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xplorer1
Participant
September 19, 2018
Question

LAN drive support in PSE 2018

  • September 19, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 1819 views

When I upgraded to PSE 14 I found that support of LAN drives (e.g. WD Book) had disappeared. As I keep all my 17,000 photos on one, this was a bit of a pain. I ended up emailing Adobe's director of customer experience, who put me in touch with the right techies. First they suggested I put all my photos on my hard drive, then they denied that LAN drive support was ever there: I showed them the release notes that documented it. Eventually (7 months) they took it on board and fixed it in PSE 15.

I'm now looking at upgrading again, to PSE 2018 or whatever the latest release is, and and am looking for someone to confirm that LAN drive support is present. Anyone using a LAN drive successfully (or not)?

Thanks...Neil

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1 reply

MichelBParis
MichelBParis
Legend
September 19, 2018

I showed them the release notes that documented it.

Interesting.

Could you be more precise about the dates of those release notes?

Edit1:

The last time I saw a semi-official answer was in the feedback forum:

Elements 13: Can Organizer be used with a Synology Network Attached Storage? | Photoshop Family Customer Community

Edit 2:

This other old discussion may be useful to understand issues with the catalog and NAS.

Using SQL to change NAS path in PSE 6

Also have a look at the link to John R Ellis explanation.

Edit 3:

Network drives

X
xplorer1Author
Participant
September 20, 2018

Michael, here's an extract from an email to Adobe tech support from April '16. As you can probably tell, I was getting pretty tetchy at the time! You should be able to follow the hyperlink to the Release Notes. Do you have an answer to my original question?

"Dear Piyush, thank you for your reply.

You ask me to let you know if I "have further doubts in this regards". I do, with regards to both the substance and tone of what you say.

Firstly, you tell me something that I - and many others to judge from the volume of debate on your own and other forums about this issue - have used for many years "may or may not work", and that the network drive "might not have enough permission of read and write". Frankly I find this an unacceptably unprofessional response. Adobe writes, maintains and sells this product. Surely its technical staff KNOW what it's capable of, and what read and write permissions would be necessary. I feel as if you're trying to brush me off.

Secondly, I've read the manuals available on the Adobe website:

Adobe's release notes for PSE10 state:

“Network support: You can access photos from network drives if they are mapped to a drive letter or if you use a valid share name. However, Photoshop Elements cannot store any of its working files on network drives.”

So keeping photos on network drives IS supported. There's no mention of withdrawal of this functionality in the 11, 12 and 13 release notes. 14 release notes can’t be found, but PSE14 FAQ state:

What features from previous versions are not available in Photoshop Elements 14?

A handful of features from previous versions are not available in Photoshop Elements 14 due to new product support for 64-bit systems. They include:

  • Photo Mail
  • Photomerge Style Match
  • Magic Extractor tool
  • Texture Fill
  • Frame from video
  • Interactive layout mode in Photomerge Panorama
  • Photoshop Showcase
 

There's no mention in the above list of network drive support being removed. And the Editor works perfectly well with pictures on my network drive. If the Editor can, why can the Organiser no longer do so?

With regard to the tone of your reply, you dismissively tell me "The solution is simple which to move the photo library to the Hard drive physically present on the computer"

Your "solution" is neither simple nor suitable for my use of PSE. I keep the photos on a network drive for the very simple reason that it allows other household members to access them as well, regardless of my laptop being powered on or home network-connected. I have also - as I have told you repeatedly - just moved to a (very expensive) new laptop with a 256GB solid state drive. The remaining free space on it would be largely consumed by my photo library, so I need network drive support in Organiser to work again.

Please refer this back to your management for comment.

MichelBParis
MichelBParis
Legend
September 20, 2018
xplorer1  wrote
Michael, here's an extract from an email to Adobe tech support from April '16. As you can probably tell, I was getting pretty tetchy at the time! You should be able to follow the hyperlink to the Release Notes. Do you have an answer to my original question?

Let's be clear:

- I am just another user like you, except that I have been following this forum and the feedback one for years and that I am specifically reading catalog related questions. I have strictly no inside info about the technical aspects of your issue. I also do know that no one at Adobe is at liberty to publicly comment on certain issues on account of the rules of firms in the stock exchange. For instance, I consider the comment given by Chris Cox in the feedback forum are the best info you can get officially. Don't expect members of the support team to tell you more.

- On the other hand, before answering your question, I wondered if it was worth the trouble. There are so few discussions in this forum about LANs that I am pretty sure you won't get any answer from people mastering the use of LANs. That's the nature of this forum. People happy with their solution won't browse the forum regularly to give help. They come because they have issues. So, I thought that what I could do was only to search the forum for you to gather some information.

Now, a user to user forum is the place to discuss such matters and examining different points of view. Here is mine.

I don't believe at all with the future of NASs with Elements as you would like. That's good for IT people wanting to manage their home computers like at the office. The trouble is that in most homes, it's increasingly difficult to be the boss with one's mates and children. For them sharing means freedom and Internet. Good luck. So, the other need may be safety, but today, it's much safer and cheaper to:

- store your photo library AND catalogs on external USB drives (several ones on different locations)

- plug in your external drive alternatively to your desktop or laptop and work immediately.

So while a NAS is an adequate media for backups, the demand will soon be marginal in the case of Elements.

However I don't see any technical issue in storing the media files on a LAN today and I very much doubt there has been something new with the latest PSE versions, at least for catalogs. From the tone of your question, I imagine you have a serious doubt about the notion of 'support'. I hope like you that other users with NASs will bring their experience here. For me, if supports means you can store your files on a NAS, then you can. If support means you'll get help from the Adobe support team when you have technical issues, it's NO. By the way can you find recent 'release notes' for Elements?

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