Hello Charlie.

I called Data Robotics a couple of days ago and the customer support person I got seemed to actually analyse the problem much more professionally than whoever replied to my email at first. He looked at the drobo log file that I had sent before and he said it looked like the issue was a data transfer problem between the laptop and the drobo. He suspected the firewire cable was at fault and offered to send me a new one.

He also said that I could try using data recovering software to get my files back. I'm running Recuva right now on the drobo drives to see if I can get anything back. I could just restore a backup but I would have to redo about two days of work that I did on my images if I did that. So I'm keeping that option as a last resort. Recuva estimates it's going to take another 2 days or so to finish (it's been running for about 20 hours and it has 48% to go, so maybe it will be less). I don't know if it will work or not, and I have a couple of other programs to try before I give that up, so I was going to wait until I had either been successful in restoring the files or I had to go back to my last backup before I post again.

In any case, though it may not be the fault of the drobo, it's too soon to tell. For now I'm using a USB 2.0 cable instead of the FW800 one just to see if I still get issues. I'll post back about my experience once I know more.

I have the same problem you are describing where the drobo goes offline and I have to reboot both my laptop and the drobo. I mentioned this problem to the support guy and he said it's not normal and that it may be due to a bad cable as well. I hope it is, because my other suspicion was that it may be a Windows related issue. It's a bit disheartening to hear that you get those problems on a Mac as well, as I was thinking of getting a Mac sometime next year for a number of reasons. I thought one of the side effects of that could be that I'd stop having problems with the drobo randomly offlining, but if you were having the same problems on a Mac that makes it less likely.

Assuming that the file corruption problems are not a fault of the drobo, I'm still torn about whether it was a good idea or not to get one. It's nice to have the storage expandability, just adding hard drives without getting more clutter of cables and encasings. But it's true that it's slower than I want, although still to a workable level. I have to say if the issue with the drobo going offline is a common occurrence and not some weird hardware-software config particular to me, at this point I'd have to advise anyone else against getting one.

As for returning the unit, I've now had the drobo for about a year so it's too late for that.

Anyway thanks for the reply. I'll post again when I know more.

Jorge

No one? I would have thought that some of the people in this forum were using a drobo to store their Lightroom-managed image collection.

So far Adobe has said that it doesn't look like Lightroom is at fault, which may well be true. Data Robotics customer support have told me that "when moving large numbers (thousands) of files simultaneously, data corruption is more likely to occur".

Then (I kid you not) they provided me with a wikipedia link to the definition of "data corruption". They also said that I should try to do moves of large numbers of files using "batch operations".

Keeping to myself what I think about sending wikipedia links as customer support, I replied that in fact I was not moving thousands of images but only 5 or 6 into a folder that did contain thousands of images. This operation somehow corrupted the entire destination folder and I lost all the images it contained (though I have a backup). That was 3 days ago and I still haven't received a reply. So far I'm very unimpressed with Data Robotics customer support here in the UK. Unimpressed enough to make a point to post it in the DAM forums. Although if I get any better treatment in the next few days I'll post back and write about it.

In the meantime, if anyone that reads this is using Lightroom and a Drobo do let me know what your experience has been like so far as it may help me figure out where the source of the problem is.

Thanks,

Jorge

I'm having some pretty serious issues using Lightroom with a drobo and I'm wondering if anyone has a similar setup and may be able to offer some insight.

First my setup:

• Dell Studio17 laptop with Intel Core i7 2.67GHz CPU
• 8GB of RAM
• ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650
• Drobo 2nd gen with 2 1TB Western Digital Caviar hard drives
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

I have my lightroom catalog in my laptop hard drive and my images in the drobo and I make weekly backups of both to an external hard drive.

Since I started using lightroom I've been finding more and more images that become corrupted. Sometimes running a chkdsk /x will recover them (recommended by Data Robotics support page), but many times it won't. The problems so far have been somewhat manageable, if extremely annoying, as I every few weeks I'll have to go to my backup to restore some new images that I discover have become corrupted. But yesterday I had the worst problem to date.

Within Lightroom, I took a folder full of images and moved it into my main catalog folder, which itself contains many other folders with thousands of images. As I dragged and dropped it I got an error message that said the folder was inaccessible. I tried to access the destination folder from the windows explorer and got the same result. I run a chkdsk /x on the drobo drive and it got stuck at 74% with this message:

"Correcting error in index $I30 for file 32976".

I left it like that all day and finally cancelled the process at night as it wouldn't go any further. This is just another one of a list of problems with missing and corrupted files I've had since I started using the drobo+lightroom combination. Other times I've had just a few images become inaccessible and running chkdsk /x didn't help recover them either, although the process would normally finish and not get stuck like this time. In those cases chkdsk would give some message about trying to recover some orphaned files (I can't remember the exact message). But I don't think it was ever succesful in recovering any of these files and I just had to restore them from a backup.

I may be completely wrong, but I get the impression this issue may be related to the fact that the drobo goes idle sometimes when I'm using lightroom. I suspect that when I moved the folder the drobo was idle and lightroom could not find the destination folder momentarily, which caused the "folder inaccessible" error message and which somehow made the folder corrupted.

