Lightroom doesn't delete files.

Question

I have latest drivers and versions of everything... running lightroom on latest Intel iMac and Intel MacBook.
I am not sure wether this applied to Lightroom 1 as I never noticed it... but with version 1.1 it does not seem to "Delete from Disk" in the Photos, Delete option... the RAW file is still on my hard drive.
Anyone else experience this?

Answer 1

If you have 20 minutes... here is why I found that I was unable to delete or move folders or images when I first started using Lightroom.
The deletion problem turned out to be the result of two missed (or wrongly checked) options when splitting up my original catalog and exporting it into two smaller catalogs.
I am aggravated at myself that I screwed up and let it happen -- but I think Lightroom's explanation of the options when importing/exporting catalogs could be clearer and have some warnings of the potential for massive problems...
Here is what happened to me:
I exported and created 2 catalogs from my very large initial catalog. I had always imported all of my image files "at current location" and the imports often included files that I really did not need to show in Lightroom. Files that were buried in the root folders from a shoot along with the raws and older high quality jpg, tif or psd images that I wanted imported in Lightroom. This became a drag as I found a lot of "duplicate images" with the same filenames - many that were of low resolution images that had been created in various web galleries and the like over the years. I soon realized I had some 24,000+ images and with probably 20% of those being low resolution images that I wanted to delete from Lightroom.
I decided that maybe splitting up the large catalog in 2 catalogs - one for Personal and one for Photoshoots -- would be a good place to start in managing my already imported images. In many cases I had already ran many of the images through the Development module and created .tif edits and wanted to make sure everything I had done was also imported into the new catalogs.
It looks like I misunderstood Lightroom's options and while creating the new catalogs I unintentionally exported the original image files (called "negative files"?) with the exports -- creating duplicates of all images (!) and their folder structure that was in my initial catalog and placing them in the Lightroom catalog folders.
Not realizing what I did, I dove in to the new catalogs and began going through and removing Gigs of unwanted files both from Lightroom and from disk, rating images and doing color and contrast corrections. I worked on many images ( hundreds for sure )
It was not until my computer backup gave me the error message that my "disk was full" did I think anything was out of whack. It was strange as I had deleted so much and had carefully deleted them in the exact method required by Lightroom (in Folders, remove from disk etc.) to make sure they were also deleted on disk.
I checked my original files and saw that my deletions had not taken.... They were mostly still there... and most of my folder moves did not take place either! I was baffled. Then I though, OK... but, that still would not account for my 500GB disk filling up so quick -- I did not even consider the two problems were related. I decided to find out where the meat was... XP does not give good folder size info and I have hundreds of folders on my system so I downloaded a Folder Size program and set it up..
I was shocked to see that my Lightroom folder now was larger than my original images folder!!! When I looked into the Lightroom folders I found the duplicate folder tree with all the duplicate images! At first I still didn't understand why... only after a lot of head scratching, researching and doing test imports, deletes, and moves, and rehashing my situation, and all possibilities about them, did the actual cause for everything become clear to me...(no answers from the adobe board had close to an answer as no one except me, I guess, could ever get themselves so turned around!)
Only the new imports were deleting from my original files location... All the images in the new catalogs were deleting images from their own sets of dedicated image files... in the Lightroom folder! which I had not know were created or existed... :-( Yikes... I had done a "Show in Explorer" more than a few times, but was apparently so deep in my folder structure that I never noticed that it all sat in the Lightroom folder and not in my My Pictures folder where I thought the images were being accessed (and deleted from)
This made for a big confusing mess.
The reason it appeared that some files deleted and others did not was because I had imported hundreds of new images into the new catalogs and had alway imported them "in their original location" so they were only in the original file structure and they deleted fine.... but all the ones from the catalogs I had created (when I checked that "include original negatives") did not delete in the original file structure -- however they were deleting in the Lightroom catalog folders where they were duplicated... making me think some files deleted or moved while others did not.... [sigh]
Sooo... rather than trying to figure out how to get back to having my master files only in their original location, and still be able to keep all of the changes that I have made in the new Catalogs -- including knowing which ones I had deleted in the new Catalogs and old catalogs along with the folder structure changes and all... I just "bit the bullet" -- and wrote all that time and work off....[double sigh] I went back to my backups from just before I split out the new catalogs... and pretended those days of work on the new catalogs was never done...
I re-split the one original catalog from my earlier backup and making sure I didn't include the "negative files" created the new catalogs and went back to editing and deleting....kind of like pretending it never happened....
So now everything seems a bit DejaVu... but boy am I getting a lot of practice with my Lightroom shortcuts. :-)
I will never make that mistake again.