Introduction
This post will delve into some of my troubles using OneDrive with Adobe Lightroom while being mobile. This setup has presented a few hurdles, for background on my current setup please see my last post. The problem revolves around bandwidth required to keep OneDrive’s local copy synced with the cloud copy then the flow on effects that this presents
Lightroom File Changes
One of the cool things with Lightroom is its ability to pick out faces and tag the person in metadata so photos are searchable by the persons name. This requires a small update, maybe a few kilobytes at most to the jpg file. Which for a small number of files really is not a big deal. Though with DSLR jpgs being around 6 Mb each, if you tag say 100 photo this soon adds up to 600 Mb to be uploaded. Combined with new photos being added through normal use this is a large added burden.
Implications on OneDrive
Synchronisation Method
OneDrive is not asynchronous, meaning that any change to a file no mater how small means the whole file needs to be transferred to the servers. Other systems like Dropbox and I believe Google Drive will only upload a block of the file that contains that change. This leads to big improvements in sync speeds especially when dealing with larger files.
Offline Use
The flow on effect of the last problem is more of an inefficiency, small updates register as a change to the file. When files are changed when offline (disconnected from the OneDrives servers) this kicks off the file to be downloaded again from one drive and the new file to be uploaded when next online. You will know this has happened when you start seeing duplicate file names only with the computer name appended. Meant as a precaution to files getting deleted or over written it does have it uses, though in my experience just end up with many duplicate files.
When deleting or moving files when offline these are no reflected on the cloud copy. Leading to another cause of duplicate files. I expect this when the app is not loaded but would be nice if the app recorded the changes to be synced next time system is online. A lass this is not the case. All out of sync files and folders are just re transferred to the original and new locations.
Conclusions
Make sure you are online and your OneDrive is fully synced before doing any major file manipulations. Leaving a portable drive plugged in avoids this problem. Putting it to sleep rather than shut down can also avoid resume. From observation Microsoft treat portable drives as and restarts sync at any time it is not found. In my case this resume “Processing changes” will take many many hours. Then any changes need to be uploaded or downloaded.
Recommendations
Microsoft it would be great if you could implement asynchronous syncing this would save me and the Internet a great deal of bandwidth. Some how improve the file modifications to the one drive folder. Moving & renaming modifying all seem to require a new upload rather than just replicating the local change which would require a lot less data transfer.