Freeing Disk Space

[rpcrowe]

Saving disk space

I deleted older versions of Photoshop and Bridge as well as Permiere Rush that I never used


Photoshop: I have the 2025 (4.83GB) version
I also have a Photoshop Beta (4.95GB) version


Do I need BOTH the Photoshop 2025 and the Beta version of Photoshop - deleting either one would save 4+GB of space.
[/B]

[Manfred M]

Unless you are testing some of the new functionality, especially in the AI functionality in Photoshop, there is no reason to keep the Beta version.

I deleted my Beta version because I work with the current full release (2025) only.

[DanK]

I also stopped installing the beta versions


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[pnodrog]

It is certainly worthwhile removing unwanted software. However for most photographers it is usually the image files that take up the bulk of the storage area. Large multiple layer PDD or TIFF files being a big offender as is unnecessary duplicates of photographs. For me it's a constant battle. The LightRoom "Virtual Copy" function has reduced my saving different versions of the same photograph almost completely.

[billtils]

Why worry? External storage discs are so cheap that if culling is a real (or emotional) problem don't bother, just move everything in the "don't really want to delete it but .." space on to one.

[DanK]

It is certainly worthwhile removing unwanted software. However for most photographers it is usually the image files that take up the bulk of the storage area. Large multiple layer PDD or TIFF files being a big offender as is unnecessary duplicates of photographs. For me it's a constant battle. The LightRoom "Virtual Copy" function has reduced my saving different versions of the same photograph almost completely.

I agree. It's images that matter, although LR backups pile up as well and need to be cleaned out from time to time.

Apart from the large size of PSD and TIF files, the major storage problem for me is the morass of images. I don't cull enough because it is so tedious to do it. I do a few things to lessen the clutter:

-- when a folder from a shoot has a lot in it, I use star ratings in lightroom to help me find the better ones later.
--I virtually never save JPEGs of anything. When I upload, I use a utility from Jeffrey Friedl that creates the JPEG, uploads it, and then deletes it. In Lightroom, it's trivial to create another JPEG version if I need it.
--when it's helpful, I use virtual copies.

My current setup is programs on an SSD and photos on an internal hard drive, mirrored to an external drive and backed up to the cloud. This works fine, except that when I'm away from home with my laptop, I have no access to my photos, and I have to move photos I edit on the laptop to my main computer by exporting a Lightroom catalog. A pain. I'm thinking of transferring the primary copy of the photos to an external drive, perhaps a Sandisk Desk Drive, so that I can carry my images and catalog with the laptop. The Desk Drive runs about $250, if you shop around.

[pnodrog]

I will soon be doing a lot of travelling and my laptop although reasonably good does not have the storage available for all my photographs. So with that in mind I have transferred all my photographs to an external 4T portable SSD. For performance reasons I have kept the catalogues, previews etc on an internal SSD. At this stage I have not observed any notable reduction in performance. I have not done a denoise since doing it and expect it may take a very little longer.

When I go away I will simply move the catalogues to the external SSD and the current one onto the internal SSD drive of the laptop. The largest drive (HDD) on my desktop computer is now basically a backup drive. This is largely a reverse of how I have done it in the past. However all my photographs are now more or less mobile.

[JDW in Oz]

Many thanks to everyone who has posted here, for so much good advice.

Warning in advance, this will be a long read.

Reducing my photo folders has been an ongoing project of mine this year. I divided the work load into two separate lots, to be done separately.

First, I tackled the film scans dating to 1962-1975, fortunately only a few thousand images as I wasn't prone to machine-gun image-making. Studies, work as a cadet journalist, some travel, adolescence, the cost of film and all the rest.

1975-2008 was more complicated. I moved around a lot, in Canada, to New Mexico (USA) for two years then to Australia where I live now. Media photography and travel stock kept me busy. I sold many mages, and those thousands of originals are no longer in my archive.

With 1962-2008 done, I bit the bullet and flung myself headlong into the World Of Digital.

