# Lightroom and Harddrive Usage



## bwud (Oct 24, 2015)

Can anyone explain this? I have LR pointing to a "F" drive for cache, yet in some operations (in this case photomerge), it uses many gigs of space on "C." The two screenshots of My Computer were taken seconds apart, the only difference between them is that LR was open in the first and closed in the second.

Ideas?


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## tpatana (Oct 25, 2015)

You windows cache is on C, and LR on F. That's why.


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## bwud (Oct 25, 2015)

tpatana said:


> You windows cache is on C, and LR on F. That's why.



Huh, I didn't expect that I would exceed memory and kick into swap space.


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## meywd (Oct 25, 2015)

bwud said:


> tpatana said:
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> > You windows cache is on C, and LR on F. That's why.
> ...



it depends on how much RAM you have


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## symmar22 (Oct 25, 2015)

I assume "C" is a 60/64 GB SSD. From my experience, it is a bit tight for a comfortable Windows install. 120GB is IMO a minimum. 

The best solution is to use a second SSD dedicated for photo work in Lightroom an Photoshop, and a lot of RAM (16GB is an absolute minimum) to avoid caching as much as possible.


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## sulla (Oct 25, 2015)

without investigating in depth, but here are a few thoughts:

it's not necessarily a memory issue. the swap file is not the only file that is able to consume disk space. You can find out whether it is a swap file issue by looking at the task manager. If it shows great memory usage, it probably is. In this case you could put the swap file on a different drive.
It might be windows caching lightroom files. In this case the defined temp-file location - by default c:\windows\temp or C:\temp, - speaking in environment variables it is %temp% and %tmp% - gets populated with a lot of files which are cleared when you close the application. Applications instruct windows to write temporary files to %temp%. You could put those directories on diffenrent volumes, too. Photoshop, however, has its own settings for temporary files.
The file location you set in Lightroom for "camera raw cache" is really just that. A special location, different from windows %tmp%, where lightroom puts cached camera-raw data it needs in the "develop" module instead of letting windows handle the location itself. This, and only this goes to this location. Whether panorama-stitching data also go there, I wouldn't know, likely not. you could google for that.
preview files form the library module goes to a subdirectory of the catalog file. you can't do much about that besides moving the catalog file itself to a different location.
other locations for temporary files are within your user profile within c:\users\yourUID\... Some programs use temporary files there, like internet explorer. Whether lightroom also places temp files there, I wouldn't know without googling.
I'm sure adobe have some nice documentation explaining temp file locations for LR.


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## bwud (Oct 25, 2015)

symmar22 said:


> I assume "C" is a 60/64 GB SSD. From my experience, it is a bit tight for a comfortable Windows install. 120GB is IMO a minimum.
> 
> The best solution is to use a second SSD dedicated for photo work in Lightroom an Photoshop, and a lot of RAM (16GB is an absolute minimum) to avoid caching as much as possible.



For reference: 16GB RAM, C is a 60GB SSD, and F is a 250GB SSD. LRCAT and previews are on F.

And yes, for Windows 7, 60 is really tight. 

I think Sulla is probably spot on, particularly 



sulla said:


> The file location you set in Lightroom for "camera raw cache" is really just that. A special location, different from windows %tmp%, where lightroom puts cached camera-raw data it needs in the "develop" module instead of letting windows handle the location itself. This, and only this goes to this location.



A'ha. I for whatever reason though of it as lightroom cache, not merely the explicitly named "camera raw cache." 

Thanks all.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Oct 25, 2015)

The program likely resides on Drive C, so when you have files open, they will temporarily use drive C. 

You have so little space left on Drive C, I'd suggest upgrading it. Clone software will often not work when the space remaining is tiny, so consider a large drive.

A 500GB SSD runs about $180 in the US.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2W02DV8166


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## bwud (Oct 25, 2015)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> You have so little space left on Drive C, I'd suggest upgrading it. Clone software will often not work when the space remaining is tiny, so consider a large drive.



I will eventually upgrade it, but for now it's not an issue, I was just curious about the cause.

I don't care for cloning. Will merely start fresh.

Thanks again!


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## tpatana (Oct 26, 2015)

meywd said:


> bwud said:
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I have 32GB, doesn't help. It's windows feature to use swap regardless of amount of RAM.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Oct 26, 2015)

tpatana said:


> meywd said:
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> > bwud said:
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I do not see my computer using the page file unless I have a lot of stuff open and use up my 12GB of RAM. You can disable it, but its better to leave it running.

http://www.howtogeek.com/126430/htg-explains-what-is-the-windows-page-file-and-should-you-disable-it/

With enough RAM in modern computers, the average user’s computer shouldn’t normally use the page file in normal computer use. If you do see your hard drive start to grind away and programs start to slow down when you have a large amount open, that’s an indication that your computer is using the page file – you can speed things up by adding more RAM. You can also try freeing up memory — for example, by getting rid of useless programs running in the background.


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## tpatana (Oct 26, 2015)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> tpatana said:
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And my cache is on the boot-ssd, so it doesn't take time to spin up.

I tend to have plenty stuff open, Chrome usually has 40-80 tabs open  Usually starts to slow down when I approach 100, and I need to start closing some tabs.

LR + PS is 90% of the time open also, plus random number of other SW. Looks like currently using 12.2GB memory, but when I have heavy stuff on PS I've seen 20+ numbers.


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## meywd (Oct 26, 2015)

tpatana said:


> Mt Spokane Photography said:
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The page file size is controllable, you can disable it on all hard disks except the SSD for best performance, and since you have lots of RAM, you don't need it to be big.


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