Folder Path view on the Mac

[Bob M]

As an issue, this is relatively trivial.  It's more that I would like to understand what's going on (and perhaps improve my Mac education)

I purchased a V6 license a few days ago and have been playing with PM+ (build 3215) on both a Windows 7 and a MacBook Air (10.14.4).  So far, I am very pleased with what I see; it seems to do everything I would want it to, or rather, will do.

In playing around, I discovered an issue on the Mac that struck me a being a significant problem but upon investigating, it turns out it isn't, just a minor annoyance.

My photos are stored on a network drive. I have 4 Western Digital drives of varying vintages.  They are named Photos, WD-NAS-01, WD-NAS-03, and WD-NAS-05.  It is important to note that the top level folder on all drives is named Public and is not (easily) renameable.

On the windows machine, if I choose "Folder Path" View, I get /NAS_NAME/Public/...
While on the MacBook, I end up with 4 volumes named Public.  Thus when I choose "Folder Path" view, I find my photos are scattered over multiple volumes Public, Public-1, Public-3 etc. (I scanned to catalogue over multiple sessions, often with a reboot in between).  It seems as though whether the photos end up in Public, Public-1, etc is determined by the order in which I had accessed the various network drives since rebooting.

I was sure this was going to be a problem and that I could end up with more than one copy of a photo under "different volumes".  So I tried rescanning a directory that was showing under a volume different from the current one.  And surprising to me, I didn't end up with a duplicate but instead the folder "moved" from Public-1 to Public-3.

What I find surprising is, at least it seems to me, that the only thing you could be using as the primary key to your database is the photo's location.  If that is true and there is no confusion with these changing volume names, then you must also be using the network drive name  as well.  (Or is my logic completely off base here?)

In any case, would it be possible to have the option to use drive names rather than volume names in the "Folder Path" view on a Mac?  This would avoid the problem for me of seeing my photos apparently scattered across 4 volumes when in fact they are all on the same drive.

[Kirk Baker]

Bob,

As an issue, this is relatively trivial.  It's more that I would like to understand what's going on (and perhaps improve my Mac education)

I purchased a V6 license a few days ago and have been playing with PM+ (build 3215) on both a Windows 7 and a MacBook Air (10.14.4).  So far, I am very pleased with what I see; it seems to do everything I would want it to, or rather, will do.

In playing around, I discovered an issue on the Mac that struck me a being a significant problem but upon investigating, it turns out it isn't, just a minor annoyance.

My photos are stored on a network drive. I have 4 Western Digital drives of varying vintages.  They are named Photos, WD-NAS-01, WD-NAS-03, and WD-NAS-05.  It is important to note that the top level folder on all drives is named Public and is not (easily) renameable.

On the windows machine, if I choose "Folder Path" View, I get /NAS_NAME/Public/...
While on the MacBook, I end up with 4 volumes named Public.  Thus when I choose "Folder Path" view, I find my photos are scattered over multiple volumes Public, Public-1, Public-3 etc. (I scanned to catalogue over multiple sessions, often with a reboot in between).  It seems as though whether the photos end up in Public, Public-1, etc is determined by the order in which I had accessed the various network drives since rebooting.

Yes, macOS keeps both a displayable name and a unique volume name that can vary when multiple volumes with the same name exist.  The -1, -2, -3 appended onto the name is how macOS does this.

I was sure this was going to be a problem and that I could end up with more than one copy of a photo under "different volumes".  So I tried rescanning a directory that was showing under a volume different from the current one.  And surprising to me, I didn't end up with a duplicate but instead the folder "moved" from Public-1 to Public-3.

What I find surprising is, at least it seems to me, that the only thing you could be using as the primary key to your database is the photo's location.  If that is true and there is no confusion with these changing volume names, then you must also be using the network drive name  as well.  (Or is my logic completely off base here?)

