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Looking for some guidance & wise words regarding photo sync a.k.a How do you do it?
I now have a shiny new iPad so it's about time I got myself sorted out. I've noticed the same 'problem' with the iPhone but never got round to sorting it.
It's all to do with the synching of photos via iTunes and how it mangles folders.
Within my Pictures I've got various folders, some of which I want synching & some not. I can tick the relevant folders & over they go, but subfolders within don't get recreated, all the photos just end up in the highest level folder iyswim.
So how would (Can I?) I get it to replicate:
\Pictures\holiday1
\Pictures\holiday2
\Pictures\friends & family\us
\Pictures\friends & family\us\Jessica\0-3months
\Pictures\friends & family\us\Jessica\3-6months
and so on, with each one in a seperate album? In as automated a fashion as possible for future synchs?
I saw someone recommending you create a new folder for photos to be synched and then put all the folders in there - ensuring that you don't go more than one level down - but that seems a bit of a faff.
Ideas?
I now have a shiny new iPad so it's about time I got myself sorted out. I've noticed the same 'problem' with the iPhone but never got round to sorting it.
It's all to do with the synching of photos via iTunes and how it mangles folders.
Within my Pictures I've got various folders, some of which I want synching & some not. I can tick the relevant folders & over they go, but subfolders within don't get recreated, all the photos just end up in the highest level folder iyswim.
So how would (Can I?) I get it to replicate:
\Pictures\holiday1
\Pictures\holiday2
\Pictures\friends & family\us
\Pictures\friends & family\us\Jessica\0-3months
\Pictures\friends & family\us\Jessica\3-6months
and so on, with each one in a seperate album? In as automated a fashion as possible for future synchs?
I saw someone recommending you create a new folder for photos to be synched and then put all the folders in there - ensuring that you don't go more than one level down - but that seems a bit of a faff.
Ideas?
Stop fighting the way iPhoto works, would be my suggestion.
iPhoto isn't designed to work with a user-supplied folder structure; it relies on the photo metadata to organise things - either by album, or by event, or by date, or by face.
Whilst this is probably not the kind of answer you're looking for, it may be the one that saves you aggravation in the long term, even if it makes you curse in the short term.
iProducts work on a "library" principle, which isn't necessarily a representation of the underlying folder structure.
iPhoto isn't designed to work with a user-supplied folder structure; it relies on the photo metadata to organise things - either by album, or by event, or by date, or by face.
Whilst this is probably not the kind of answer you're looking for, it may be the one that saves you aggravation in the long term, even if it makes you curse in the short term.
iProducts work on a "library" principle, which isn't necessarily a representation of the underlying folder structure.
Mac Pro Fault -
2008 2x quad 2.8GHz Xeon with 10GB RAM.
No hardware RAID card
Machine has 4x SATA drive in RAID 0 (tried different combos but want RAID 0)
Diagnostics run fine, all clear.
Cleared NVRAM, even tried new battery.
Tested drives, all fine.
Unplugged everything external.
The fault is that the internal drives are shutting down and not responding, the computer carries on working just waiting for the drives. External drives are fine.
Tried flattening the machine and re-installing from scratch (both with 10.6 & 10.7).
Can't re-install the machine as it gets to about 3/4 through the install before the drives stop responding and the install just sits there. No errors or warnings until it eventually times out and asks me to re-install.
I'm on the view that it has a hardware fault but what's frustrating is not being able to determine what the fault specifically is.
Any ideas?
2008 2x quad 2.8GHz Xeon with 10GB RAM.
No hardware RAID card
Machine has 4x SATA drive in RAID 0 (tried different combos but want RAID 0)
Diagnostics run fine, all clear.
Cleared NVRAM, even tried new battery.
Tested drives, all fine.
Unplugged everything external.
The fault is that the internal drives are shutting down and not responding, the computer carries on working just waiting for the drives. External drives are fine.
Tried flattening the machine and re-installing from scratch (both with 10.6 & 10.7).
Can't re-install the machine as it gets to about 3/4 through the install before the drives stop responding and the install just sits there. No errors or warnings until it eventually times out and asks me to re-install.
I'm on the view that it has a hardware fault but what's frustrating is not being able to determine what the fault specifically is.
Any ideas?
Hmmm.....how are you assessing the discs?
TechTools Pro 6 or Drive Genius 3, etc?
Surface scanning should detect if there's bad sectors, and as each disc has a reserve capacity, called into use via the SMART routine, then if they've all been used up, you're starting to see the failing of the drive, since it can no longer map them out.
Not knowing where they are, means it'll try to write to a bad sector, which I'm sure you can appreciate, is not a good thing and explains re-inatallation issues, etc.
TechTools Pro 6 or Drive Genius 3, etc?
Surface scanning should detect if there's bad sectors, and as each disc has a reserve capacity, called into use via the SMART routine, then if they've all been used up, you're starting to see the failing of the drive, since it can no longer map them out.
Not knowing where they are, means it'll try to write to a bad sector, which I'm sure you can appreciate, is not a good thing and explains re-inatallation issues, etc.
Never presume something to be the case without making sure!
I can't condone availing of torrents of either product, but if you did, and then deleted after running the test(s), you might justify it as OK.
