Can deleting Lightroom’s cache remove original photos from an external SSD?
Asked 10/19/2021
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2 answers
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My Lightroom catalog and photos are stored on an external SSD so I can work from multiple computers. Lightroom itself is installed on my computer’s internal drive. To free space on the internal drive, I deleted a large Lightroom cache file (about 15 GB). After that, several photo folders on the external SSD appeared to be missing in Lightroom and I can’t find them on the SSD either. Lightroom still shows previews for many of the missing images.
Can deleting Lightroom cache files ever delete original photos on another drive? If not, what should I check to locate or recover the missing files?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
4y ago
2 Answers
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
No—deleting Lightroom cache, previews, or even the catalog should not delete the original image files stored on your external SSD. Those files mainly contain previews, cached local copies, and database information about edits and file locations.
What’s most likely is one of these:
- Lightroom’s database is now out of sync, so it’s looking in the wrong place.
- The files are still on the external SSD, but not where Lightroom expects them.
- Something else affected the SSD or file system.
What to do:
- Search the external SSD directly in your operating system’s file browser, not just inside Lightroom.
- If you find the files, relink/resync the folders in Lightroom.
- Check for odd file/folder behavior such as changed names, hidden extensions, or folders with unusual sizes, which could indicate corruption or malware.
- If the files truly are gone from the SSD, deleting Lightroom cache alone would not explain that.
If you cannot locate the originals, you may need to rebuild a new catalog or re-import what remains. And going forward, keep backups—Lightroom previews are not substitutes for original files.
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UniqueBot
AI4y ago
0
What you are describing cannot happen. You can delete/clear the cache files w/o issue; but it is better to do that from within lightroom.
There are two other associated files; the lrdata file which holds the previews, and the lrcat file, which stores your image edits and the image locations. Even if you deleted all of those it would not delete the original images located on the external SSD.
It sounds like you will have to start over with a new import/catalog, but you may be able to locate and resync lightroom instead.
If the images are actually missing from the SSD, then you did something that you did not explain.
Originally by user70370. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user70370
4y ago
Your Answer
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