Reasonable logic given those assumptions.  What PM+ does is put an identifier file as close to the root of the disk as it can manage (probably in the "Public" folder in your case) and uses that identifier to track the disk's contents.  Whether it is in actuality Public, Public-1, Public-2, etc. does not matter to PM+.

In any case, would it be possible to have the option to use drive names rather than volume names in the "Folder Path" view on a Mac?  This would avoid the problem for me of seeing my photos apparently scattered across 4 volumes when in fact they are all on the same drive.

But they aren't all on the "same drive" are they?  Why would there be multiple volumes mounted if the photos were all on the same volume?

-Kirk

[Bob M]

Bob,

As an issue, this is relatively trivial.  It's more that I would like to understand what's going on (and perhaps improve my Mac education)

I purchased a V6 license a few days ago and have been playing with PM+ (build 3215) on both a Windows 7 and a MacBook Air (10.14.4).  So far, I am very pleased with what I see; it seems to do everything I would want it to, or rather, will do.

In playing around, I discovered an issue on the Mac that struck me a being a significant problem but upon investigating, it turns out it isn't, just a minor annoyance.

My photos are stored on a network drive. I have 4 Western Digital drives of varying vintages.  They are named Photos, WD-NAS-01, WD-NAS-03, and WD-NAS-05.  It is important to note that the top level folder on all drives is named Public and is not (easily) renameable.

On the windows machine, if I choose "Folder Path" View, I get /NAS_NAME/Public/...
While on the MacBook, I end up with 4 volumes named Public.  Thus when I choose "Folder Path" view, I find my photos are scattered over multiple volumes Public, Public-1, Public-3 etc. (I scanned to catalogue over multiple sessions, often with a reboot in between).  It seems as though whether the photos end up in Public, Public-1, etc is determined by the order in which I had accessed the various network drives since rebooting.

Yes, macOS keeps both a displayable name and a unique volume name that can vary when multiple volumes with the same name exist.  The -1, -2, -3 appended onto the name is how macOS does this.

I was sure this was going to be a problem and that I could end up with more than one copy of a photo under "different volumes".  So I tried rescanning a directory that was showing under a volume different from the current one.  And surprising to me, I didn't end up with a duplicate but instead the folder "moved" from Public-1 to Public-3.

What I find surprising is, at least it seems to me, that the only thing you could be using as the primary key to your database is the photo's location.  If that is true and there is no confusion with these changing volume names, then you must also be using the network drive name  as well.  (Or is my logic completely off base here?)

Reasonable logic given those assumptions.  What PM+ does is put an identifier file as close to the root of the disk as it can manage (probably in the "Public" folder in your case) and uses that identifier to track the disk's contents.  Whether it is in actuality Public, Public-1, Public-2, etc. does not matter to PM+.

In any case, would it be possible to have the option to use drive names rather than volume names in the "Folder Path" view on a Mac?  This would avoid the problem for me of seeing my photos apparently scattered across 4 volumes when in fact they are all on the same drive.

But they aren't all on the "same drive" are they?  Why would there be multiple volumes mounted if the photos were all on the same volume?

-Kirk

All of the photos are on/from the same drive.  In general, the other drives have been mounted by other applications doing other things quite unrelated to PM.  They were not explicitly mounted for use by PM.  This morning I was experimenting and after rebooting I mounted all four network drives by simply viewing their contents with Finder prior to starting PM.  I viewed "Photos" last just to test whether PM would then catalogue to Public-3 and indeed that was the case.

This is a minor issue and I think it only effects the "Folder Path" View.  If it bothers me having my photos randomly scattered over up to 4 pseudo volumes when using this view, then I need to explicitly unmount all drives except "photos" prior to any indexing (or reboot).  But since the software in some sense knows they are from the same drive, it could in principle be modified so that it shows them all coming from the same drive.  But as I said, this is a minor issue that I can live with now that I understand it.  It would be nice to have this fixed at some stage, but my guess is that you have much higher priority things to deal with.

Thanks
Bob