# where to keep LR program folders



## mbb (Oct 8, 2017)

hi

with this new installation of LR ive given a separate dedicated internal hard drive to the folders below, but haven't moved anything LR installed in c drive "my pictures"

camera raw cache
untitled export 
watched folder

can anyone advise me pls, should i put any other folders on this dedicated disk. the pc is under spec, so a bit slow, but does everything i need with LR 

thanks


----------



## clee01l (Oct 8, 2017)

I note that you say "internal" dedicated drive. All buss mounted disk drivess should behave at the same performance levels, with the differences due only to the differences is the drives themselves (cache, read /write speeds etc.).   That said, it really does not matter where you put the components of LR as long as you maintain sufficient working storage (/TEMP) on the primary drive.


----------



## Linwood Ferguson (Oct 8, 2017)

The export/watched folders rarely make any difference.

Generally speaking Lightroom's catalog benefits from being on the fastest drives, not so much because of the catalog but because the preview cache goes with the catalog (at least absent some manual hacking), and the preview cache benefits from speed (write and read). 

The ACR (Camera Raw) cache benefits from speed as well.  If you have two drives of somewhat equal speed, separating these two (catalog and ACR) may help.

Generally these concerns are often over-ridden by issues of disk space, unfortunately. 

There are subtle differences in drive speed, but somewhat over-simplified: If you have only one SSD, put catalog, cache, and preview cache there if you have room.  If you have two SSD's, you might see minor improvement by separating ACR and Catalog/preview, but very minor.  If you have no SSD's, only hard disks, you will see larger benefit by separating these, and these from your images.

Here I'm lumping SSD with NVMe (U.2 and M.2) though the latter are faster than the former, but both are generally faster than lightroom.


----------



## mbb (Oct 9, 2017)

Cletus,
yes i agree with you about the speed etc. i probably confused matters by saying "the pc is under spec"


----------



## mbb (Oct 9, 2017)

Ferguson said:


> The export/watched folders rarely make any difference.
> 
> Generally speaking Lightroom's catalog benefits from being on the fastest drives, not so much because of the catalog but because the preview cache goes with the catalog (at least absent some manual hacking), and the preview cache benefits from speed (write and read).
> 
> ...



thanks for that. i guess this dedicated drive will be the fastest as theres nothing else at all on it. the other idea i had was that in case of my needing to reinstall the OS it would be very handy to have the complete LR program [not just some folders] on the dedicated HD. what you u think?


----------



## Linwood Ferguson (Oct 9, 2017)

mbb said:


> thanks for that. i guess this dedicated drive will be the fastest as theres nothing else at all on it. the other idea i had was that in case of my needing to reinstall the OS it would be very handy to have the complete LR program [not just some folders] on the dedicated HD. what you u think?



Generally speaking I think that's a bad idea. Almost no (Windows) programs today install wholly on a different drive, they almost always have components in the registry, the appdata folder, maybe documents all of which are on the OS disk (usually). You can't just pop the disk back into a new windows install and run it, you need to rerun the installation to get things going again, meaning these are redundant items that either have to be rewritten anyway, or worse leave garbage behind.

Now putting data on a separate volume I get, though the reality is it is hard to do even that.  Take Lightroom - you can put your catalog and images on another drive, but absent some serious hacking the preferences, startup data, and maybe presets are all on C anyway.


----------



## mbb (Oct 9, 2017)

Ferguson said:


> Generally speaking I think that's a bad idea. Almost no (Windows) programs today install wholly on a different drive, they almost always have components in the registry, the appdata folder, maybe documents all of which are on the OS disk (usually). You can't just pop the disk back into a new windows install and run it, you need to rerun the installation to get things going again, meaning these are redundant items that either have to be rewritten anyway, or worse leave garbage behind.
> 
> Now putting data on a separate volume I get, though the reality is it is hard to do even that.  Take Lightroom - you can put your catalog and images on another drive, but absent some serious hacking the preferences, startup data, and maybe presets are all on C anyway.



yes i understand that perfectly, ive already put 

camera raw cache
untitled export 
watched folder

on separate hd, so for ease of reinstalling or saving work in case of needing to reinstall the OS are there any more LR folders to put there
thanks


----------



## clee01l (Oct 9, 2017)

mbb said:


> in case of my needing to reinstall the OS it would be very handy to have the complete LR program


There should be no need to ever reinstall Windows.  Modern Windows versions do not clutter your disk with garbage like Windows XP.  Wiping the HDD and starting over with a clear install is a lazy technicians solution to fixing complex Windows problems.  If anyone tells you today that you need to reformat and reinstall, you need to find a different tech support person.


