SqueezeGuide · Storage
RAW photos filling your hard drive? Options that actually help
Most of us keep far more RAW files than we use. The fix that lasts is usually a mix. Cull the duds and move finished work off the main drive. Then decide whether to shrink what is left.
Start by culling
Culling costs nothing and it works. Pick the keepers, reject the rest, and delete the rejects you will never need. Do it straight after each shoot, while you still remember what the shots were for.
Move finished work off the main drive
Old jobs do not need to sit on your laptop. Move finished projects to an external drive, and keep the Lightroom catalog on the fast drive so browsing stays quick. Label the archive drive with the years it covers, so you can find a job without searching every drive.
Keep the RAW, or shrink it?
The original RAW keeps every bit of sensor data. A lossy DNG throws some of it away to save space. Shrinking is a good trade for finished work that you do not expect to rework. Keep the original RAW for:
- Work with contract or legal terms that require originals.
- Shots you may print very large.
- Anything you have not finished editing.
Across five camera brands, one sample each, our test went from about 195 MB to about 28 MB. That is about 85% smaller overall.
What 85% smaller buys you
About 85% smaller6 to 7 times the photos
The arithmetic is simple. A file that is 85% smaller is 15% of its old size, so the same drive holds roughly 6 to 7 times as many photos. Cost per photo falls the same way. Divide a drive's price by the number of photos it holds. At six or seven times the photos, the cost per photo drops to about a sixth or a seventh of the old figure.
Greg Benz, a photographer, says compressing his images helped him avoid the need to replace six hard drives on a nearly full RAID array. We cover his method in our lossy DNG guide.
Back up before you delete anything
Once a RAW is gone, the shrunk file is the only copy you have. Before you delete any original:
- Open the shrunk file in Lightroom and check it, with your edits showing.
- Keep at least two copies on different drives.
- Keep one copy off site, or in the cloud.
Squeeze leaves your originals alone. It only moves them to the Trash when you ask. Trash keeps files until you empty it, so you can still get them back. If you trash RAW files that Lightroom knows about, Lightroom may show them as missing until you remove them from the catalog or relink them.
A simple order of work
- Cull the latest shoot and delete the rejects.
- Move finished jobs to an external drive, and keep two copies.
- Shrink only the finished keepers you are happy to hold as lossy files.
- Check the shrunk files, back them up, then empty the Trash.
Run the plan on one finished job first. Move it, shrink it, then open a few shots from start to finish in Lightroom. Check the edits, the previews and the folder names. Only when that job looks right should you do the rest the same way. A small test costs little, and it stops a bad batch from spreading across the whole archive.
Do not shrink a file twice. A lossy DNG gains less from a second squeeze, and the losses add up.
If you want the shrinking step done for you, Squeeze is a Mac app that makes RAW files about 85% smaller. It shows the sizes before you start. Get it at squeeze.photos/#install.