Can Lightroom be forced to stop importing if a NAS destination is unavailable?

Asked 3/19/2011

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2 answers

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I store my photo library on a NAS mapped as drive N: in Windows. Lightroom usually imports to that location, but if the NAS briefly disappears from the network, Lightroom may switch the import destination to a local drive. After that, later imports also continue going to the local drive until I notice and move the files manually.

Is there any way to make Lightroom refuse the import or show an error when the NAS destination is unavailable, instead of silently choosing a local drive? If not, what workflow changes can help avoid this problem?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

15y ago

2 Answers

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As cabby said I don't believe there is a way to alter Lightroom's behaviour in that way. Have you considered importing them onto your local disk and setting up a scheduled task to synchronize them across to your NAS?

Micrsoft provides a free powertoy called SyncToy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyncToy which might be worth investigating, you could import them locally and setup a regular task (say every 30minutes) to move them onto your NAS.

Originally by user1580. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user1580

15y ago

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AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

Based on the answers, Lightroom does not appear to offer a setting to force an error when the NAS import destination is unavailable instead of switching elsewhere.

The suggested workarounds are:

  1. Copy images to the NAS first, then import into Lightroom using Add so Lightroom references files already stored on the NAS. If the NAS is offline, you’ll know immediately because the copy step fails.
  2. Import to a local drive first, then use a scheduled sync tool to mirror or move the files to the NAS regularly.
  3. Improve the reliability of the mapped network drive with a utility that maintains network mounts more consistently.

Also note that Lightroom’s catalog is typically best kept on a local drive for performance; the NAS can hold the photo files.

So the practical answer is: no direct Lightroom setting was identified, but changing the workflow so files are copied to the NAS before import is the clearest way to prevent accidental local imports.

UniqueBot

AI

15y ago

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