Ever since moving my image files to a NAS I have a problem with some files for which Lightroom will not process (esp. write) metadata correctly. I have searched the forum and some other places and I have seen reports about similar problems usually with some variations, though. I have not been able to find a solution for the situation I see but I think I have narrowed down the problem. Any help would be highly appreciated. (Sorry for the long post, but it seems to be anything but a simple problem and I am not sure which information is needed.)System & setup info:Lightroom Classic CC 7.3Mac OS X SierraNAS Synology, with fast router and ethernet connectionsImage files are on a dedicated volume on the NAS, the catalogue is located on a local drive(non-English language versions, so some error message wording given below may be imprecise)What I see:Everything worked fine until I migrated image files from local HD to NAS (by moving the from within LR from one folder on the local drive to a folder on the NAS volume). After the migration in the same catalogue several images reported metadata conflicts (three different kinds). For TIFF files (mostly large, 100+ MB) several files showed conflicts. Resolving the conflicts usually resulted in producing another type of conflict and--eventually--in its disappearance. Sometimes conflicts would come back, too, for unclear reasons. Frequently, there would be error messages about unknown file types or read-only files (all files were only TIFF and certainly read-enabled). Simply selecting all files in a folder or the entire catalogue will not work as only some conflicts are resolved and when I save the metadata for all files again, then some resolved conflicts reappear--meaning I would have to deselect all resolved conflicts after each save which is almost the same as working on every image separately.Some JPGs had metadata conflicts after the move to the NAS, too. However, these could be easily resolved by clicking on the badge and saving the metadata to the file from within LR.As a result at the moment I can either live with lots of metadata conflict markers in my catalogue(s) and just ignore them (bad idea if there is a really important conflict somewhere) or I can try to fix all conflicts by hand (which takes a huge amount of time and may not even work in all cases). Also the conflicts seem to reappear randomly.What I have tried or checked:Permissions: I am logged onto the NAS as a user with admin rights; I did not find an option to specifically authorise any "system" user or such for the volume on the NAS; permissions in MAC OS show Protocols: NAS settings afp only/SMB only/afp and SMB -- for all no visible differenceXMP-files: write/don't write separate xmp files -- no visible differencewriting to the same picture/file type on a local volume: everything works fine, the problem appears on the NAS onlywriting to different pictures/file types on the same NAS volume: DNG and other RAW files with side car XMP-file (e.g. Sony's ARW) work just fine; JPG works; TIFF does not work (some files never work, some files sometimes; reason unclear)refreshing the connection to the NAS by opening finder windows or such has not made a difference.Moving all files from the NAS to a local drive (suggested in some forum posts) is not really an option. I got the NAS in the first place because internal drives are too small.Moving to Lightroom CC (with cloud storage) is not an option for me either (bandwidth limitations with 100+ MB files; limited functionality of LR CC).I have called Adobe support who told me that they will not deal with this at all because NAS is not supported. (However, they did send me an email later that day claiming that they had solved my problem and closed the ticket.)What I think:Moving the image files to the NAS has for some reason resulted in metadata conflicts for some but not all files.Resolving the conflicts is possible for JPG and RAW files that allow side car XMP files.But writing metadata into a large file or writing any large file to the NAS ("large" = 10+ MB?) seems to be a problem.(From what I see it cannot be a general TIFF-file problem as these files work locally and it cannot be a general metadata problem, as writing the metadata into JPGs or side-car files works.)My questions:It seems like there is a problem when moving image files to a NAS volume--is there any solution to avoid that b/c I still have images to move to the NAS?Also there is a problem when writing data--apparently large files--to the NAS from within Lightroom. Is this correct or am I on the wrong track?Most importantly: Does anybody have an idea (or experience with) how to set up the combination of MAC OS Sierra, Lightroom Classic CC and a Synology NAS to avoid this? Avoiding the conflicts during the move to NAS as well as afterwards being able to solve them reliably on the NAS with limited effort would be great.

