# Previews folder filling my C Drive



## ShelleyA (Jan 7, 2021)

My C drive keeps filling up with Lightroom files, specifically Previews and Proxies. My C drive is only 256G, and I keep all my files, including LR originals on D. However the foder C:\Users\ALIENWARE\AppData\Local\Adobe\Lightroom CC\Data is currently 90GB 
I have set my preferences to NOT store a copy of all smart previews on "C".
Is there a way to move those files to another drive? They are making my computer almost unusable. There is nothing else I can delete from C!


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## Conrad Chavez (Jan 7, 2021)

(I edited this post because it was about Lightroom Classic and not the cloud version)


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## Paul McFarlane (Jan 7, 2021)

Hi Conrad

That doesn't help, this is the Cloud version, not Classic.


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## ShelleyA (Jan 7, 2021)

Conrad Chavez said:


> The only non-technical way to keep the previews file on another volume is to store the catalog itself on another volume,  because Lightroom Classic always puts the previews in the same folder as their catalog.
> 
> For a small internal drive, one strategy is to periodically delete the previews, because they’ll be re-created as needed and you lose nothing (except maybe the speed advantage of being able to use previews that have already been generated). But they will grow again as you browse images, since you need  previews to be able to browse in the Library module.
> 
> ...


Thank you. I appreciate your detailed reply. However this is the Mobile Desktop version, not Classic.


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## Jim Wilde (Jan 7, 2021)

Can you post a screenshot of the Preferences>Local Storage tab? We might be able to suggest the optimum settings to better manage the space needed on the C drive.


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## ShelleyA (Jan 7, 2021)

Jim Wilde said:


> Can you post a screenshot of the Preferences>Local Storage tab? We might be able to suggest the optimum settings to better manage the space needed on the C drive.


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## ShelleyA (Jan 7, 2021)

ShelleyA said:


> View attachment 15845


Is that saying there's 110GB available on "C"? Because there is not.


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## Conrad Chavez (Jan 7, 2021)

Paul McFarlane said:


> Hi Conrad
> That doesn't help, this is the Cloud version, not Classic.





ShelleyA said:


> Thank you. I appreciate your detailed reply. However this is the Mobile Desktop version, not Classic.


Oops, sorry! I  read this from the  New Posts list and should have taken a closer look at the forum it was in.
I’ll edit my post so as not to mislead others who might read this thread.


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## Jim Wilde (Jan 8, 2021)

ShelleyA said:


> View attachment 15845


How many images do you have stored in the cloud? You could reduce the Photo Cache size down to 0% as you have a local copy of the originals on the "SSD DRIVE" (which is presumably the D drive), but that'll only free up 13GB.


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## ShelleyA (Jan 8, 2021)

Jim Wilde said:


> How many images do you have stored in the cloud? You could reduce the Photo Cache size down to 0% as you have a local copy of the originals on the "SSD DRIVE" (which is presumably the D drive), but that'll only free up 13GB.


I have close to 150,000 images.

I have deleted the previews folder, which has freed up about 40GB, for now. Of course there's a new Previews folder, but it is much smaller and I assume it will take a while to get to that  size again. Is it also safe to delete the Proxies folder? 

Thank you for your help.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 11, 2021)

ShelleyA said:


> Is it also safe to delete the Proxies folder?



Yes, it'll just rebuild again


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## charleskinghorn (Jan 12, 2021)

My C drive is also 256 GB and my Cloud photographs are stored on my D drive, a 4 TB hard drive. Assuming your D drive is a hard drive, I find it strange that you reference it as "SSD DRIVE". Is there some error within your system messing up your drive references? My options are much like yours.


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## charleskinghorn (Jan 12, 2021)

On further thought, I have 80,000+ images taking up 1.46 TB. My earlier comment may be "barking up the wrong tree". My _C:\Users\charl\AppData\Local\Adobe\Lightroom CC_ directory is only 20.9 GB with slightly over 202,000 files in 7,800 folders.

Now that I'm delving into this, what I see appears to be similar to the LR Classic catalog in structure. My _C:\Users\charl\AppData\Local\Adobe\Lightroom CC\Data\7d52eb24dea9406cad05d63bfe0d4b03\previews_ directory is 8.2 GB and 113,000 files; and my _C:\Users\charl\AppData\Local\Adobe\Lightroom CC\Data\7d52eb24dea9406cad05d63bfe0d4b03\proxies\2560_ directory is 9.0 GB and 7,700 files. I don't know how Adobe uses those directories and their files; but I wasn't happy with the structure of the Classic catalog, and I don't terribly like what I see here.

I am not having your problems, but I have not been using LR CC very heavily recently. Since we don't know how Adobe uses the data in these directories, I guess we just have to have faith in what they are doing. You may want to look at these directories, their size and contents. You problems may lie in settings or usages which affect the contents of these directories.


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## charleskinghorn (Jan 12, 2021)

Further to my last posting, I see on further exploring the forum, that others have had this problem and I am rather late to the party. My apologies if I have muddied up the waters, but at least I am learning from all this.


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## edwin1554 (Feb 6, 2021)

charleskinghorn said:


> Further to my last posting, I see on further exploring the forum, that others have had this problem and I am rather late to the party. My apologies if I have muddied up the waters, but at least I am learning from all this.


I am having the same issue - running out of space on my c drive so went looking and find that its Adobe that is eating up all this space. Can I delete these files on the c drive?

I have a cache setting that is on a non-C drive but these files don't appear to be cache files...

I am on LR Classic 10


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## Victoria Bampton (Feb 9, 2021)

edwin1554 said:


> I am having the same issue - running out of space on my c drive so went looking and find that its Adobe that is eating up all this space. Can I delete these files on the c drive?



We can't tell you to delete stuff until you tell exactly what kind of files you're wanting to delete... tell us more?


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## edwin1554 (Feb 10, 2021)

It was all *.dat files. 

I deleted them last night -things seem to be still working today...

C:\Users\XYZ\AppData\Local\Adobe\CameraRaw\Cache

Kind of weird - CameraRaw sounds like a PS folder but I rarely use PS - using LR 95% of the time. 

Plus I have the cache folder for LR set for another drive...should not be the c: drive.


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## Johan Elzenga (Feb 10, 2021)

The Camera Raw cache is used by Lightroom too. You can even purge it from the Lightroom preferences.


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