By my own estimate I have >350,000 D images scattered over several Western Digital portable disks*. Here my twin goals were to reduce the load and save the 'survivors' in separate disks. For convenience I decided to stay with Western Digital, and went with 5 TB portables, two large, one small. (I kept the older WD portables for use as secondary storage and travel backups.)

Sensible, I thought. Forgetting the workload involved. Optimist!!

First I culled the duplicate folders. A third of the way through this (I was by then at 2013) I realised I had doomed myself to two separate forays into m stash, the first involving a thorough search of each and every year/month data folder to check every date folder for data (dates, folder number, description, reference to separate data page on another computer if required, date saved, and number of images) and duplicates.I ended 2013 and stopped.

I retired in 2012 and I've travelled extensively in Southeast Asia since then, also two visits to North America and a thorough search of out-of-the-way Pacific islands, the last two journeys done with my SO. When I travelled with congenial company I tend to research my photo forays more but actually do fewer images, as I'm more involved in the social (and sociable) aspects of our trips. A small blessing, this.

So I removed the non-SEAsia folders and put them in two separate WD portables, one main, one backup. This freed up a surprising amount of space. The plan is for me to someday return to these and cull those I decide to dispose of, but as they are of lesser importance, the deed may or may not get done.

I then went back to 2009 and set to removing duplicate folders (and in too many cases triplicates, quadruplicates, and even a quintuplet!! but then I'm Canadian-born, and we do proudly lay claim to the Dionne Quints). On the surface of things this seemed an easy task, but in the actual doing, no way!! Anyway, I copied the multiple folders to a spare WD portable and later compared file dates and sizes, checked for stray lost images, and finally kept the best folder of the lot. Some 300 folders emerged, of which two-thirds were eventually cleaned up, the best images kept, and the unwanted spares zapped off to the far universe.

Then came the crunch. From 2009 to date. I'll check the entire lot of saved folders, mostly (I hope) a cursory inspection with nothing else to do. Occasional stray images are found and moved to their rightful places, saved for a future decision, or disposed of. About 50 lost folders emerged, put into larger folders and forgotten. These were also relocated to where they belonged.

I've currently finished 2011 and am now into 2013 - 2011 was a too busy year, I was planning my retirement (for late 2012) and setting up my business to be sold. This latter involves blocks of time at home to cull, clean up, sort, save/dispose - I may well be a prime candidate for an ADD/ADHD Dedication Award. So again, fewer photo folders from those two years to dispose of.

From 2014 until Covid and the lockdown I did +/- 60,000 images every year with some but I now realise, not enough culling at the time. Few photos during Covid as I was under lock and key in Australia. From mid-'22 when I was finally set free to again wander the world, I've not yet worked up the courage to go in and look.

With luck and careful planning I hope to be done with all this by January (2026). I will then revisit my films cans images. Maybe. My scanning skills are not the best, and I may find some or even a lot of what I did even with a Plustek MF scanner may have to be redone. Huh...

All this has been in part greatly liberating - the joy of disposing of things (1) I no longer want or have places for in my life and (2) not wanting to leave the task to my partner or family after I'm gone - but there is the emotional price.

Revising those images, so many forgotten memories have returned. Places I've visited, the thing I did there, the hopes and plans and thoughts I had, the cherished family members friends who are no longer here. And our long-gone cats.

I had not given this last point much serious thought - and I've now had to live thru and deal with some at times emotionally challenging thoughts, even one or two disturbing ones.

It certainly has made me aware of my mortality, and realise that my time on this wonderful planet is finite.

From the latter I came to the ultimate realisation that we all have to live through many situations, and some will be difficult or even upsetting. For me, it's good to tackle them at a time when I still can.

Deleting software? A good idea, so well, that will come. Maybe With four laptops and a home PC, it's tempting to just hit Wipe and be done with the load. (No, I won't - all the reloading...)

That's it. Many thanks to those of you (I hope there will be a few) who have had the patience to read thru all this. My wish is that you may get something positive out of it, a few good ideas maybe, or some useful thoughts.

