folder (both in my pictures) that I'm talking about.  I have tried to back these up, but neither nero or roxio will let me write them to disk (it crashes both)  It seems a strange way to store information, and takes up disk space, I don't use lightroom to cataloge my pics, so would happily delete this stuff if I can.
It seems to me that if I use LR long enough this file is going to get really stupid with gazillions (well lots anyway) of files and will eventually start using up a lot of disk space, rather pointlessly it would seem.  Wayne

[sniper]

Perhaps I should have explained better, I use LR for editing wedding pics (mostly) they come onto my PC are edited for the basics and then are copied to a removable dive (and backed up to dvd) then are removed from this PC, they then never come back onto it, any further editing takes place later on another computer.
This is why I don't need to keep the previews etc on my PC, also due to the large volume of work I'm doing it's fairly quickly going to use up serious disk space (and my OS drive isn't that big) any suggestions would be welcome.  Thanks  wayne

[francofit]

Thanks guys, yes it is the irdata and the backup folder (both in my pictures) that I'm talking about.  I have tried to back these up, but neither nero or roxio will let me write them to disk (it crashes both)  It seems a strange way to store information, and takes up disk space, I don't use lightroom to cataloge my pics, so would happily delete this stuff if I can.
It seems to me that if I use LR long enough this file is going to get really stupid with gazillions (well lots anyway) of files and will eventually start using up a lot of disk space, rather pointlessly it would seem.  Wayne
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EDITED: see below "P.S." bottom Line for a direct answer to your last message.
---------

Yes you can easily control those files and/or let LR automatically discard them.
Here is my experience with the "Lightroom Database Previews.lrdata" folder-subFolders-and-files under Windows XP.

- It is the place where every image preview (thumbnail, standard and full size) get stored and/or deleted based on:
 * the explicit commands the user gives
   using the menu "Library/Previews/..."
   and/or
 * implicit operations related to the display/zoom of images.

- The LR user has complete control over them.

  e.g. SETTINGS:
  * With "FILE / Catalog Settings", then Tab "File Handling":
    - for the "standard" previews can define size and quality
    - for "1:1 Previews" can set after how long the previews
      will be automatically discarded or
      even to keep them forever.
 
  e.g. COMMANDS:
  *  "Library/Previews/Discard 1:1 Previews" etc..

- I have never had any problem making backups of the LR files structure (but I backup up on other external HD using the Windows "SyncToy" free utility)

- Since a while (when I realized that my "Preview" structure was around 6 GB with more than 2000 files and 5000 folders) I don't backup them because, for me, it doesn't make sense. So I simply excluded them from the backup list.

- I still keep the settings of "never" automatically discard them, because I prefer so
  (I use LR 99% of my work and I hate waiting for the rebuilding of the previews whenever I browse/compare/survey/make refinements and/or experiments with the images in the Catalog)

- When I want to clean everything up I can always use the command "Library/Previews/Discard..." or even delete everything directly under Windows deleting the folder "Lightroom Database Previews.lrdata"

Hope this can help you.
Ciao

----------------------------------------------------
P.S.: so, the Bottom Line for you, should be:

* Set "FILE / Catalog Settings", then Tab "File Handling" ..
"Automatically Discard.." to:  AFTER ONE DAY

and optionally if you want immediately get rid of the temporary preview files...

* When you are done with a batch of your wedding work, you can
 "Library/Previews/Discard 1:1 Previews"
or
 delete the folder "Lightroom Database Previews.lrdata" directly ffrom Windows obviously after quitting LR.
BUT, if you want to keep at least the thumbnail views, you have to delete only the subFolders (0 thru F) and leave alone the "thumbnail-cache.db"

Pls note that in any case, future relaunch of the same LR db will eventually re-generate discarded thumbnails, Standard and/or 1:1 (or bigger) previews according again to your LR Settings and actions you will perform on the images.

----+++

More or less the same holds true for the "Backups" folder: look for settings and/or choose not to backup while launching LR.
Again (directly from Windows) you can selectively delete the "Backups" subFolders you don't need anymore.

[sniper]

Thanks,  just the info I needed mate!.    
Cheers Wayne

[jjj]

Perhaps he's talking about the .lrdata file -- it's a package file which contains the previews, which can be thousands of files.

On OS X this is nicely contained as a package.  Perhaps on Windows this looks like a plain old directory and thus the user thinks it makes sense to go in there and root around?

Still... deleting them is a horrible idea.  Well, if you want the program to WORK that is.
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Correct, unlike the simple two files on a Mac, in Windows it's an awful lot of very small file in folder upon subfolder. Which are so numerous they take ages to copy or delete. Which I do at times -  after moving the data elsewhere BTW.

[CatOne]

Correct, unlike the simple two files on a Mac, in Windows it's an awful lot of very small file in folder upon subfolder. Which are so numerous they take ages to copy or delete. Which I do at times -  after moving the data elsewhere BTW.
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It's the same on the Mac.  It's just the package format nicely prevents people from mucking around in places they shouldn't be mucking around, then deleting things and complaining that the product sucks because it's no longer behaving correctly  

BTW, if the previews didn't exist, everyone would be saying "LR is AWFUL Aperture is SO MUCH FASTER!!!!1!!" but the previews speed the program up.  You can have fast or you can have more disk space and easier migration... pick any ONE.  Aperture's as fast as you can get without previews... which is not as fast as LR with previews.  Aperture 2.0 basically uses previews to speed itself up to match LR where speed is concerned.

[jjj]

  Aperture's as fast as you can get without previews... which is not as fast as LR with previews.  Aperture 2.0 basically uses previews to speed itself up to match LR where speed is concerned.
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Aperture 2.0's apparent speed is due to using the previews already in the file, which is very different from large previews of the tweaked image. Say you import a bunch of images in LR with a preset applied, then the LR preview will then reflect that development. Aperture's 'cheat' means you can do some initial sorting/ranking editing much quicker - an idea taken from PhotoMechanic.