Alternatively, you could contact Apple Support, and having demonstrated you've tried your best to diagnose it, they should offer you some additional ideas or suggest to go to the nearest Store and have a Genius Bar staff member run TTP6 on it to see what's reported.
Surface scanning takes ages, so it'd be more a case of dropping it off, then calling back later or them calling you with a diagnosis and repair estimate.
Drives hanging is a classic symptom of drive issue or the OS file structure issue - which Verify System in Disk Utiility would pick up, as would fsck -y in verbose mode.
You've not mentioned that as having been done, since NVRAM resets don't fix that problem, so perhaps you should, and Repair Permissions (even if only to make yourself feel better it's been done).
I can't condone availing of torrents of either product, but if you did, and then deleted after running the test(s), you might justify it as OK.
Alternatively, you could contact Apple Support, and having demonstrated you've tried your best to diagnose it, they should offer you some additional ideas or suggest to go to the nearest Store and have a Genius Bar staff member run TTP6 on it to see what's reported.
Surface scanning takes ages, so it'd be more a case of dropping it off, then calling back later or them calling you with a diagnosis and repair estimate.
Drives hanging is a classic symptom of drive issue or the OS file structure issue - which Verify System in Disk Utiility would pick up, as would fsck -y in verbose mode.
You've not mentioned that as having been done, since NVRAM resets don't fix that problem, so perhaps you should, and Repair Permissions (even if only to make yourself feel better it's been done).
As above, I have fsck'ed and reset permissions and cleared caches and cleared NVRAM's, formatted drives individually, ran RAM tests, reseated everything etc without success.
If the discs had bad sectors, problems then you'd get IO errors appearing in logs or from the output of fsck, stuff in Lost + found etc.
No errors at all.
What ever it is, it's more subtle.
Going to try install OS on single drives to see if it's having an issue with RAID.
If the discs had bad sectors, problems then you'd get IO errors appearing in logs or from the output of fsck, stuff in Lost + found etc.
No errors at all.
What ever it is, it's more subtle.
Going to try install OS on single drives to see if it's having an issue with RAID.
If we're to assume an issue on the Logic board, beyond the diagnostic capabilities of the standard disc supplied, then one option is to put a disc in an external caddy, and install OS X on it via FireWire.
If all goes well, and it boots fine, then I'd put said disc into each of the internal bays, and see which/if all fail to pick it up as in situ.
If we were to suppose it's a RAID issue, then I'm struggling to fathom why since it's software RAID being used, and wonder if the discs are faulty in such a manner as to report to OS X as it tries to install, that they are.
So ultimately, it boils down to a disc issue rather than Apple hardware failure.
One option you could look at, is SoftRAID - seemingly a much better solution than Apple's offering, when you look at the comparison.
If all goes well, and it boots fine, then I'd put said disc into each of the internal bays, and see which/if all fail to pick it up as in situ.
If we were to suppose it's a RAID issue, then I'm struggling to fathom why since it's software RAID being used, and wonder if the discs are faulty in such a manner as to report to OS X as it tries to install, that they are.
So ultimately, it boils down to a disc issue rather than Apple hardware failure.
One option you could look at, is SoftRAID - seemingly a much better solution than Apple's offering, when you look at the comparison.
dang that software isn't cheap!
I've found that there's another reset button on the mobo that I didn't know about, tried everything else so will try that and see if it makes a difference.
Used to have an application on the PC called 'PC Check' http://www.eurosoft-uk.com/pccheck.html
That would test the crap out of a PC, used to work for an electronics company that sold its own branded PC workstations and we used to use the software to run long burn-in tests before dispatch. Presumably Apple have something similar but not something you could buy.
I've found that there's another reset button on the mobo that I didn't know about, tried everything else so will try that and see if it makes a difference.
Used to have an application on the PC called 'PC Check' http://www.eurosoft-uk.com/pccheck.html
That would test the crap out of a PC, used to work for an electronics company that sold its own branded PC workstations and we used to use the software to run long burn-in tests before dispatch. Presumably Apple have something similar but not something you could buy.
Update, tried the reset button on the mobo, cleared NVRAM again and installed 10.7.2 from disc.
It installed fine, no discs falling asleep, seems OK now, currently restoring users and applications from the Time Machine drive.
A little too ambiguous for my liking but it's not worked at all since Wednesday so to last this long without incident is clearly different.
Thanks for folks help.
It installed fine, no discs falling asleep, seems OK now, currently restoring users and applications from the Time Machine drive.
A little too ambiguous for my liking but it's not worked at all since Wednesday so to last this long without incident is clearly different.
Thanks for folks help.
One, or more of your disks is playing silly buggers. As suggested above, if you have the time, re-install on a single disk. If everything works, try creating a RAID 0 volume across two of the other disks.
If the single disk fails, and again if you have the time, attempt another disk etc etc. I don't envy you the problem, but you are attempting to run with a pretty esoteric setup, having four disks in RAID 0.
If the single disk fails, and again if you have the time, attempt another disk etc etc. I don't envy you the problem, but you are attempting to run with a pretty esoteric setup, having four disks in RAID 0.
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