Participating Frequently

Question

Problem with metadata conflicts and TIFF/large image files on a NAS

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
April 28, 2018
6 replies
4393 views

Ever since moving my image files to a NAS I have a problem with some files for which Lightroom will not process (esp. write) metadata correctly. I have searched the forum and some other places and I have seen reports about similar problems usually with some variations, though. I have not been able to find a solution for the situation I see but I think I have narrowed down the problem.

Any help would be highly appreciated. (Sorry for the long post, but it seems to be anything but a simple problem and I am not sure which information is needed.)

System & setup info:

Lightroom Classic CC 7.3

Mac OS X Sierra

NAS Synology, with fast router and ethernet connections

Image files are on a dedicated volume on the NAS, the catalogue is located on a local drive

(non-English language versions, so some error message wording given below may be imprecise)

What I see:

Everything worked fine until I migrated image files from local HD to NAS (by moving the from within LR from one folder on the local drive to a folder on the NAS volume). After the migration in the same catalogue several images reported metadata conflicts (three different kinds). For TIFF files (mostly large, 100+ MB) several files showed conflicts. Resolving the conflicts usually resulted in producing another type of conflict and--eventually--in its disappearance. Sometimes conflicts would come back, too, for unclear reasons. Frequently, there would be error messages about unknown file types or read-only files (all files were only TIFF and certainly read-enabled). Simply selecting all files in a folder or the entire catalogue will not work as only some conflicts are resolved and when I save the metadata for all files again, then some resolved conflicts reappear--meaning I would have to deselect all resolved conflicts after each save which is almost the same as working on every image separately.

Some JPGs had metadata conflicts after the move to the NAS, too. However, these could be easily resolved by clicking on the badge and saving the metadata to the file from within LR.

As a result at the moment I can either live with lots of metadata conflict markers in my catalogue(s) and just ignore them (bad idea if there is a really important conflict somewhere) or I can try to fix all conflicts by hand (which takes a huge amount of time and may not even work in all cases). Also the conflicts seem to reappear randomly.

What I have tried or checked:

Permissions: I am logged onto the NAS as a user with admin rights; I did not find an option to specifically authorise any "system" user or such for the volume on the NAS; permissions in MAC OS show
Protocols: NAS settings afp only/SMB only/afp and SMB -- for all no visible difference
XMP-files: write/don't write separate xmp files -- no visible difference
writing to the same picture/file type on a local volume: everything works fine, the problem appears on the NAS only
writing to different pictures/file types on the same NAS volume: DNG and other RAW files with side car XMP-file (e.g. Sony's ARW) work just fine; JPG works; TIFF does not work (some files never work, some files sometimes; reason unclear)
refreshing the connection to the NAS by opening finder windows or such has not made a difference.

Moving all files from the NAS to a local drive (suggested in some forum posts) is not really an option. I got the NAS in the first place because internal drives are too small.
Moving to Lightroom CC (with cloud storage) is not an option for me either (bandwidth limitations with 100+ MB files; limited functionality of LR CC).

I have called Adobe support who told me that they will not deal with this at all because NAS is not supported. (However, they did send me an email later that day claiming that they had solved my problem and closed the ticket.)

What I think:

Moving the image files to the NAS has for some reason resulted in metadata conflicts for some but not all files.

Resolving the conflicts is possible for JPG and RAW files that allow side car XMP files.

But writing metadata into a large file or writing any large file to the NAS ("large" = 10+ MB?) seems to be a problem.

(From what I see it cannot be a general TIFF-file problem as these files work locally and it cannot be a general metadata problem, as writing the metadata into JPGs or side-car files works.)

My questions:

It seems like there is a problem when moving image files to a NAS volume--is there any solution to avoid that b/c I still have images to move to the NAS?

Also there is a problem when writing data--apparently large files--to the NAS from within Lightroom. Is this correct or am I on the wrong track?

Most importantly: Does anybody have an idea (or experience with) how to set up the combination of MAC OS Sierra, Lightroom Classic CC and a Synology NAS to avoid this? Avoiding the conflicts during the move to NAS as well as afterwards being able to solve them reliably on the NAS with limited effort would be great.

