# Local Storage puzzle



## mikebore (Jul 11, 2022)

I have an 80000/690GB Lightroom Cloudy Library which is working well, but there are some puzzles about local storage numbers. The relevant screenshots are shown below.

The obvious primary question is why it thinks 2TB of Local storage is being used. This obviously explains "not enough space available with these settings" although it all seems to work fine!

The secondary question is about reducing the 150GB of disk space it uses. I don't mind using 150GB if I am getting the benefit (eg instant viewing without downloading).

The third screenshot shows that movie proxies are taking up 142GB of Local Storage, and I do have about that quantity of Home Movies (Filter shows 693 movies) in the Library, presumably available to play without needing download.   But rather surprising that the smart previews of the 79000 photos only apparently take 5GB. 

I do have an ALL PHOTOS ALBUM but this is not set to store locally. (It exists so that all photos and videos are stored locally on my 2TB iPad Pro).

Something seems inconsistent about these screenshots.

Any explanations or recommendations welcome!

Thanks


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## Jim Wilde (Jul 11, 2022)

1. I can't answer the first question. Presumably you've tried logging out of the Creative Cloud app, then logging b ack in again? If that doesn't fix the display, I think you'll need to contact Adobe customer support directly.

2. 142GB of that 150GB are proxies, and there's nothing you can do about that whilst you have the option to "Store a copy of all smart previews locally" enabled. The remaining 8GB will be related to the local catalog, can't really avoid that.

3. You're misreading the Proxies entry.....the "2560" sub-folder will be the image smart previews (a smart preview is 2560 px on the long edge), and the "720p" and "1080p" sub-folders will be the video proxies. The 5GB "Previews" sub-folder will be all the smaller previews (Grid and maybe non-edit Display mode).


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## mikebore (Jul 11, 2022)

Thank you very much Jim. Very helpful. 

I have been rethinking my setting to "Store a copy of all smart previews locally" and decided to turn it off.  In practice when I want to show movies or photos away from base) I use my 12.9 (2TB) iPad, not my MacBook Air, and the iPad has the ALL PHOTOS ALBUM stored locally so does not need to download anything. 

After turning off 'Store smart previews locally' the Local Storage window looks like this:





Now debating whether to delete the cache and get 140GB back. 

BTW before changing the setting above I signed out of Creative Cloud and back in, but it had no effect.


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## Jim Wilde (Jul 11, 2022)

The other value of having smart previews stored locally is for performance reasons. If you are editing on the MBP without locally stored SPs (or originals), you will always have to wait while the original image is downloaded from the cloud, whereas if you have an SP locally you can immediately start editing using that SP while the original is downloaded in the background. But if you need the space on the MacHD.....

Apologies about the signing out/in via Creative Cloud comment....I completely misread the first issue, thinking you had a false display about the size of your cloud storage account, rather than a false display of the local space on your MacHD drive!


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## tspear (Jul 11, 2022)

Not sure about 2TB worth. But on my laptop, where I have select albums set to store locally, I normally use about three to five times the total size of the images in the album gets added to my local storage amount. I have found this out trying to "squeeze" in one more album to download to work on when getting ready for a flight. (That laptop is/was rather space constrained).
My guess, Lr for performance reasons is caching multiple sizes of the single image. I never did look further.

Tim


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## mikebore (Jul 11, 2022)

Jim Wilde said:


> The other value of having smart previews stored locally is for performance reasons. If you are editing on the MBP without locally stored SPs (or originals), you will always have to wait while the original image is downloaded from the cloud, whereas if you have an SP locally you can immediately start editing using that SP while the original is downloaded in the background. But if you need the space on the MacHD.....
> 
> Apologies about the signing out/in via Creative Cloud comment....I completely misread the first issue, thinking you had a false display about the size of your cloud storage account, rather than a false display of the local space on your MacHD drive!


 Thanks. I have decided to delete the cache and will see how I go.


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## mikebore (Jul 11, 2022)

tspear said:


> My guess, Lr for performance reasons is caching multiple sizes of the single image. I never did look further.
> 
> Tim


Thanks Tim. Something odd happening...I am not likely to find out now I have turned off local smart previews and deleted the cache......unless I turn local smart previews back on and see if it repeats the anomaly. 

PS I didn't say before but this is a 512GB internal drive so it never really had 2TB of local copies!


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## mikebore (Sep 7, 2022)

I decided to revisit this issue, and started completely afresh. I deleted my local Lightroom Library and downloaded a fresh copy from Adobe, with Store smart previews locally" checked on.

And got the screenshot below. Everything is apparently working normally and correctly.

The size of the Library on disk is 146GB, about right for 80K/695GB., and consistent with the size of the cache changing to 142GB if I uncheck "Store Smart Previews"

The Mac is a M1 MBA with 512GB internal drive, but it is apparently storing 1.8TB of local copies! I assume this is why it says "Not enough space available for these settings" but is working normally. The top line shows 33.28GB free, but Finder shows 143GB free on the machine.

