Infinite Syncing Loop in Lightroom

Report · Oct 10, 2019

I just moved a bunch of photos into my Lightroom CC catalog as I'm working on organizing a ton of images. Everything synced fine and uploaded to the cloud correctly. Then I chose the option in Preferences to store all originals on disk so that I still have a backup of everything that's in the cloud. Since I told it to store a copy of originals on disk, it's said it's syncing for days now. If you go to All Photos and then filter by "syncing", you can actually watch images disappear as they download and then a little while later, many of those images pop back up in "syncing" again. I've been able to watch as around 2000 photos get synced and remvoed from the "syncing" filter, then come back again, then disappear, then come back, etc. again and again and again. Has anyone had this problem? Is there something I'm doing wrong or not understanding?

{Thread renamed by moderator}

Report · Oct 10, 2019

Hi There,

Sorry to hear about the syncing issue you're facing with Lightroom, let's make this right.

Could you please go to Help > System Info and let us know what version of Lightroom you're using?

Also, please have a look at a similar conversation here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/Lightroom/Lightroom-CC-Syncing-stuck-forever/td-p/9557125 and let us know if it helps.

Regards,
Sahil

Report · Oct 10, 2019

2.4.1 [ 20190911-1202-844edb7 ] (Sep 11 2019). I saw that thread; in my Lightroom, alt+clicking the cloud icon does nothing. But I did go to All Photos, filtered for Syncing, and set all those photos to 1 star. Lightroom is still syncing but earlier it said around 4000 images left to sync and now it says 9500

Report · Oct 10, 2019

Do you have enough space on the hard drive that is storing the local copies?

Report · Oct 11, 2019

Yes it has 1TB free and my entire lightroom catalog is 209GB

Report · Oct 11, 2019

Can you tell if it is hanging up with uploading images to the cloud, or with syncing them to your computer? Have you viewed your catalog on the web to see if everything this there at, lightroom.adobe.com? If You don't see all of your images, then some of them never finished uploading. I would try turning off the local sync for awhile and see if that gives everything a chance to upload to the cloud.

If that isn't the problem, or if that doesn't solve the problem, did you try step 4 in the other post that was linked to above?

Report · Oct 11, 2019

Before I started having this issue, I had local storage turned off and the entire catalog successfully synced to the cloud and between my phone, Lightroom CC desktop, and and lightroom online. Then I enabled local storage to make sure there was more than just the one copy in the cloud, and that's when I started having this issue, so I don't think uploading to the cloud is the issue. And yesterday I tried filtering for all images that were still syncing and then applying a 1 star rating to all of them. Before I rated them, there were 4000 still syncing. After I applied the star rating, that number quickly went up and now it's fluctuating between 10,000 and 13,000 images still syncing. And I can still watch as photos disappear from the syncing filter only to reappear a little while later.

Report · Oct 11, 2019

By your description it sounds like the sync problem is down to your local drive, not up to the cloud. Did you set up a custom location for the local sync? Have you tried turning off the local sync? What happens when you do that? Do you get any error messages?

Report · Oct 11, 2019

That sounds about right. I have the local sync set to the root level of an external hard drive; my internal drive isn't large enough to fit the catalog. There is 1TB free on the external drive so it's not a space issue and I've synced catalogs in other Adobe accounts to the same location (different folder) before with no issues. I just tried turning off local storage and I get an error that says "Some Images Invalid" but if I go to All Photos and filter by sync errors, no images appear ("black hole")

Report · Oct 12, 2019

The error message gives us some clue as to what's going on, however I still don't know how to fix it. This Adobe help page has information about the message, "some images invalid", although I think you have already tried the proposed solution.

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cc/kb/known-issues.html

I recommend that you contact customer care and see if they can help. There is a link at the bottom left of this page to chat with someone. If they fix it for you, let us know.

https://helpx.adobe.com/support.html?promoid=1XGJD4QX&mv=other

Report · Oct 12, 2019

Thanks! Before I got your message I decided to try moving the catalog to a new folder on the external hard drive so I'm going to let that change sync and if the problem continues I'll contact customer care and see what they say. I'll keep this thread up to date in case anyone else has this issue in the future.

