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WDI Author

Level 1

83 points

Big Sur Does Not Support Photos Library On NAS

Since Big Sur no longer supports Photo libraries on NAS, per Apple technical support, does anyone have any recommendations for a photo library software that does for a replacement for the "Photos" app on Mac?

Apples solution was to plug my hard drive in to my laptop which would work but much more inconvenient, downgrade, or use iCloud Photos library.

I guess I'll have to plug my hard drive directly in my computer as a downgrade.

I'm not really that keen on uploading every picture I take to the internet, AKA iCloud Photos, because...

It's totally unnecessary IMO.
Tons of wasted bandwidth for RAW etc especially since I'm not interested in them being anywhere else except home where they are safe with me. I'm limited to 5 Mb/s upload event though my download is 200 Mb/s. Just the way they do it around where I live.
etc

Did anybody else keep there photo library on a NAS and what do you do now?

Cloud services are great. I've been an iTunes Match subscriber since...? the dinosaurs? Just not interested in uploading my photos. I've weighed the benefits back and forth and I'm just not interested. Bottom line is that is seems like wasted bandwidth, overhead, and well, they are personal. Photos with NAS in Mojave worked for me. Just looking a new solution.

Posted on Nov 20, 2020 8:35 PM

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

197,291 points

Posted on Nov 21, 2020 1:26 AM

WDI wrote:

Oh, and there is no going back because Big Sur changed the library when troubleshooting the issue so it will no longer open in Mojave Photos app...

The only way to downgrade the library losslessly is using iCloud Photos. If you would just upload the photos once, to iCloud Photos Library, temporarily for the conversion, and then download again on Catalina to a new, empty library, you will have a perfect downgrade to the Photos 5 format. See: Downgrading a Photos Library to a Previous Version of Photos with the Help of iCloud Photos

But surely you have made a backup of your library before you upgraded to Big Sur? Restore the Photos 5 version from your backup to have a Catalina version.

Without a backup and without iCloud Photos you will have a hard time to get access to your Photos Library on Catalina, because we can no longer recover the photos unchanged from the Photo Library package. We need Photos to retrieve the photos from the library. The package contents is no longer easy to read without the help of Photos to decode the filenames: How Photos 5.0 on Catalina Manages original Files and Filenames

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48 replies

Yer_Man

Level 10

163,824 points

Mar 9, 2021 3:13 PM in response to jharps1

Have you read the thread? Again:

The problem is that the library will be damaged silently in the background and you may not be noticing it for a long time. You will simply get more and more inconsistent entries in the internal database files. You may occasionally see recovered files appearing after a library repair, and one day, out of the blue, the repair will fail altogether

Mar 9, 2021 3:27 PM in response to Yer_Man

jharps1: be careful what you post on this forum - you tend to get shouted at (in bold italic) for your troubles!

In contrast to other responses, I sympathise with your storage size problem. I too have a disk drive problem with over 800GB of photos & videos spread across 5 Libraries and putting them up in the cloud is not feasible.

Apple really needs to think this one through for the professional AND casual photographer. Particularly with 4K video the norm and 8K likely to arrive anytime soon!

Hope you find a workable storage solution.

Yer_Man

Level 10

163,824 points

Mar 9, 2021 3:35 PM in response to Scubaman31

There was no shouting. There was an effort to emphasise the danger to the person's data from what they are doing. Did it need that emphasis? Well given that the person seemed not have noticed it in the many previous times it was posted, I would say yes. Sympathy is great. Avoiding dataloss is even better.

What is there to rethink? External drives are inexpensive and easy to work with. And frankly, I don't think too many professional photographers are working with a giveaway app like Photos.

WDI Author

Level 1

83 points

Nov 20, 2020 8:47 PM in response to WDI

Oh, and there is no going back because Big Sur changed the library when troubleshooting the issue so it will no longer open in Mojave Photos app...

WDI Author

Level 1

83 points

Nov 20, 2020 9:17 PM in response to babowa

That may be what I do. I really like the Photos app. I do edit and share via iCloud photos sharing. And I like being able to organize the photos in the app.

Nov 22, 2020 1:22 PM in response to WDI

Your worst case option is to extract the renamed originals from the library , then give them meaningfull names with somthing like exiftools.

WDI Author

Level 1

83 points

Dec 19, 2020 10:37 PM in response to WDI

Also, TV and Music libraries are still on network. Tell me I can't do this either. Remove that ability and your really limiting the convenience of using the apple laptop with limited space.

WDI Author

Level 1

83 points

Dec 20, 2020 6:53 AM in response to Yer_Man

And I'm not trying to be rude Terence. I appreciate your responses. I know you are just trying to say look, it doesn't work that way, never supported and justify why.

babowa

Level 9

78,429 points

Dec 20, 2020 3:22 PM in response to Yer_Man

Interesting - I paid almost $300 for my Aperture on DVDs. And it still works in 10.12 (Sierra).

Jan 8, 2021 4:26 PM in response to FrenesiPynchon

Same I actually just got a new time capsule thinking it was still possible .

kent.w

Level 1

9 points

Jan 12, 2021 11:28 PM in response to WDI

Hi,

Perhaps you could use the free Adobe Bridge as photo catalogue app and store your photos in files on your NAS.

Just a thought.

Yer_Man

Level 10

163,824 points

Jan 13, 2021 12:16 AM in response to kent.w

That could work as Bridge is effectively a souped-up file browser with no central database.

Feb 14, 2021 2:09 PM in response to WDI

Would it be possible to create a sparsebundle “folder” on your NAS and use this as the Photos Library repository?

Feb 14, 2021 3:00 PM in response to Scubaman31

No - network storage is still not viable.

Feb 14, 2021 4:59 PM in response to TonyCollinet

It may not be viable (in the sense responsive) but would it work? I’ve certainly used disk utility to create remote sparsebundle folders and accessed them from a Synology NAS.

Big Sur Does Not Support Photos Library On NAS