warning! synology photostation 4 unusable

[smallnetddc]

I have a DS109 nas with about 110000 pictures on it. With the Photostation 3 ( from the 9xx firware) It had generated nice thumbnails. After upgrading to photostation 4 new pictures didnt seem to get a thumbnail and a convert process was running all the time.
Thinking something was wrong with the firmware upgrade I started from scratch with the latest firmare. Now I noticed that after adding 1000 pictures on the NAS it is taking already more than 16 hours to generate the thumbnails....
( so for 110000 pictures this will be 666 DAYS !!!! ).
I fired off a support question, but the response was... The thumbnails will get generated in due time.... )

 

[voyager31]

Hi there

Interesting read--I don't think there's anything wrong with the Synology DS, check out their performance numbers when indexing pictures

http://www.synology.com/us/products/DS109/perf.php

10 Photos @ 5.42MB each
4 thumbnails being generated

DS109 = 255 Sec
DS109+ = 47 Sec

DS109 = 110K photos, at 5.42MB = 32.46 days
DS109+ = 110K photos, at 5.42MB = 5.98 days


Synology has always stated that their + models are great performance based applications, and it shows based on the math above.

You may be better off transferring the photos to your computer, deleting the photos off of the DS, and then upload the pictures through the Synology Photo Uploader - so it uses your main computer to handle the thumbnail generation.

Good luck


Edit: I think your calculation is off in terms how long it will take to index your pics

110000 / 1000 => 110 Groups of pics
110 Groups of pics * 16 hours = 1760 Hours
1760 Hours / 24 hours = 73.3 Days to index 110000 pics.

 

[smallnetddc]

I discovered the 'upload' workaround also

After some looking around, I found that also. Sopied the pictures to my pc and use the assistant now to do the upload and creates the thumdnails.
Synology would do better to make this clear somewhere in the admin pannel of the nas and in the firmware upgrade notes. This would help a lot of users.
I also discovered that in a subdirectory where the convert tool is there are some config files, so perhaps with some tuning its possible to speed things up.

 

[randfee]

rofl.... those conversion times are just pathetic!
Is there no way to generate thumbnails on a PC, let's say, one second per image (set dimensions and naming?!) and then copy those to a thumbnail folder or such? Don't know Photostation, no idea, but I would presume that's a possibility.

 

[voyager31]

Synology Photo Uploader is what you're looking for....

You may be better off transferring the photos to your computer, deleting the photos off of the DS, and then upload the pictures through the Synology Photo Uploader - so it uses your main computer to handle the thumbnail generation.

 

[BostonDan]

Not sure I understand this. If I copy a bunch of images to a network share on the DS109 and then access the network share, will the PC be subject to these time estimates for generating thumbnails or will the PC take care of generating thumbnails? Appreciate any info.

 

[thiggins]

Not sure I understand this. If I copy a bunch of images to a network share on the DS109 and then access the network share, will the PC be subject to these time estimates for generating thumbnails or will the PC take care of generating thumbnails? Appreciate any info.

I think this depends on how you access the file.

If you access by browsing to the folder via Windows, then Windows would generate the thumbnails.

If you are using the Web Photo server, then The NAS generates the thumbnails.

 

[BostonDan]

I think this depends on how you access the file.

If you access by browsing to the folder via Windows, then Windows would generate the thumbnails.

If you are using the Web Photo server, then The NAS generates the thumbnails.

Thanks - I was guessing Windows would generate the thumbnails, but I needed someone more knowledgable to confirm. Appreciated.