Smart Previews Not Loading

[DaBrownCO]

My Smart Previews are not loading when I open a folder in which my originals are stored in an external hard drive that is off-line. In each of two folders I've opened, a handful of Previews load, but that's it.

I appreciate any help you can offer.

David

[DaBrownCO]

It's Smart Previews and I've never had a problem before even for files that are not local. It does appear that is part of the problem though. I'm going to try to rebuild my Smart Previews and see if that helps.

[Jao vdL]

If your catalog is on dropbox, typically also your smart previews (and your normal ones!) will be. The (smart) previews are all individual files hidden in the smart previews container. Dropbox will zero all those files out by default. This might not have been a problem before but recent mac os system updates have made this mechanism not work reliably in dropbox for most applications and they need to fix their code to work again with most applications. This is a pretty big danger with all of these cloud services by the way also on windows.

[JohanElzenga]

@Jao vdL  AFAIK the 'online only' setting in Dropbox is not the default. At least it isn't on my machine. I have to turn this on myself for individual files or for folders. But everything else is indeed as you say and explains the problem the OP has.

Dropbox issued a statement about this problem just before MacOS Monterey was released and hasn't fixed it until now. The reason that this takes so long is that it isn't a simple bug. Dropbox uses an API that Apple depreciated in MacOS Monterey and later, so they have to rebuild this feature from scratch using alternative API's. I understand there is a beta Dropbox app that does fix it, but that too isn't so easy. The solution was to move the Dropbox folder to an obscure place where the real Apple iCloud folder is also located, and have a link that creates a virtual disk like Apple iCloud also does. That means a lot of relinking missing folders in Lightroom Classic if you stored your images in Dropbox...

P.S. It looks like the update was just released, but it could also still be the beta: 

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Apps-and-Installations/After-today-s-upgrade-30-Nov-22-I-cannot-loca...

My own version of Dropbox has not updated itself yet.

[DaBrownCO]

I've been running Monterey for quite some time and while, of course, I would get the Exclamation icon indicating file was lost, I still had the Smart Preview and could go through my images. I'm not sure if the latest Lightroom update caused the problem or not, but I'm skeptical about that. I'm sort of at a loss. I'm going to try making the files off-line, recreate Smart Previews, and take off-line to see what happens. I'm also wondering if my issue might be a Dropbox sync issue. 

Anyhow, I really appreciate the help. I'll get back with any progress.

[JohanElzenga]

My advice to you would be to stop using Dropbox as a kind of virtual external drive. Buy a real external drive and only use Dropbox as a backup so you don't have to buy two drives. A 1 or 2 TB external drive costs next to nothing these days. You don't have to get a more expensive SSD, just buy a USB-3 spinning disk.

[Jao vdL]

SSD drives are also insanely cheap nowadays. Samsung and Sandisk both have a 2 TB one for $150 on amazon. I like the sandisk ones as they are nice and rugged. They are tiny and you can even just velcro them to the back of your laptop screen and keep them plugged in. Just make sure to reformat them to APFS or mac os extended (journaled).

[DaBrownCO]

I understand what you are saying, but this has worked for me up until now. I do have an external drive that I do have a back-up of my library on. However, I'd rather not have to carry around this drive all the time. I may have to resort to that though.

[Jao vdL]

All you should have to do is to set dropbox's sync preference to "Available Offline" for new files and then on the dropbox folders where you store your catalog and previews to right click (or control click) and select "make available offline" This should fix the issue until dropbox fixes their code to be compatible with Monterey and Ventura.  

[JohanElzenga]

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@DaBrownCO wrote:

I understand what you are saying, but this has worked for me up until now. 

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You keep saying that, but the point is that it isn't working anymore (otherwise you wouldn't be here with a problem). And the reason for it is a known issue that is confirmed by Dropbox.

[DaBrownCO]

Yup. I know what I need to do. I do have one more question though. My SmartPreviews.lrdata file is date Sept 19, 2020 as Create Date and Date Modified. Would that make a difference? I'm just curious. I am going to set up my External Drive as the source for my pictures and not Dropbox.

[JohanElzenga]

No, ignore that. The previews 'file' is not really a file, but a 'package'. That is a folder that looks like a file and can be double clicked like a file to launch an application. The modification date of a package is often not updated when the contents changes. Even the size is often not correctly shown by the MacOS Finder. This is a known issue, but it has no relevance to your problem.

[DaBrownCO]

Okay thanks for that information. I moved everything to an external drive and I can already see how less of a headache it is, and everything is working. I appreciate your help and patience.