Thoughts on 'Relative' media addressing

[stevehughes]

Hi,

 

When I saw that Daminion locates media files relative to the catalog location I thought it would be a good solution for something I'd like to achieve. But now I'm not sure sure.

 

At home, my entire media collection lives on a NAS. I have a mechanism that replicates this entire structure to my PC at work so I can access the files from either location.

 

I figured that I could put the catalog file in the top level of the NAS. Then it would get replicated up to my work PC and I could use Daminion without a hitch at both locations.

 

Problem is that IIRC it's not a good idea to run an SQLite database from a NAS, for performance and also for stability reasons. If I'm wrong on this please correct me.

 

If I am right, then how about the concept of allowing the user to configure in each installation of Daminion the path to the top level of storage. Then the relative locations stored in the catalog would be relative to this path rather than the catalog location.

[Murat]

When I saw that Daminion locates media files relative to the catalog location I thought it would be a good solution for something I'd like to achieve. But now I'm not sure sure.

 

You are absolutely right: local catalogs should be located on local disks to prevent their from corruptions and for the performance reason.

 

I've added your suggestion about a customizable Relative Root folder for catalogs (#2639).

 

Another possible solutions are:

- Using some sort of Folder Redirection. However I didn't use this method personally.

- Storing media files on a local drive instead of the NAS

[stevehughes]

You are absolutely right: local catalogs should be located on local disk to prevent their from corruptions and for the performance reason.

 

I've added your suggestion about a customizable Relative Root folder for catalogs (#2639).

 

Another possible solutions are:

- Using some sort of Folder Redirection. However I didn't use this method personally.

- Storing media files on a local drive instead of the NAS

 

Thanks Murat.

 

Just for info.... I played around with folder redirection with some apparent success. I didn't want to redirect an obvious folder like 'My Photos' to the NAS storage because I didn't want to get random stuff added into the library by users of the PC. So Instead I created a symbolic link using the following command (Note that you must run the Command Prompt as Administrator for this to work):

 

mklink /D c:\PhotoAlbum "\\qnap\Photos\Album JPEGs"

 

Pointing Daminion at C:\PhotoAlbum for its file import seems to work.

 

Edit ... Actually I'm not sure how well it works. If I go down into c:\PhotoAlbum and add a subfolder to the catlog, it still points at the NAS location. Such is the nature of a link. If I try to add c:\PhotoAlbum into the catalog it seems to hang partway. So probably not a usable solution after all !

 

Steve.

[Murat]

I created a symbolic link using the following command (Note that you must run the Command Prompt as Administrator for this to work):

 

mklink /D c:\PhotoAlbum "\\qnap\Photos\Album JPEGs"

 

Pointing Daminion at C:\PhotoAlbum for its file import seems to work.

 

Edit ... Actually I'm not sure how well it works. If I go down into c:\PhotoAlbum and add a subfolder to the catlog, it still points at the NAS location. Such is the nature of a link. If I try to add c:\PhotoAlbum into the catalog it seems to hang partway. So probably not a usable solution after all !

 

Windows Links will not works here, because we need some sort of mirroring the folder/file structure. The third option might be to install Daminion Home Server in your home and if have a static IP you can access it from your work without duplicating the file content. However obtaining a local drive might be a better/faster/cheaper solution.

[Russell]

If you're working on some kind of database that can be accessed by multiple users simultaneously, without a server... that'd be awesome.

 

Done well, it would work over Dropbox! :-)

 

Russell