I've written to Data Robotics support and I'm waiting for a reply. I'm also going to write to Adobe support this weekend, but I thought I'd ask in the DAM forum as well to see if anyone using Lightroom and the drobo are having similar issues. My online searches have revealed very little so it seems like it may not be a common problem. Even if some of you are using a similar setup in a similar way and have found no problems I'd like to know as it would help to narrow down whether it's a particular problem with my setup or maybe maybe some faulty hardware.

Thanks.

Jorge

No worries. At the end of the day it's just something that would make it easier to search for specific information in the book. Really useful, but not absolutely necessary.

I'll just have to study the book until it's all in my head! 

Jorge

I know that this thread is over 2 years old, but I wonder if there's any possibility for the searchable index to happen for the second edition of The DAM Book. I'm reading through it right now and I already know I'm going to have to go back to search for information that I've already forgotten where it is.

Jorge

PS: Great book by the way. Totally worth buying it even though I already own the first edition.

That's great to know. Thanks for the info John.

Jorge

One thing I asked that I don't think has been answered (although I suspect the answer is "yes"), is if I have a bunch of JPEG and NEF files keyworded in LR3 and I convert them to DNG (within LR3) do the keywords and other metadata get transferred to the new DNGs?

Just trying to figure this out now because whether the answer is yes or no it will determine whether I have to figure out a way to do the DNG conversion + metadata transfer in iMatch before migrating to LR3 (if I do decide to migrate in the end). I'll take a look at writing a script to launch DNG Converter from iMatch, as John suggests. I'll see if by doing it that way the images keep the metadata. I know the DNG converter keeps the metadata pertaining to image editing, but I was thinking more about keywords and the such. I'll run a couple of tests when I get home tonight.

Sorry to be asking all these questions about LR3 instead of testing myself, by the way. At this moment I'm focusing on re-organizing my iMatch database which is a pretty daunting task in itself. I want to get that done first so I can have a more tidy database to transfer to LR3, as it doesn't seem like a good idea to transfer the jumbled mess that I have right now to a new software I'm not familiar with. Once I'm done with the reorganizing I'll download an evaluation copy of LR3 and focus on transferring my database and testing LR3 with it. If I were to install an evaluation copy of LR3 now I fear I'd run out of the trial period before I have a "fixed" database to test with, and then I wouldn't be able to make an educated decision on whether to migrate. I hope this makes sense.

In the meantime I'm trying to gather as much information as I can so when time comes to try LR3 I can hit the ground running.

Thanks again guys.

Jorge

Hey Bob, so you are saying that LR3 can catalog movies now? I didn't know that. That's good. I don't have a lot of movies but it would still be nice to be able to add them to my image database since I'm able to do that in iMatch. I thought by moving to LR3 I'd have to drop them out of the database.

Jorge

One of the reasons I'm thinking about doing the switch has to do with the burglary of my flat and the loss of backups as a result. Other than having lost 2 years of photos I've also lost pretty much all the RAW editing I've done to the images that didn't get stolen.

That's why I suspect I may save hundreds of hours if I use a LR3, since I'll eventually have to redo all the editing and using LR I wouldn't have to jump back and forth from one program to another but can stay in one for both editing and cataloguing. It also means I'd have to spend about 270GBP for a LR3 license, but when you divide that cost by the number of hours it may save me it starts seeming worth it to fork out the cash.

I do like the flexibility that I get with iMatch, but it seems that lots of times that flexibility comes at the cost of being a semi-professional programmer. I can do some scripting, but I still find iMatch too complex to use for some tasks. The interface drives me mental sometimes too.

I don't know, the jury is still out, but I'm leaning towards LR3 as at this point simplifying my workflow is worth a lot to me.

Thanks for the feedback guys. If there are any other things that any forum members would still like to add I'd still love the input.

Jorge

I've been using iMatch for a few years now, but I'm considering a switch to LR3 with the hope of simplifying my workflow. My previous workflow involved mainly Bridge (renaming, rating, culling), ACR (editing) & iMatch (cataloguing). Seems like with LR3 I could do all that with just one application, which should save quite a bit of time.

I've been reading about LR3 in several forums and reviews, but most of the information I find is about the image editing capabilities of LR3, and not so much about its DAM capabilities. I've also been reading very mixed reports on the speed of the software, both as an image editor and as a DAM application. So I was hoping some of the people in this forum, which is (obviously) very DAM oriented would be able to give me some impressions about it. Any advice on moving from iMatch to LR3 would be very welcome too.

Some specific questions I have are:

• How fast is LR3 for browsing/displaying images? This is one of my frustrations with iMatch. I suppose you have to generate previews to get optimum performance, but is it fast after that? By fast I mean when there's virtually no wait when you are looking at an image and click the arrow to look at the next.
  
• Does it feel fast for searching through a database? In the iMatch forums this is one of the things that I've heard cited as a downside for LR when compared to iMatch, which is admittedly pretty fast at finding all images in a collection of, say, 50,000 that contain certain keywords in just a few seconds. It seems that in most cases the negative comments refer to older versions of LR. Any improvement in LR3 in this area?
  
