Lightroom.dat files

[troutfisher]

First off I apologise if this is in the wrong place.
I store my LR catalogue on my "E" drive in a folder called chris catalogue
In this folder I have in addition to the usual LR folders a folder called "Master-v11 ,lcat-data", the folder is 190 mb and contains 73 files and 88 folders and is full of .dat files some dating back to 2019
Firstly what are these and can I get rid of them.
The LR camera raw cache ( now purged and containing no files )is in its usual place as specified in LR so I wonder if the cache was full and LR has created this other folder as overspill.
Any thoughts?

 

[seaodyssey]

What I would do is to rename that folder, I normally put an X at the start.
startup Lightroom, if it works and you check everything works as expected you have your answer.
If it does not, remove the X and you are back to how it was.

I no longer use Lightroom, but have done the above on other apps.

 

[troutfisher]

Thanks for that, I had forgotten that trick.
I renamed it dataold and everything seems to be working OK

 

[sk66]

The critical file to keep/backup is the .lrcat file. The .lrdata file is image previews, and the newer .lrcat-data file contains "sky" and "subject" masks/edits (added w/ LR classic 11).

I would tell LR to create a new backup; the .lrcat file will be backed up automatically; the lrcat-data file will also be backed up if there is required mask information in there, otherwise it won't be... I *think* only the required data is backed up and not the entire folder structure.