# Import stopped due to low disk space



## pepsimax (Sep 21, 2015)

During import of a full 32Gb memory card I received a Lightroom error message saying the Macintosh HD was low on disc space and I needed to delete files to make space. I have emptied the trash but thats not enough. i really need to  archive a lot of my older photographs but before I do that, what do I do about Lightroom which is now paused mid building standard previews of what has been imported so far? I don't want to corrupt anything by shutting it down. If my Mac is nearly full, would I be better off keeping all my photographs on an external hard drive linked to the computer? I do have a Drobo system which I bought sometime ago but haven't set up. I'm not very technologically confident at all so always delay these things!


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## Johan Elzenga (Sep 21, 2015)

You won't corrupt anything by shutting down Lightroom, but you should use Lightroom to move images to another disk. If you shut down Lightroom and move them manually in the Finder, Lightroom won't know where they are anymore. So set up that Drobo (or prepare another external disk) and use Lightroom to drag and drop folders of images from your internal hard disk to the Drobo. You have to make Lightroom know the Drobo before you can do that, so click on the plus sign in the Folder panel of Lightroom to create a new folder, navigate to the Drobo and create it there as the parent folder. Now you can start dragging image folders into that parent folder, and Lightroom will move those image folders to the Drobo.


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## clee01l (Sep 21, 2015)

Moving files on the primary disk drive to the trash folder does not free up space.  You need to move them to another drive and empty the trash folder.   There should be a cancel (little red 'x') on the progress bar in the upper left corner of the screen. You can use that to stop the LR processes and then exit LR normally.  LR will always build previews if it needs on and the preview is not there.
LR uses working storage to build temporary intermediate files.  You need to keep 100-125 GB free on the Primary disk drive for LR and any other apps the require working storage.  If you have a smallish SSD (~256GB) , It should be reserved for the OS, apps and working storage.


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