sync details/error metadata. What to do?

[max1979l]

The sync of Lightroom classic CC keeps getting stuck, or worse, the number of images to be uploaded increases after I successfully uploaded all the images. In the preferences I see the list of images that LR wants to upload (again), and I read under "sync details/error" metadata.

What does it mean, what am I supposed to do?

I suspect the issue is related somehow to my real time backup solution (either CrashPlan or the Synology Drive). I can't pinpoint the exact cause of the error though.

Any help would be appreciated. I wanted to buy the software, but this makes the sync feature useless for me.

[Akash Sharma]

Hi max1979l,

It seems that the images are not getting synced as they are not readily available. How many images do show the error message in the "Lightroom mobile" sync activity section?

Also, which exact version of Lightroom Classic CC are you using?

I suspect the issue is related somehow to my real time backup solution (either CrashPlan or the Synology Drive). I can't pinpoint the exact cause of the error though.

Are these backup solutions not working as expected?

Thanks,

Akash

[max1979l]

I get several hundreds of this error messages. I can only sync properly when CrashPlan is turned off (I did sync 45k images without issues).

Every image that gets synced from Lightroom, triggers the backup in CrashPlan, even though those images have been already backed up. I guess Lightroom is writing something in the original files, and CrashPlan interprets this as a change in the file and updates the backup.

After CrashPlan has updated the backup, lightroom has then the issues. I assume both programs are writing in the same spot two different things, and Lightroom has the short end of the stick.

Frankly I don't know what to do, I need crashplan to backup the images, but I need the sync feature as well...

[max1979l]

I forgot to add: I'm using the latest version, 7.3.1.

[max1979l · Accepted solution]

It turns out Lightroom Classic CC is not compatible with CrashPlan for Small Business (at least on my system, at the moment of writing). I'd like to point out that my system is new (everything freshly installed), and I only have the OS (Win10), Lightroom, Photoshop Bridge, CrashPlan and Synology Drive, and very few other applications (DisplayCAL, PortraitProfessional, BSplayer).

Even though CrashPlan has backed up the data already, as soon as Lightroom starts uploading the images, CrashPlan thinks the images have been changed. Maybe Lightroom writes something in the raw files, or in some table in the system files, maybe it has to do with VSS, I don't know. Anyway this triggers the backup in CrasPlan, which starts to back the images up again. It doesn't take much time, you might not even notice it, as it does an incremental backup. I can't tell what exactly gets written. The result though is that this causes Lightroom to getting stuck and stop syncing.

Deleting Sync.lrdata, or using the option "rebuild Sync Data" has no effect on this issue. Once it gets stuck, both these tricks do nothing, as Lightroom will get stuck again on the same images. Removing the images from the collections and syncing them again does nothing as well (although at first it seems to fix the issue).

After tearing my hair out, I decided to perform a clean install of Lightroom, create a new catalog, import the old one in it, delete all my data online (all this to have as fresh a start as possible, as I was getting also errors from the server side at this point), deny access to my pictures to CrashPlan (made a copy in another location and let CrashPlan backup the copies) and start the sync from scratch. It seems to be working, but it'll take time to sync all the images again.

Please note that pausing CrashPlan during the sync doesn't help. I did pause CrashPlan, and sync 45000 images without a problem, even had them on my iPad and iPhone. I could edit the smart previews on the iPad, create new collections and have them synced with my iPhone and desktop.

Afterwards I unpaused CrashPlan, and the corruption in the sync started immediately after. At this point I could sync collections between the iPad and iPhone (so the server was still in touch with these two devices), but these changes were not reflected in the desktop version, nor the changes made in the desktop version were synced online.

As far as I can tell, the Synology Drive (formerly Cloudstation) doesn't seem to create conflicts with the sync function of Lightroom, as it probably relies on other information to sync the data on the desktop and the NAS.

I hope this can help others with the sync issues.