This topic has been closed for replies.

wdp831

Participant

I would probably chalk this one up to a permissions issue. I've been battling a similar problem, and AFP almost fails in every test case I've run.

SMB is problematic if I have it signed to a user with global access/permissions, such as an admin or group with global permissions to a folder. If i set a user to have specific R/W access to a folder, my xmp/meta data issues appear to subside.

P

Paolo0D44

Participant

Hi all,

my two cents. I am also affected by this annoying issue since a long time.

After many threads read, and many tests, done to narrow down the issue, I discovered is that it just disappear by applying the following configuration to the Synology NAS:

DSM > Control Panel > File Services > SMB,

- tick "Enable opportunistic Locking" and

- UNTICK "Enable SMB2 lease"

With this configuration I cannot replicate the metadata conflicts in any way.

Unfortunately, removing SMB2 lease feature, cuts down many cache optimizations other applications can do using SMB.

Synology suggests in its documentation to keep the option enabled.

DdeGannes

Community Expert

This response is specific to the original post, I have not to read any of the earlier responses but just wish to make this observation.

Lightroom default is to read and write to the Catalog File and this is its primary function which will take place as a function.

If you choose the "automatically write to amp" or when you do a menu metadata > save metadata to file this is a secondary function so if you are working with multiple files constantly then Lightroom may not have completed all these secondary functions if you abruptly exit Lightroom. it will resume when you next open Lightroom and the program is not occupied with primary functions.

Secondly, your system Operating Performance will be affected by the weakest link in the task being performed. e.g. writing to a location of an internal HDD with adequate free disk space, then to an external HDD directly to your computer and then to a wireless network.

e.g. 2.) writing to a 2 TB HDD that only has 200 GB of free disk space the system is searching 2 TB of disk to find space to write data to only 200 GB of available space.

These comments are about your Operating Systems performance not Lightroom performance but will affect how Lightroom performs.

Regards, Denis: iMac 27” mid-2015, macOS 11.7.10 Big Sur; 2TB SSD, 24 GB Ram, GPU 2 GB; LrC 12.5,; Lr 6.5, PS 24.7,; ACR 15.5,; (also Laptop Win 11, ver 24H2, LrC 15.0.1, PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.

P

patrickvoAuthor

Participating Frequently

DdeGannes-9S76PN--thank you for the observations.

For the record or anybody still following the thread:

Writing XMP files as an additional activity may indeed be a cause for problems in this context. However, in this case it seems different: The problem was much worse when I was *not* using XMP files. Especially in the case of TIFFs this may have caused by LR trying to write the entire file with additional info which takes a lot longer for large TIFFs than for an additional XMP thus leading to the time stamp issue mentioned above and the conflicts.

Effective writing speeds may also be an issue. However, in this case it is a 1Gb ethernet connection to a NAS which is (at the moment) mostly empty. Transfer speeds to the NAS exceed 100 MB/s for large files.

johnrellis

Legend

However, in this case it is a 1Gb ethernet connection to a NAS which is (at the moment) mostly empty. Transfer speeds to the NAS exceed 100 MB/s for large files.

It could be the network latency (delay) rather than the transfer speed that's a bigger factor. Network latency is typically an order of magnitude larger than the latency of local disks.

Rafael Aviles

Legend

Are you putting your photos in the NAS system default “Photos” folder? The NAS system does a lot of things with those files (indexing, creating thumbnails) that may result in metadata conflicts with Lightroom. Best thing is to avoid that folder and create your own.

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patrickvoAuthor

Participating Frequently

Good point, but in my case, unfortunately, this does not seem to be the problem: I have created a separate Volume which contains all related data. The name "Photos" may be used in some places, but it is certainly not a system folder. I created all folders there myself and many files (which show the problematic behavior) are in in folders with completely different labels.

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

I'm also using the Home folder in the shared folders location.

I found a way to resolve the issue now doing the following:

Copying all photos including the XMP files into the wished folder on the NAS OUTSIDE of Lightroom. Then deleting all the photos on the MAC. Lightroom will complain that it does not find the photos anymore. "Show" Lightroom to the new location on the NAS. It will add the photos to the catalog on the NAS and won't report any metadata conflicts for me.