With my usual best wishes to all, DANN (now in Australia, enjoying the last of our winter after five months in hot Indonesia and Malaysia).

* Fellow photographers have hastened to reassure me that I've been supremely restrained in my photographing. Most I know proudly claim to at least 500,000, with one or two above the 1,000,000 mark.

[C J Southern]

I will soon be doing a lot of travelling and my laptop although reasonably good does not have the storage available for all my photographs. So with that in mind I have transferred all my photographs to an external 4T portable SSD. For performance reasons I have kept the catalogues, previews etc on an internal SSD. At this stage I have not observed any notable reduction in performance. I have not done a denoise since doing it and expect it may take a very little longer.

When I go away I will simply move the catalogues to the external SSD and the current one onto the internal SSD drive of the laptop. The largest drive (HDD) on my desktop computer is now basically a backup drive. This is largely a reverse of how I have done it in the past. However all my photographs are now more or less mobile.

Hi Paul,

From the “hope this helps” department ...

I work with dozens of clients where preventing data loss is part of my day-to-day job. That includes regular backups and, unfortunately, dealing with the aftermath when things go wrong. A few key points you might find useful:

SSDs are excellent, but not foolproof

They’re fast and generally reliable, but when they fail, recovery is often impossible. Many SSDs use hardware-level encryption, so a controller failure can make the data unrecoverable. OS-level encryption (like BitLocker) adds another layer of risk if the recovery key isn’t available. And because TRIM actively clears deleted blocks, even simple file recovery often doesn’t work.

The risks go beyond hardware

I’ve seen data lost through fire, theft, crypto-viruses, power surges, accidental deletion, and even lightning strikes. One client’s safe was stolen and dumped in a river; several others thought they were “backed up” until disaster proved otherwise. I often joke that although there may be 50 ways to leave your lover, there's many more ways to lose data.

The 3-2-1 rule still applies

- 3 copies of data

- On 2 different types of media

- 1 copy stored offsite (geographically separate)

That’s the only setup I’ve consistently seen hold up under all scenarios.

Practical approach

For clients, I use Active Disk Image to create full drive images to another device (their free version is more than adequate), then I encrypt the sets (I use AXCrypt), and then store a copy locally plus another with Backblaze (all you can eat for around NZD $15 a month; I currently have about 45TB backed up with them). That way they’re protected both on-site and off-site.

Travel adds risk (theft, failure, etc.), so it’s even more important to have redundancy. If you only have one copy of your photos, they’re vulnerable. Two copies reduce many risks but still leave holes. Three copies in different places is where peace of mind begins.

Bottom line: if the data matters, don’t rely on a single device - SSDs included. The only thing worse than losing data is realising too late that the “backup” we thought we had wasn’t a backup at all.

[pnodrog]

Hi Colin. I'm a bit obsessed with making backups. I start by saving a full res high quality Jpeg copy to the camera's second card. I never delete these but just simply archive the SD card when it becomes full. The RAW photographs on the CF card are transferred to my computer and are only ever deleted from the card (Format) once the computer copies have been duplicated on another external drive. For anyone using a similar system just be aware as you edit using LR to Geotag, add key words etc that the side car files (xmp) will need to be backed after an edit session. For this reason I keep a synced duplicate of my working SSD.

About once a year I make sure I have a copy of all my LR catalog and photographs on an external hard drive and have them stored at a relatives house. I have accumulated a collection of backup drives dating back about 15 years. I suppose my next task is to discard any that no longer work or are just simply too out of date.

Just recently the SSD drive on my laptop stopped working, it's the drive I download to from the camera. I'm pleased to say it's failure caused a minimal inconvenience. The only loss was the files of my most resent exported low res photographs used to post on the internet. None of the source files or LR catalogue were lost.

Personally compared with my film days archiving a drive once a year is still cheap compared to the film and processing costs. My attitude is if you take into account travel costs etc it would be silly to try and save on backing up.