----------



## mbb (Oct 20, 2017)

Ferguson said:


> Generally speaking I think that's a bad idea. Almost no (Windows) programs today install wholly on a different drive, they almost always have components in the registry, the appdata folder, maybe documents all of which are on the OS disk (usually). You can't just pop the disk back into a new windows install and run it, you need to rerun the installation to get things going again, meaning these are redundant items that either have to be rewritten anyway, or worse leave garbage behind.
> 
> Now putting data on a separate volume I get, though the reality is it is hard to do even that.  Take Lightroom - you can put your catalog and images on another drive, but absent some serious hacking the preferences, startup data, and maybe presets are all on C anyway.



Linwood, apologies i seem to have asked a question again which u kindly answered before


----------



## mbb (Oct 20, 2017)

clee01l said:


> There should be no need to ever reinstall Windows.  Modern Windows versions do not clutter your disk with garbage like Windows XP.  Wiping the HDD and starting over with a clear install is a lazy technicians solution to fixing complex Windows problems.  If anyone tells you today that you need to reformat and reinstall, you need to find a different tech support person.



perhaps, but im thinking more about windows getting corrupted beyond repair, which has happened several time win win 7


----------



## Gnits (Oct 20, 2017)

Installing apps on anything other than the windows system drive is a recipe for disaster and may be the reason you had what appeared to be O/S issues.  I once put all my apps on the D drive. Bottom line, app suppliers rarely test their apps to run on anything other than the c drive and individual developers use default chunks of code when writing to temp files, parameter files etc. it is best to keep your O/S and all apps on at least a 256MB Ssd drive and back it up every day. Keep your data on a different drive if that suits and back that up also.


----------



## mbb (Oct 20, 2017)

Gnits said:


> Installing apps on anything other than the windows system drive is a recipe for disaster and may be the reason you had what appeared to be O/S issues.  I once put all my apps on the D drive. Bottom line, app suppliers rarely test their apps to run on anything other than the c drive and individual developers use default chunks of code when writing to temp files, parameter files etc. it is best to keep your O/S and all apps on at least a 256MB Ssd drive and back it up every day. Keep your data on a different drive if that suits and back that up also.



yes i may have all the data in another hd now ...maybe. heres the first post i made, trouble is that i don't know what the stuff in "my pictures" is. is it data?

_with this new installation of LR ive given a separate dedicated internal hard drive to the folders below, but haven't moved anything LR installed in c drive "my pictures"
camera raw cache
untitled export 
watched folder_


----------



## Linwood Ferguson (Oct 20, 2017)

mbb said:


> _with this new installation of LR ive given a separate dedicated internal hard drive to the folders below, but haven't moved anything LR installed in c drive "my pictures"
> camera raw cache
> untitled export
> watched folder_



The camera raw cache is the Adobe ACR cache and can be moved or even deleted it will just get rebuilt, nothing is needed in it permanently.

The other two folders are used only if you use them -- one was probably created accidentally during an export (an export allows you to specify where they get written), the watched folder (which I did not know was created by default so you might have done that also) is a way to auto-import into Lightroom, and if you are not using it, it can be ignored as well.

Lightroom may create, on install, a catalog folder, and inside it a catalog, preview cache (folder) and backup folder (if you backed that default catalog up).  This stuff is needed only if it is real.  If it is the default and unused catalog with nothing in it, it could all go.  If on the other hand you took the default and put images into it, that might BE your catalog, or might have some images.  You can open it and look, but before you open it, be sure you know exactly where your current catalog is, so you can get back to it (look in catalog settings).


----------



## clee01l (Oct 21, 2017)

mbb said:


> perhaps, but im thinking more about windows getting corrupted beyond repair, which has happened several time win win 7


But it does not happen with Win10 and probably was not so severe with Win7 that it was beyond repair.  It might have been beyond the skill level of the tech that said "reformat and start over" But that is a function of the training of the tech that made the suggestion.