Tim Spear commented that when he "stores albums locally" it uses 3-5 times the space it should do. But I am not storing any albums locally, only Smart Previews. I do have an "All Photos Album" (so that I can force smart previews of all pics onto my 2TB iPad), but this is not "stored locally" on the mac.

Since everything appears to be fine should I just ignore? Is it just a bug?

Thanks


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## tspear (Sep 7, 2022)

@mikebore 

Sorry, I have no Apple devices to compare too. We need someone with Apple stuff to look into it.
@Jim Wilde  can you assist?

Tim


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## Jim Wilde (Sep 7, 2022)

tspear said:


> @Jim Wilde  can you assist?


Not really. There's obviously some sort of corruption going on there, it looks like a bug but I haven't seen any widespread reporting of anything similar.

If that was my system, for sure I'd be deleting the local library again to see it that makes a difference. If not, time to report it at the Adobe Community Forum.


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## mikebore (Sep 7, 2022)

Thanks Jim, I thought I would try on my other Mac to eliminate a variable, but the same thing is happening. It has only just started downloading but the settings window already looks like the screenshot blow. This implies whatever the problem is it lies with my Library in the Cloud. Are there any maintenance or validation checks I can run on the Cloud library? Thanks


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## tspear (Sep 7, 2022)

@mikebore 

I am not aware of any. Time to contact Adobe customer support. You can also try the Adobe community forums where a few Adobe employees occasionally comment.

Tim


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## mikebore (Sep 8, 2022)

tspear said:


> @mikebore
> 
> I am not aware of any. Time to contact Adobe customer support. You can also try the Adobe community forums where a few Adobe employees occasionally comment.
> 
> Tim


Have posted this:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/ligh...ne-all-working-ok-ignore/idi-p/13185854#M7502

Will see if anything comes out of this before contacting UK Adobe Customer Support, as I am extremely deaf and avoid phone if possible. 

Note that since my last post here the second mac finished downloading the new copy of the Library with the same result.


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## tspear (Sep 8, 2022)

Adobe used to have a TTY system for tech support and sales in the USA. An IT coworker of mine used to use it. 
I would be surprised if no such option exists in the UK. 

Good luck!

Tim


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## mikebore (Sep 8, 2022)

Thanks. I am not familiar with the term TTY but found more here. I don't have a device but it seems a bit like Chat Support which I use in many other situations, so will investigate.  I have Made-for-iPhone hearing aids which transmit straight to my HAs which work well for some voices and accents.


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## mikebore (Sep 8, 2022)

SOLVED! 

Long story short, on a two hour support chat with Adobe he asked me to install older versions Lightroom. I went back to 4.4, but we eventually narrowed it down to a bug which came in on version 5.4.

Here is a screenshot from version 5.3:





Thanks for the help and encouragement here.


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## Johan Elzenga (Sep 8, 2022)

Interestingly enough, there is a different answer from @RikkFlohr in the Adobe Community forums. According to the explanation, it's not a bug but as designed: https://community.adobe.com/t5/ligh...sed-needed-in-preference-dialog/td-p/13185854


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## mikebore (Sep 8, 2022)

Johan Elzenga said:


> Interestingly enough, there is a different answer from @RikkFlohr in the Adobe Community forums. According to the explanation, it's not a bug but as designed: https://community.adobe.com/t5/ligh...sed-needed-in-preference-dialog/td-p/13185854



Yes I have seen his reply (which he wrote before I posted that reverting to version 5.3 removes the problem) and responded. 

With his explanation, even if somehow I was requesting local Orginals *and* Smart Previews for all 81050/686GB it would only add up to requesting 696+142=838GB of local storage, not 1.8TB.


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## mikebore (Sep 8, 2022)

mikebore said:


> Yes I have seen his reply (which he wrote before I posted that reverting to version 5.3 removes the problem) and responded.


I meant to include that reverting to version 5.3 fixed it on both computers.


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## RikkFlohr (Sep 8, 2022)

While behaving as designed wrt reporting more space than the drive can hold - the values are still not correct given the data. We have opened a bug for this.


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## mikebore (Sep 8, 2022)

RikkFlohr said:


> While behaving as designed wrt reporting more space than the drive can hold - the values are still not correct given the data. We have opened a bug for this.


Thanks Rikk, are you referring to something that looks wrong in the version 5.3 screenshot? Can you clarify?


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## tspear (Sep 8, 2022)

mikebore said:


> Thanks. I am not familiar with the term TTY but found more here. I don't have a device but it seems a bit like Chat Support which I use in many other situations, so will investigate.  I have Made-for-iPhone hearing aids which transmit straight to my HAs which work well for some voices and accents.



Sorry, showing my age. TTY is rather dated tech. I am not current on the best methods outside of chat support.
Glad you found an answer.

Tim


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## mikebore (Sep 8, 2022)

RikkFlohr said:


> We have opened a bug for this.


In case useful, the Chat Support person created case Case ADB-25960065-B8N6 CRM:07497000000896 for this. I have submitted Diagnostic logs to this case number.


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## mikebore (Oct 18, 2022)

Today's update to version 6.0 seems to have fixed this issue


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## Victoria Bampton (Oct 21, 2022)

Oh great, thanks for reporting back.


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