A cloud backup method is also another option. I'm a bit old fashioned and just a bit untrusting of cloud based systems. Control freak? Maybe.

This all probably means I agree with Collin's comments....

[DanK]

My version of the 3-2-1 presently is:

1. Primary storage of photos is on an internal hard drive
2. Secondary storage is on an external hard drive, mirrored.
3. Third storage is an online backup

It would be faster to have #1 as an SSD, but I don't want to rebuild the computer. I may actually do this in the other direction: make my primary photo storage an external SSD that I can cart around when I am away, and use the internal HD as my local backup.

[pnodrog]

My version of the 3-2-1 presently is:

1. Primary storage of photos is on an internal hard drive
2. Secondary storage is on an external hard drive, mirrored.
3. Third storage is an online backup

It would be faster to have #1 as an SSD, but I don't want to rebuild the computer. I may actually do this in the other direction: make my primary photo storage an external SSD that I can cart around when I am away, and use the internal HD as my local backup.

I now use an external SSD as my primary photo storage and find it works very well. When travelling I use the laptop and at home use the desktop. It is now has a fixed assignment as E: drive for both computers.

[DanK]

I now use an external SSD as my primary photo storage and find it works very well. When travelling I use the laptop and at home use the desktop. It is now has a fixed assignment as E: drive for both computers.

That’s exactly what I’m planning. I started shopping for an external SSD but won’t be able to get back to that for a month or so.


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[C J Southern]

Hi Colin. I'm a bit obsessed with making backups.

Excellent to hear! Having too many backups to choose from in the event of an issue is a great problem to have!

So many people just never give it any thought; they appear to assume "it worked yesterday so it'll work tomorrow".

FWIW, it's quite common for old HDDs to develop "stiction" if they haven't been spun up for a while - sometimes even a violent "yawing" whilst they're in a horizontal position is enough to do the job.

[C J Southern]

It would be faster to have #1 as an SSD, but I don't want to rebuild the computer. I may actually do this in the other direction: make my primary photo storage an external SSD that I can cart around when I am away, and use the internal HD as my local backup.

I've moved literally hundreds of clients from HDDs to SSDs. For the most part it's as simple as backing up the HDD using Active Disk Image (free) & restoring it to the SSD; usually takes about an hour (mostly just waiting for the HDD to back up).

One gets the best result if the SSD had an NVME interface though; although the older SATA ones are still faster, they're not a patch on the NVME ones (providing one has a motherboard that can take them).

[pnodrog]

Excellent to hear! Having too many backups to choose from in the event of an issue is a great problem to have!

So many people just never give it any thought; they appear to assume "it worked yesterday so it'll work tomorrow".

FWIW, it's quite common for old HDDs to develop "stiction" if they haven't been spun up for a while - sometimes even a violent "yawing" whilst they're in a horizontal position is enough to do the job.

I'm a retired electronics engineer so don't trust electronics at all. Doing design work one of my important tasks was to look at failure rate statistics, mainly for connectors and interface devices. The figures are reassuring but certainly made me aware they are far from infallible.

[C J Southern]

A cloud backup method is also another option. I'm a bit old fashioned and just a bit untrusting of cloud based systems. Control freak? Maybe.

This is something clients often say to me. Usually it's a combination of 3 concerns:

1. They don't understand what it is. I tell them that - in essence - it's just storage that's not local. It's a mysterious sounding phrase, but at the end of the day it's just a storage location somewhere.

2. They don't trust the provider not to lose it. Not all cloud providers are created equal (and I can't speak for them) but I mostly stuck with Google. In the context of Google, I usually put it to them like this: Google have professionally run climate controlled data centres where data is kept on monitored drives - with redundancy and backups. In contrast, many people have only a single copy of their data residing on a single HDD or SSD. Who is most likely to lose it? It's not even remotely close.

