P: Backup to NAS hangs at "Copying Catalog"

[MrAbeFroman]

Hi!  After losing a hard drive to a spilled cup of coffee (thankfully, not a single file lost), I just upgraded to new M1 MacBook Air with Big Sur 11.1.  I have Lightroom Classic version 10.1 installed and working well, except when I backup the catalog to my Synology NAS as I close out of Lightroom, it hangs on the backup at "Copying Catalog".  I've let it run for hours and nothing. 

If I backup to the local SSD everything works great.  Lightroom has no issues accessing the NAS for import and access to the original raw files that I keep on the NAS.  It does seem to start the backup as the NAS will show the dated folder along with the Catalog.lcat file and lrcat-wal file, but it never zips and completes the process.  I found a post that suggested giving Lightroom access to Full Disk, which I've tried, but that didn't seem to make any difference.

I've been manually copying the backups to the NAS without issue, but really want this to work automatically to ensure I always have good backups.  HELP!  Thanks in advance!

MacBook Air M1

Big Sur 11.1

Lightroom Classic 10.1

Synology DS718+

[spvb49713624]

Hi,

I'm having exact the same problem since switching from a Intel based Macbook Pro and MacMini (both running Big Sur 11.6.2) to a Macbook M1 Pro (2021) running MacOS Monterey 12.1 with the most recent LR Classic universal app. Both Intel machines backup to my Synology NAS with no problem (and still do). The M1 Pro crashes eventually after a few minutes. Backup LrC-catalogue to local SSD and copying this to the NAS manually is my workaround for now, but I'm not happy with that. Fully agree with @TDC3000: seems obvious that this is a bug in the LrC-app that needs to be fixed.

Issue occurs on

MacBook M1 Pro 14 inch

Montery Big Sur 12.1

Lightroom Classic 11.1

Synology DS916+

Issue dus nog occur on

Macbook Pro (2016) 13 inch / MacMini (Late 2014)

Big Sur 11.6.2

Lightroom Classic 11.1

Synology DS916+

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

I've tested this scenario

• Mac (Intel) 11.6.2 - Backup Successful
• Mac M1 12.0.1 - Backup Successful

Destination: Synology DS218+ mounted as SMB

I am not able to replicate your failure. 

[spvb49713624]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for your feedback, inspired me to do some more testing and other things over the weekend.

I updated my Synology NAS to the latest version of DSM (7.0.1) and gave my router a reboot. This led to the following testresults (catalog size is 1.5 GB, back-up is 575 MB).

MacBook Pro M1 (Pro chip, 16 GB RAM, MacOS 12.1):

Backup to local SSD: successful

• Local backup process is done within a minute
• Copying backup to from SSD to NAS is done in less than 10 seconds (both over wifi- and Gigabit-connection)

Backup to NAS: successful

• Over Wifi: Backup takes 25 minutes, most of the time copying catalog; optimising and compressing is done in de last two minutes
• Over Gigabit connection: 9 minutes; optimising and compressing catalog is done in de last two to three minutes

Macmini (Late 2014, 8GB RAM, MacOS 11.6.2)

Backup to local HDD: successful

• The backup process tot local HDD takes about 4 minutes
• Copying backup tot NAS is done in less than 10 seconds

Backup to NAS: successful

• Over Gigabit connection: The backup process to NAS takes about 6 minutes

So it seems my good old Macmini outperforms the brand new Macbook Pro. That is surprising, is it not?

Before the weekend, my Macbook Pro timed out on the connection to the NAS during the backup over wifi and crashed. Unfortunately I didn't save the crash-reports. Anyway, a crash seems no longer to be the case (for the moment), but the time it takes to make a backup over a fast wifi-connection is disappointing. As is the finding that the Macbook Pro is outperformed by the Macmini, even when connected to a Gigabit ethernet connection.

So if not a bug, it is a performance issue at least. Maybe the folks at Adobe can look into that.

[TDC3000]

Thank you for the follow-up @spvb49713624 @Rikk Flohr: Photography - makes sense that this is an unexpected performance drop in the move from Intel to M1 for this feature, rather than a failure, which is reassuring.

I will time the next catalog backup event and report it here.

[TDC3000]

Also @Rikk Flohr: Photography and Adobe team - it is SUPER helpful if you add commentary before simply moving a bug report to discussions. When you do that (provide no feedback), it comes across as disinterest in improving the product and adds unnecessary frustration, not to mention extra work for you.

Thank you for accepting the feedback in the spirit it's intended, for a more productive and loyal ecosystem user base  😉.

[TDC3000]

@Rikk Flohr: Photography @spvb49713624  - Following up on catalog backup performance issues:

Backup directly to Synology NAS did complete after 4 minutes (~ 1.5g catalog) successfully.

Agreed with you @spvb49713624 this is an unexpected degradation in performance, not a failure, considering that previously this task took seconds (direct to NAS) rather than minutes.

I don't want to get into semantics about what a bug is and isn't; the information is presented here and can be looked into if people are interested/care to.

The former suggested workaround - copy to SSD and transfer to NAS - is not necessary and probably a data loss risk based on these experiences. 

Thanks to all for adding commentary and helping to flesh this out.

[ernst22779960c5q0]

Hi MrAbeFroman,

did you ever solve this problem? I encounter exactly the same issue.

Macbook, NAS, etc. Photos on NAS with no problem, but back-up of the catalog hangs. All of a sudden it seems, no change on hardware, perhaps an upgrade of MacOS, I'm not sure, don't use LR on a daily bases.

I've scrolled to the replies but found no concrete solution, but perhaps I overlook something.

So I'm interested in any useable tip you recieved.

Thanks!

Ernst

[EPICDirector]

Same problem with thumb drives, although I have a raid data drive attached to a Windows 10 system. I used to be able to backup a catalog and it would take under 10 minutes (usually third to half that). Backup of images themselves is done automatically nightly on the RAID. Occasionally, at the beginning or end of a major change to LR, instead of backing up to the system SSD, I would back up to a thumb drive, directly. Not move an already zip-compressed from SSD to thumbdrive, but deliberatly change the destination folder to a backup folder on the thumb drive for the catalog backup. 
While backup to thumb drives takes longer (hence my 10 min time frame above) than SSDs it provides off-site peace of mind. This always worked in the past...but not now. Now backup hangs up half way through "Copying Catalog". 
I have to force the backup to quit and LR crashes. Has a fix been found yet?

[DdeGannes]

The only reliable back-up, of your Catalog file is one created when you exit Lightroom Classic. It will be a zip file contained in a folder with the name is the date and time it was created. That is what you need to include in disk of flash drive sync.

[EPICDirector]

Denis,
That is my current problem. LR won't create that "Reliable backup" anymore when I exit Lightroom Classic. At least not on a thumb drive. It used to, but not any more. I have numerous past backups on the same drive. 

[AlinD]

I'm experiencing the same thing.
Lightroom Catalog backup when exit hangs at "Copying catalog" for some minutes when the destination is a folder on Synology NAS.  After "copying catalog" moves on the "Compressing catalog backup" step is also really slow.

Is there any fix for this ? ... other than having the catalog backup locally and using another backup software to mirror it on the NAS ? Thx !