• I have a bunch of files in JPEG and Nikon NEF format files that I want to convert to DNG. Will I be able to do the conversion directly within Lightroom, with the metadata (keywords, IPTC fields, etc) transferring over to the new files?
  

I have many more questions, but I won't ask them for now so I can keep the post a bit more focused.

I'll be downloading LR3 and running some of my own tests with it, but it would be useful to hear what people with reasonably big image catalogue sizes have to say after having used it for a while.

Unfortunately I won't be able to test LR3 with a "proper" image database to compare performance with iMatch. This is because my own catalogue is in shambles due to a combination of not properly reconstructing my backups after my computer died and I swapped some hard drives, which left me partially without data redundancy for a short while, and some idiot with great sense of timing that decided to break into my flat and take what wasn't his (laptop, camera & lenses among other things).

At least this incident has made me update my backup system to something much more robust, so hopefully I won't find myself in this situation again.

Thanks in advance for any info.

Jorge

Hello all. I finally solved my problem a couple of weeks ago, but didn't want to post right away as I wanted to do some testing and make sure everything was really ok.

To make a long story short, the problem was indeed with the calibrator. The Pantone Huey Pro, while being a good calibrator for standard screens as far as my experience goes, simply does not have the range for a wide gamut RBG LED screen like the one on my laptop. One of the reasons it took me this long to figure it out is that Pantone support wasn't able to give me a clear answer on whether the Huey Pro was able to profile my type of screen or not.

I bought a Spyder 3 Pro since the Datacolor website states than it can handle the new wide gamut screens, and so far it's working really well. It's a real pleasure to be able to work on my images again. After this I don't think I'll be buying from Pantone again anytime soon.

Thank you Peter for your help and congratulations on the 2nd edition of The Dam Book. I'll make sure to check it out!

-Jorge

Peter,

Thanks for letting me know what that "quick flash in Bridge" is. I've been trying to find that out for a while and noone seemed able to give me an answer.

I do understand that the in-camera render from each different vendor is just their particular interpretation of the RAW file and that I shouldn't expect what I see in ACR, or any other RAW interpreter/editor, to match it.

Thank you also for the clarification about Breezebrowser.

I've been doing a lot of testing this weekend but I haven't been able to solve the problem. Right now what I know is this:

• The RAW images in CS4 don't match the thumbnails that were once extracted from them in CS3 in my old computer.
• If I reinstall CS3 in my new computer I get the same issue (RAWs don't match JPEGs).
• If I uninstall my screen calibration software and remove my calibration profile I get consistency (RAWs match JPEGs). Although of course that leaves me without color management.

What I don't understand is how calibrating my screen can affect adversely ONLY my RAW files in CS4. I would think that a bad screen profile would make EVERYTHING look wrong within CS4. Am I missing something here?

I've found an article online that suggests that my screen calibrator (Pantone Huey Pro) may not be capable of correctly profiling a wide gamut RGB LED screen like the one I have, so maybe that's related to my problem. I'll have to investigate more down that route.

To do some further testing I've just downloaded An evaluation version of Breeze Browser Pro. It shows both the RAWs and the JPEGs correctly. So this definetely seems to be a problem with CS4.

Peter,

I made a new user account to test it out and yes, the problem persists.

One thing I've noticed too is that if I purge the cache in Bridge for one of my image folders, as the thumbnails regenerate they look the way they should for a split second, and then they revert to looking wrong again. At least I'm almost 100% sure they look right for that fleeting moment, but I can't check properly because the "correct" rendition of the thumbnails lasts only an instant.

I don't know if that is important, but it seems at least significant to me that Bridge would decide to display the images properly and then apply some sort of post process to them that screws them up. But I don't know how Bridge works internally so I can't guess at what it's doing.

I've mentioned this a couple of times to Adobe UK support but they have either overlooked it or not thought it was significant, because they never address it in their replies to me.

Hello Peter, thank you for the fast reply.


Yes, that's correct. Also, if I look at RAW+earlier JPEG in a different computer they still look the same.


Yes, if I make changes to the DNG and extract a new JPEG the new changes are reflected and both images look the same.

Although if you mean whether non adjusted images look different than they should, since all of my RAW images have been corrected in one way or another before extracting JPEGs I have nothing to compare them to. So I can't really test that.


If you mean the circular icon with the two dials (above and to the right of the thumbnail), yes, I do see that.


I'm not 100% sure what you mean. I suppose you mean that ACR may open the images with certain default settings but they are not necesseraly applied until you save the file? In any case all of my images have been corrected in ACR (they all show the badge over the thumbnail) because I always do at least some sort of basic correction. So that means my correction settings should be applied. Correct me if I'm misunderstanding you.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that if I turn off calibration in my computer (uninstall Huey software & remove color profile) both RAWs & JPEGs look the same again. But of course that is not a viable solution since it throws color management out the window.

So it seems that the calibration profile is somehow affecting the RAW images in a different way than anything else on the screen, although I'm not sure how that's even possible.

-Jorge