3. They don't trust the provider no to give someone else access to it. In the case of Google, I've seen the same kind of webbing at some data centre security huts that they use on aircraft carriers to stop an aircraft that's had a tail hook failure (so you can't "charge the barrier arm"). Visitors have to sign a non-disclosure agreement and are escorted into the building by an employee (the only one with the access card). To get to where the data is actually stored, staff have to pass iris recognition. The data is encrypted - so even if someone "took home" a drive they wouldn't be able to access the data. The centres are monitored by a security team that's aided by AI. Contrast that with the person at work who goes out for lunch and leaves their computer unlocked - or goes out shopping and doesn't lock the front door.

I had an incident where I deleted a couple of terabytes of data I didn't think I needed - only to discover 1 file that would have been kind of nice to retain. Turns out Google keep a "super-deleted" copy for 23 days. I explained to the service agent what the file was - where it was - and what it was called; he replied "I can see you have "X" amount of deleted data but even I can't see what it is - all I can do is restore all of it then you can get the file you need and delete the rest again". I'm pretty sure that if I threatened to "blow up the president" then someone a few levels up would get access to it pretty darn quick, but as it stands, the normal customer help staff can't access it. In short, they take security incredibly seriously.

Usually the weakest link is the customer who often doesn't take security seriously; they'll use the same credentials for Google, CiC, Amazon, Sporty's Pilot Shop, and XXX porn dot com. One of the 70 sites has a data breach thus giving the bad guys access to all 70. If people use unique, complex, passwords and turn on multi-factor authentication then the chances of someone "hacking" into the like of Google is pretty much zero. In my case I encrypt the data before uploading it anyway so the bad guys are more than welcome to it.

Having just said all that, some people seem to think that since cloud storage is so secure and reliable that they don't need any other forms of redundancy ... but that would be a mistake. I heard the story of a father who took a photo of his son's groin rash and emailed it to his doctor during COVID lockdowns (at his doctor's request). A copy of the photo got pushed up to Google cloud - Google's anti-child-pornography algorithims flagged it and Google froze his account (probably to potentially preserve evidence) and turned his details over to the police (which I have no problem with - better to be safe than sorry). Police investigated and found nothing illegal - at which point you'd think Google would simply reinstate access to his account ... but no. Why? ... I have no idea. I've had dealings with Google about not honouring promises they've made to me (in writing) and it's like talking to a proverbial brick wall. So in that regards there is still risk - it's just a different kind of risk that still needs to be mitigated; even with cloud storage, 3-2-1 backups still need to happen.

I appreciate that most of that won't apply to you, but just thought I'd "put it out there" for other to have a read of (if they're having trouble getting to sleep!).

This video gives a good overview of their security: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLory3qLoY8

[C J Southern]

I'm a retired electronics engineer so don't trust electronics at all. Doing design work one of my important tasks was to look at failure rate statistics, mainly for connectors and interface devices. The figures are reassuring but certainly made me aware they are far from infallible.

Sounds like an interesting career! Mine was possibly similar; I started formal training with the RNZAF in '78 and ended up spending 7 years either training or mostly working on the repair, calibration, and testing of test equipment such as oscilloscopes, signal sources, measuring equipment. Maaaaaaaaaan have things changed; I've now got a hand-held multimeter / signal source / 2 channel 50MHz oscilloscope on it's way that cost me the princely sum of ... just over $100. What a world.

[LenR]

That’s exactly what I’m planning. I started shopping for an external SSD but won’t be able to get back to that for a month or so.

Dan, I have an internal SSD on my desktop and use externals for TIFF backup. Although there are a lot of options available, I have been using Samsung T5 and T7 Drives and have found them reliable and fast enough for my needs.

[DanK]

Dan, I have an internal SSD on my desktop and use externals for TIFF backup. Although there are a lot of options available, I have been using Samsung T5 and T7 Drives and have found them reliable and fast enough for my needs.

Len,

Thanks. Samsung was one of the few at the top of my list after I read reviews. They are now one generation newer, T7 and T9. They aren't very expensive.

Dan