Where are the photos stored?

sirozha wrote:

I would like to know if ReadyNAS Photo II is an application developed by Netgear or if this is re-branded third-party application. Also, because the use of this application for sharing photos requires that the URL is proxied by readynas.com, what assurances are there that this service will exist in 3, 5, or 10 years from now? It takes a lot of time to re-do all the photo albums currently hosted by other services, such as Shutterfly, Flickr, etc. It would be very disconcerting to learn a few years from now that the service were no longer supported since there is no functionality to share the albums using a non-Netgear URL (for example, based on your own domain or a dynamic DNS based service).

Photos II is 100% developed by NETGEAR.

adb wrote:

higherdemon wrote: I have all my photos on a share on my NAS. In order to use them in this application I must all import them? I find it bizarre that I can't just say to Photos II where my photos are stored. Now I need to import them again. So I'll end up having them twice. I am thinking wrong or? because I don't see anyone having this problem? You are right. It creates several different sized versions of the original, but it also copies the original too, sadly. Would have been nice if it could have just made a reference to the original and handle the case if the original was removed. Disk space is plentiful, but...

I'm organized the same way (all photos on a share) and I think the current photos II implementation, which not only duplicates originals but also copies them under different resolutions, is a major concern in terms of disk space usage. At the very least it should *never* duplicate originals already residing on the NAS. Would photos II authors consider doing that in the not so distant future? Cause that would definitely shift photos II from good to great album sharing facility. Thanks.
--thierry

Yoh-Dah,

Can you give us an answer if Netgear will address the issue a lot of us are having with having duplicate copies when we are already storing them on the ReadyNAS? Is this something you guys will even consider? I understand the need for different qualities and I have not problem with that but having another original is a huge hit especially when cameras are making bigger and bigger files sizes.

My wish: To see a job schedule where you can set it to run and it will just look at the assigned shared location holding the images and make the different qualities automatically without making another original. The idea of having to import from the nas to the nas is just nuts.

Thanks for consider,
Phil

Phil, we're looking into a more space-efficient solution that doesn't compromise on the potential for creating a mess if users delete their original files by accident.

Yoh-Dah

Thank you!!!! This is great to hear. I had to limit which photographer could use P2 because it was not cost effective on a per mb. Until the HDD market gets back up to speed, it's also hard to just upgrade the storage due to the high cost. I look forward to the day when I can allow all my photographers to use P2.

I look forward even more to the day when we can daisy chain a bunch of ReadyNAS on our rack like what you can do with SANs now. Then storage issues pretty much disappear forever for us.

Thanks again!
Phil

Let me add my two cents.
I have no problems with Photos II making copies of my pictures. But I really suffer because of the lack of opportunity to make the folder where it stores pictures visible.
Here is the scenario: I prefer to watch my albums with mediaplayer (Popcorn Hour in my case) on my TV. It's pretty much difficult to show the player this hidden folder.
So it would be great to change the visibility and access rules in settings.

Alef wrote:

Let me add my two cents. I have no problems with Photos II making copies of my pictures. But I really suffer because of the lack of opportunity to make the folder where it stores pictures visible. Here is the scenario: I prefer to watch my albums with mediaplayer (Popcorn Hour in my case) on my TV. It's pretty much difficult to show the player this hidden folder. So it would be great to change the visibility and access rules in settings.

Don't you already have your photos stored on a normal shared on the NAS? I don't think many (if any) are strictly using P2 as the main photo storage. I know I wouldn't take that chance. What we were saying is that since we already have our photos on a shared to be used like you said with streaming or other things like photo editing software, there shouldn't be another full version of the picture for P2 but P2 can and should make the lower quality images for it's need.

yoh-dah, having read this thread I too am disappointed that the ReadyNas Photos 2 application is actualy making a second copy of all the photos onto my own drive. I was under the impression/misconception that the //c/rnp2 folder held a link or shortcut to the picture folders on my media/pictures area. This means that the storage I currently have on my NAS is effectively halved for every photo I make available via ReadyPhotos 2, an overhead I was not prepared for.
In my case I pay for unlimited storage on my own website and intended to use FTP to backup my NAS folders to this storage facility. It would be simpler to just map the rnp2 folder onto my website which will then double as a backup for my pictures?

I would also like to know if I could just use a symbolic link to a mounted share instead of the hidden rnp2 folder. Not sure if that's possible with the way it creates multiple different res copies of pics.

Abernus wrote:
O.K I figured it out. By running the following command: "net use \\<NAS IP Address>\c /user:admin" without the quotes I connact to the NAS as admin, then I can use RAIDar and browse the drive and see the C: of the NAS. I must admit it's one hell of a file path to get to the photos in .RNP2 :lol:

I cant get this to work, ran the command with the correct ip from the run prompt,,,,from win7...anyone with any tips on how to access the hidden storage area