# My LR 5 catalog previews.lrdata folder is 139 gb in size.Help



## ray perry (Jan 2, 2016)

Hi all
My LR 5 catalog previews.lrdata folder is 139 gb in size.Help. Can I delete it or the folders within it and change other settings somewhere so it does not take up so much space ?Any advice will be welcomed .
Thanks in advance


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 2, 2016)

No, you shouldn't delete it. That folder contains all the previews and thumbnails of your images. If you deleted it, Lightroom would initially not show any images anymore (just empty slide mounts) and then it starts to rebuild it. How many images do you have in your catalog? Did you set Lightroom to generate 1:1 previews?


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## ray perry (Jan 2, 2016)

Hi
I have 131,000 pictures in catalog,although that includes 3 external hard drives which I don't use or turn on often  i had lightroom to discard 1:1 previews after 130 days but I have changed it to after 1 week.
I sorta knew not to delete the folders but it just seemed such a huge size .Any other hints to limit future growth would be helpful..thank you for responding.Sincerely, Ray


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 2, 2016)

For 130,000 images that size of the previews folder is normal. My catalog is around 150,000 images and my previews folder is of similar size. In another thread there was a discussion about Lightroom not automatically deleting the 1:1 previews, even if you've set that option. There may indeed be a bug (and that may also make my previews folder somewhat bigger than it should be), so you might see that your previews folder shrinks again in the future after an update. For now, I would learn to live with it.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 2, 2016)

P.S. If the size really is a problem, you could select all the images and then choose 'Discard 1:1 Previews' manually. You would have to repeat that from time to time to keep the size down, until that update hopefully solves the problem permanently.


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## ray perry (Jan 3, 2016)

I checked and on import images I have Lightroom set to standard preview size.Ok I'll see if they "fix" the problem with an update ..I'll live with it ..thanks for telling me that your size is similiar to mine.
Thanks for your quick response .
Sincerely, ray


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 3, 2016)

1:1 previews are not only generated on import if you set that option, they are also generated when you zoom in to 100% in the loupe view. Just as an experiment I selected all my photos and ran 'Discard 1:1 previews'. I checked the size of my previews folder and it is now about 8 GB smaller. Not much, so don't expect too much from any bug fix...

Update: it seems that I made a mistake and the gain was even much less. Makes me wonder if that bug is really true...


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