LrC suddenly creates new / double photo folder after import

Report · Apr 27, 2025

I have just fished updating LrC in connection wtih buying a new Mac mini. After the update I imported a folder with photos but they appear in a new "photo" folder.

I have attached a screenshot with the new folder and subfolder above the "old" just containing a test

folder

I have all my photos on a shared network drive on a Synology NAS - the shared drive is the "parent folder" for all my subfolders. When I reveal in finder both the "new" and the "old" shared drive points to the same shared drive in finder. The same applies regarding single photos.

Why does LrC see 2 versions of the same shared drive and why does it suddenly decide to link new imports to the "new" shared drive? .... and does anyone have a solution to solve the problem?

Thanks in advance

Carsten - Denmark

Report · Apr 27, 2025

I have just fished updating LrC in connection wtih buying a new Mac mini. After the update I imported a folder with photos but they appear in a new "photo" folder.
Carsten - Denmark

By @COL-DK

Most likely the capitalization error. https://www.lightroomqueen.com/capitalization-catalog-error/

Report · Apr 28, 2025

Thanks for your reply and suggestion. I have tried the solution described but when i point the folder location back again to the shared drive i get the same duplicate shared drive in my LrC library.

One really good information I discovered by following the workflow is that I now am aware that the"old" shared drive is called "/volumes/photo" and the "new" shared drive is called "/volumes/Photo"

I will dig into my Synology NAS to try to find out why the shared drive appears in 2 variations on the same path.

Kind regards

Carsten

Report · Apr 28, 2025

Please disregard this message

Report · Apr 28, 2025

@COL-DK: "I will dig into my Synology NAS to try to find out why the shared drive appears in 2 variations on the same path."

The first thing to check is whether the Mac is connecting to the NAS using the long-deprecated AFP protocol or the SMB (preferred). There have been reports over the years of LR getting confused by case issues with Synology NAS volumes using AFP.

Report · Apr 29, 2025

Thanks for your reply. By digging further into the issue it seems you are right about having both afp and sbm protocol available for LrC can cause issues. I am following that track and are trying to find out if can turn off AFP on my Mac without causing any other problems - afp being Mac native protocol - I will definitely disable afp on my Synology NAS and see where that takes me.

Kind regards

Carsten

Report · Apr 29, 2025

I don't think you can disable AFP in Mac OS, and no one else has reported that being necessary. But you can definitely select SMB instead of AFP for your Synology:

https://kb.synology.com/en-af/DSM/help/DSM/AdminCenter/file_winmacnfs_desc?version=6

Apple deprecated AFP starting in Mac OS 10.9.

Report · Apr 30, 2025

Thanks again for taking time to try to help me. Since last post I checked about Mac and AFP - it seems that Apple has stopped using AFP on newer Mac due to security reasons. I have checked file sharing on my new Mac and that is done by SMB. Also I have checked that AFP is disconnected as a file sharing service on my NAS - it was allready disconnected. Also I have checked that SMB is running properly. Also bonjour service is running on the NAS

I have rebooted both Mac and NAS to see if that would make a difference - it did ... it didn´t solve the problem - it rearranged it 🙂 In my library in Lrc I now have a shared drive called "Photo" (/Volumes/Photo) and just below that a folder called "Photo" (also /Volumes/Photo) the path to both locations contains upper case "P" I have attached photo below

During import of a test folder I also noticed that the import history changes path after connecting the new Mac - switching from "Volumes/photo" to "Volumes/Photo" - that makes me wonder if the problem is caused by some cache related reasons and is it possible to flush that cache?? I have attached photo below

Kind regards

Carsten

Report · Apr 30, 2025

"In my library in Lrc I now have a shared drive called "Photo" (/Volumes/Photo) and just below that a folder called "Photo" (also /Volumes/Photo) the path to both locations contains upper case "P""

If you don't want to see that top-level "Photo" folder, right-click it and do Hide This Parent. (This isn't affecting your main problem with "p" and "P".)

Report · Apr 30, 2025

Thanks for the advice - that might be the quick fix while I continue to look into my NAS to discover the reason why LrC is showing a Shared drive and a folder with the same name 🙂

Thanks a lot for your help trying to solve this.

Kind regards

Carsten

Report · Apr 30, 2025

It seems pretty clear that Mac OS and/or Synology have reported both "photo" and "Photo" to LR, confusing LR. But the exact mechanism remains unclear to me.

You could try resetting LR's preferences, which starting in LR 14.3 will also clear some caches. Use the Preferences > General method to clear the caches also. This article gives details and explains how to save a backup copy of preferences in case this doesn't help:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/how-do-i-reset-lightrooms-preferences/

Report · Apr 30, 2025

Currently I am out of ideas regarding my NAS so I will give a reset of LrC a chance 🙂