# Can I delete Previews.lrdata & Smart Previews.lrdata?



## TonyLarge (Mar 17, 2020)

Hi All,

I have an iMac (3.5GHz Quad i5 + 32Gb RAM) with a 1Tb internal HD, and I'm running out of space.  I have over 750,00 images spread over 2 x 8Tb external drives with my catalog on the iMac HD.

The Previews.lrdata is 740GB and the Smart Previews.lrdata 35Gb.  I now only have 80Gb HD space left!

I thought I read somewhere that you can delete the Previews.lrdata files, and next time LR starts it recreates them as you need them.  Will that help me in reducing their size?

Meantime I have been manually doing Library/Previews/Discard 1:1 previews and Discard Smart Previews, but with 20 folders it's getting a bit tiresome, and with only 80GB free HD space I didn't want LR to blow up by doing all 750k in one go!

Any help/advice appreciated.

Tony


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## Johan Elzenga (Mar 17, 2020)

You don't need smart previews, unless you want to be able to edit images when the originals are offline. So yes, if you don't want that then delete the 'smart previews.lrdata' file.

Lightroom needs previews to show you the images. You can delete the previews.lrdata file, but that will only be a temporary solution because Lightroom will rebuild it. As it will only rebuild those previews it needs, it will probably still be an idea to do this because you probably do not look at all 750,000 images quickly.


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## Samoreen (Mar 18, 2020)

Hi,

By the way, anyone should be aware that when previews are rebuilt (when visiting a folder or working on images for which the previews have been deleted/purged), the bug reported here will be triggered. Not a problem for those not using the metadata status flag but otherwise, things may become rather annoying. A very old bug that has never been fixed and that is still discussed in the Adobe feedback forum.


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## Johan Elzenga (Mar 18, 2020)

The OP uses a Mac, so that bug should not be a problem. I did not read through all the messages, but I get the impression that this is a Windows only problem. Correct me if I'm wrong.


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## Samoreen (Mar 18, 2020)

Mac users are also affected by this bug as confirmed by a post in the above mentioned thread.


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