I know this is not the recommended way of moving files in Lightroom but at least it keeps the edits and shows no metadata conflicts.

I know this is not the recommended way of moving files in Lightroom but at least it keeps the edits and shows no metadata conflicts.

What you describe is actually the recommended way to move images. Doing it inside Lightroom is somewhat dangerous as there used to be some serious dataloss bugs with this. Most or all of those are gone but us old timers that have been doing Lightroom for a long time are still weary and you never know if one gets reintroduced.

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patrickvoAuthor

Participating Frequently

.David.Y. & johnrellis: Thanks for the replies. I pick up your points below.

Update, in case somebody runs into similar problems or follows the thread:

1) For large TIFF files (scanned slides) the situation remains unchanged: Conflicts appear and re-appear for unclear reasons; re-writing the data to the files solves most conflicts with the first try, almost all with the second try, but some remain stubborn and do not disappear.

--> Helpful method for quickly solving conflicts (at least temporarily): In the grid filter select "Metadata" / "Metadata Status" / "Changed on disk". This will show only those files with conflicts. Then select all and re-write the data to the files. Even if this does not succeed for some files, they will simply remain in the grid view and you can re-write again. (Of course, in my case some conflicts re-appear after a while.)

2) For large raw files: The problem appears sometimes, too, but less often than with TIFFs. Repeatedly re-writing the metadata to file once usually helps. Sometimes it does not help and then further re-writing will not help either.

--> Workaround (when automatically writing changes into XMP) : In this case I found that deleting the XMP file in the image file's folder and *then* re-writing the metadata from within LR usually solves the problem. However, these conflicts also do (re)appear in a non-reproducible way, albeit less often.

As stated above: protocol (afp/SMB) does not seem to make a difference as far as I can tell.

I am currently on afp.

As johnrellis stated above, the only viable solution--until Adobe finds a way to make LR work with a NAS--may be local external storage via Thunderbolt or similar. For some types of use this will be no solution, though.

Hope this helps somewhat--at least anybody thinking about using a NAS with Lightroom at this point in time.

.

.David.Y.

Participating Frequently

Hi patrickvo,

I'm experiencing the exact same problem and have also already tried everything I could potentially think of to resolve the issue.

Have you found any solution in the mean time?

Thanks a lot in advance!!!

johnrellis

Legend

I'm experiencing the exact same problem and have also already tried everything I could potentially think of to resolve the issue.

If your problem is getting metadata status conflicts using NAS on Mac: Have you tried changing the network protocol from AFP to SMB?

If you have, and that doesn't help, there isn't much you can do. LR has long had problems with reporting spurious metadata conflicts, especially on NAS, and the only workaround is to ignore the spurious conflicts or select the photos and do Metadata > Save Metadata To File.

.

.David.Y.

Participating Frequently

Thanks, I have tried that already. But you are right I'm using NAS Synology and Mac. Unfortunate that this problem does not seem to have any identifiable background. I'm wondering what happens to the files while they are moved within Lightroom...

D

dj_paige

Legend

Plenty of problems have been reported with Synology. Please search the forums for possible solutions.

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patrickvoAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks for the reply. Searching is what I have done the last three days (this forum and other sources). I have found many references to problems that appear similar but the solutions (if any were given) did not work. That is why I mentioned permissions and protocols which came up most often as possible solutions. Often the problems seemed to remain unsolved.

I have tried everything I could find, but nothing has solved the problem. That is why I posted here. But I would be grateful for any specific links/references/hints which I may have missed and that do not give the solutions I have already excluded.

Ian Lyons

Community Expert

Patrick,

Lightroom's support for NAS has never been particularly good. Sure, some customers seem able to make them coexist whilst others can't and eventually give up. May be you should be asking yourself why you believe a NAS unit is the best storage solution for you're particular needs. If you can't come up with a reason that betters traditional storage then it could be that returning to same is your best way forward.

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