----------



## mbb (Oct 21, 2017)

clee01l said:


> But it does not happen with Win10 and probably was not so severe with Win7 that it was beyond repair.  It might have been beyond the skill level of the tech that said "reformat and start over" But that is a function of the training of the tech that made the suggestion.


yes, im sure it was just too difficult for him to say it was worth fixing ... like with most repair jobs there are different levels of difficultly, and that eventually translates into money which has to be pinched against how [if anything] one stands to lose by reinstalling the OS


----------



## mbb (Oct 21, 2017)

Ferguson said:


> The camera raw cache is the Adobe ACR cache and can be moved or even deleted it will just get rebuilt, nothing is needed in it permanently.
> 
> The other two folders are used only if you use them -- one was probably created accidentally during an export (an export allows you to specify where they get written), the watched folder (which I did not know was created by default so you might have done that also) is a way to auto-import into Lightroom, and if you are not using it, it can be ignored as well.
> 
> Lightroom may create, on install, a catalog folder, and inside it a catalog, preview cache (folder) and backup folder (if you backed that default catalog up).  This stuff is needed only if it is real.  If it is the default and unused catalog with nothing in it, it could all go.  If on the other hand you took the default and put images into it, that might BE your catalog, or might have some images.  You can open it and look, but before you open it, be sure you know exactly where your current catalog is, so you can get back to it (look in catalog settings).


g

Linwood,
thanks very much for explaining that. pretty sure i created the 2 other folders to suit my way of working. my "catalog" is in "my pictures" along with this other stuff, can u suggest why i see an identical folder "Untitled Export" on the other HD, could it be because i didnt move it from inside LR so LR is making a new folder

folders in "my pictures" c drive
Untitled Export= pix roughly the same ones as in identical folder on other HD
Lightroom
Auto Imported Photos= pix i have imported
2017-07-20=  one pic
2017-07-11= nothing


----------



## Linwood Ferguson (Oct 21, 2017)

I can't explain why you see a folder you created.  

For most people exports are throw-aways.  You can always export again, though I cannot speak to your workflow.  

For most people auto-import folders are temporary -- you have import set up to MOVE the images once imported, so it should be empty unless some are waiting.  But I cannot speak to your workflow.

Honestly I am getting lost in what you are asking -- there's no way we can know whether a 2017-07-20 folder with one image is meaningful or not, only you can say.  And you can look on the folder display on the left to see if it's in the catalog?


----------



## mbb (Oct 21, 2017)

Ferguson said:


> there's no way we can know whether a 2017-07-20 folder with one image is meaningful or not, only you can say.  And you can look on the folder display on the left to see if it's in the catalog?



2017-07-20 must be a date of an auto created folder, i will test that theory. i know where the catalog is, no problem there.
thanks again , all the bits of info go to the greater understanding 
ps really like some of ur _steampunk _pix


----------



## Linwood Ferguson (Oct 21, 2017)

re Steampunk yes, fun shoot, I wish they would do it again.

All photos now "in" Lightroom (other than those from the new CLoud) should be visible in the folders view on the left side of lightroom.  It is sometimes confusing, but if you right click on folders and do "Show parent" it shows the next level up, and just keep doing that until you reach the top level folder.  That may help you visualize it compared to Windows Explorer's view.

Assuming you have one catalog, anything you find in a similarly named folder on disk should be there.  Anything with real images not there needs to be explored, to see if you somehow lost/disconnected it.

Unfortunately it is a matter of sleuthing, but eventually you should be able to identify where, and what, everything is, and decide what needs saving.  The standard stuff like previews people here can help with; the items that are real images that were imported or moved or whatever... you have to look at them, see if there are in the catalog or not... and figure it out.

Suggestion:  Figure everything out before you start moving or removing things.  

Further suggestion: If you are scattering (on purpose or not) images around a lot, consider moving them all under one parent folder, e.g. c:\photos, or even under your user pictures folder, but isolate stuff together.  Makes it easier to back up also. 

Final suggestion: Before you move stuff around or delete it, back up the whole drive.


----------

