Indesign across a Nas server being a nightmare?

[Arthur Perry_FREELANCE]

Hey Guys,

So at my current company we are creating a collection of catalogues. Combining thousands of images all drawn from separate folders named stored and amended through from our Nas server. We have 4 macs running on high serria and 1 PC (running on god knows what our Head of IT has put into that beast, mostly for animation.)

Each image for the catalogue has to obviously be photographer, categorised and placed into a named folder where we can then link the file from the server into our document. During the design process amendments have to be made to garments and products throughout the process. The way ID is crashing constantly and failing to export is putting a unreal amount of pressure on our team and updating links is proving to crash the software religiously and has resulted in courted final files after streams of amendments setting us back a week.

I am NOT an IT specialist, merely a designer but I understand that Macs talk to our server differently to a PC and adobe products don't like to work off of anything other than a locally sourced scratch disk. That simply isn't an option with Indesign and creating our catalogues from the amount of people that need to access and change products from different departments across our server. I understand that going onto the creative cloud is the option that is going to be suggested.... but the shear volume of cloud storage we would need would be to expensive a outgoing to be an option for us. Could anybody suggest any work around for speading up my design teams access to these linked files and reduced the amount of times we have to deal with crashes?

any suggestions i can take to our head of IT no matter how complex, (as long as he understands it) would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

[Dave Merchant]

The quick and dirty workaround if the direct link to NAS files isn't working is to make a local copy of the NAS folder, relinking InDesign to those copies; then immediately before you press 'Export', you re-synchronize your local folder with the NAS and click 'update all' in InDesign's links panel. I assume that the process of adding/updating the photos on the server is working fine, so the NAS will always have the definitive versions.

If the INDD file is also being shared, you can mount the local 'NAS copy' using the same drive letter on each workstation.

It's akin to making something like Dropbox for your local network, but controlling the sync yourself. Yes it uses a truckload of storage space, but if your centralized system isn't working then it's the only alternative.

There are plenty of apps (e.g. FreeFileSync) which will compare local and remote folder trees and only copy the modified files.

[coldjtf · Accepted solution]

In my experience the issue is the mixed platform environment you're working in.

I run a small Mac studio creating catalogues and the only way I've been able to reliably make it work is have a dedicated Mac on the network with a ton of storage on it, and the 5+ iMac's access that.

Any time I've mixed Windows in with this it's caused problems that are just too numerous and too complicated to solve and seriously affected productivity, these issues are the implementation on Apple side and Microsoft side - it just doesn't work reliably despite what they say.

I have client iMacs connecting to a 2010 MacPro with SoftRaid 1+0 over AFP.

All the content creation assets reside on that MacPro.

They all use the same account on that MacPro to alleviate any permissions issues.

We get the added benefit of great spotlight searches (via Adobe Bridge).

I also backup this central storage in several places.

This central storage Mac just runs the client OS, MacOS server isn't needed.

We can also open over the network (you don't need to copy locally and the copy back)and other than the occasional 'file in use' Adobe error it's pretty reliable, despite the fact that Adobe doesn't support this workflow.

If I were going to implement this from scratch today (for my needs), I would purchase the new MacMini and attach some sort of SSD RAID storage to that using SoftRaid and connect in the same way.

[Arthur Perry_FREELANCE]

This is the concept our head of IT has come up with "purchase the new MacMini and attach some sort of SSD RAID storage to that using SoftRaid and connect in the same way." We will be testing this later this week. hopefully this will reduce the issues and the PC can just still talk directly to the server as per usual, we haven't had any issues with the PC tbh only the macs.

We use a 12bay rack Synology Nas running AFP on our network.

Thank you for your advice! Will update on this thread if any issues come up.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Our studio is a combo of Macs and Windows computers (about equal number) and we all store our files on a NAS drive. No problem with exchanging files among us. Years and years of use and not one hiccup between the platforms, and we work on large, complex InDesign, Photoshop, and media files.

A NAS operating system is neither Windows nor Mac--it's "agnostic" if you want to think of it that way, so any Mac, Windows, or Linux computer should be able to exchange files with it.

IIRC from my IT technician, the Macs require a slightly different setup to the NAS, I believe SMB. But your IT folks should be able to get that info from the manufacturer of your NAS. We use a Synology NAS.

Your description in your last post seems like a nightmare in the making. You'll be running 2 different storage systems; the existing Synology NAS (which is a RAID, too), and the MacMini with a separate RAID attached.

Why would you want 2 different versions of your data?

The entire idea about centralized data storage is to reduce redundancy or out of date files, to ensure that there is only one version of your data files.

I would get better information about fixing the Mac connections to the Synology NAS, either from Synology itself, their support forum, or from a generic Synology forum. There are millions of Synology NAS drives out there and their users have their own dedicated forums for issues like this.

[alexb27411097]

Dang, really? Cuz I'm having the same problem and this post is the only really relevent thing google is giving me, only I can't find the solution. SMB is a windows-based protocol, so that's out of the question, right? I don't have IT guys, just me and google - and one of us sucks.

[ivoarps]

We work in a Mac/Windows environment, and use a Synology NAS drive. We have seldom issues, and work often with complicated Indesign productions, all through network, never from local volumes.

What protocol is used for the Network? AFP, SMB or NFS? Perhaps the NAS Operating System needs updating?

What processes are running on the NAS or Mac that could interfere?

Is it really a network related issue, or is there damage in the file, illustrations or preferences?

Could it be perhaps a backup issue, or is Indesign saving in the background? Does the crash occur in every Indesign version (CS6, CC2015 etc.)

If you use a Synology NAS, you can perhaps find something on their forums? In any case; it should work normally, Mac/Windows can work perfectly on the same network.