Report · Oct 13, 2019

The infinite syncing loop persisted even after trying to change the sync folder. Again if I turn off local storage for all originals, I get the message that "Some Photos Invalid"

Report · Oct 13, 2019

Adobe Support told me "Move images from Original location to some other location then delete images from lightroom.adobe.comthen import images again."

If I do that I may lose some images forever. All the images are in the cloud but not all of the images are synced to my hard drive. So if I move what is on my hard drive, then delete everything from lightroom.adobe.com, I will lose some images forever. I'm not sure where all the original files are, that's why I need to download them to my hard drive. I may eventually be able to find them all, but it would be much safer and faster for Lightroom to download them to my computer as it is designed to do.

Report · Oct 13, 2019

I just talked with Adobe Support chat for a while. Nothing they suggested worked, or made any sense, honestly. It was pretty clear that the representative was not understanding me on a very basic level. However, during the course of them suggesting random unrelated things, I logged into lightroom.adobe.com and noticed an album called "Sync Issues" that I've never seen on Lightroom CC or Lightroom Mobile. I went into the album and discovered 76 images. Clicking on any of them brought up a blank image with an error message telling me that I need to open lightroom on X device to finish syncing the image. All of the devices listed by the collection of sync issue images either no longer exist or no longer belong to me, and were wiped before I got rid of them. So I deleted all 76 sync issues from that album and also from Deleted Items and the error message in Lightroom CC that said "Some Images Invalid" disappeared. It changed to "Synced and backed up" as it should be.

All of that was with local storage of all originals turned off. I just enabled it again to see if the infinite syncing loop behavior that this thread was orginally about comes back or is resolved. I'll update this thread once it has a chance to do more syncing.

Report · Oct 14, 2019

I left Lightroom to sync overnight in the hopes that it would make some progress but all it did was fluctuate between 18 and 19,000 images syncing. So basically no progress.

Report · Oct 14, 2019

Colton, I'm sorry you are fighting with this. I know it is frustrating and wish I could help. Maybe you should reconsider why you are trying to create the local sync in the first place. Local sync is not considered a backup. It is simply a local sync of your cloud. It is most useful if your computer goes offline for periods of time. With the local sync in place you can continue to work on your images without internet connection. However it's not a backup, because when you delete an image from the cloud it gets deleted from the local copy as well.

Do you know which images in your catalog you need backups of? I suggest that you create an album for those images and locally sync just that album. When the images are synced to a local drive, make a copy of that folder and put it somewhere safe. Then you will have a backup, and won't need the local sync anymore. Moving forward I would make backups of everything before adding them to Lightroom.

Report · Oct 14, 2019

I realize that the local sync itself is not a backup. However, once the images are on a hard drive and not just in the cloud, I've set up a number of systems that automatically sync the hard drive's contents to other drives as well as Dropbox and/or Backblaze. That way even if I delete an image through Lightroom, the other drives and Backblaze will retain a copy. Currently I back up images that are being imported into Lightroom before I upload them, but my Lightroom has a number of images that were backed up onto various old hard drives of mine. At least one has failed and it would be a lot faster to just download them out of the cloud than to hunt down the source drives. I also wasn't aware that you could store individual albums locally on the desktop version of Lightroom, where is that option?

Report · Oct 14, 2019

Support mentioned something called Lightroom Downloader that can supposedly download the entire catalog, should I just do that instead of trying to mess with local syncing? Seems like something that shouldn't require a second app but LIghtroom CC is clearly not storing locally as it should.

Report · Oct 14, 2019

Right click on any album and you will see the option to store the album locally.

Google Lightroom Downloader App and it will take you to a link where you can chose your opporating system. I think this is the best option for you.

Report · Oct 14, 2019

Ok will do