LR3 - any way to remove device from import?

denisegoldberg

I have a drive on my computer pointing to files on Amazon S3.

For some reason LR3 has decided this is a device containing photos, and it insists on searching this first for files to be imported. And yes, there are thousands of photos on that drive. It takes minutes before it comes back and allows me to point to a local drive, making the import close to unusable.

I haven't been able to find a setting to tell Lightroom that this device should not be used.

I'm hoping that I'm missing something. Can anyone point me to a way to permanently exclude this device?

--- Denise

pathfinder

Operating system may be important for suggestions...........

denisegoldberg

pathfinder wrote: »

Operating system may be important for suggestions...........

Oops, sorry! must have left my brain somewhere else...

I'm running Windows 7.

--- Denise

Icebear

In your Preferences, have you checked "show import dialog when a memory card is detected?"

If so, LR is going to probably keep doing this to you. Why don't you just turn that preference off. To me, it's less hassle just to go to "Import" when I want to, not when LR thinks I want to. That will let you just pick the drive you want to import from without LR automatically going to the drive you don't want.

Would that help?

denisegoldberg

Icebear wrote: »

In your Preferences, have you checked "show import dialog when a memory card is detected?"

...Would that help?

I'm with you - I'll tell Lightroom when I want to import.

I just checked Preferences again, the "show import dialog when a memory card is detected?" is not checked.

The problem occurs whenever I request an import. For some reason Lightroom has decided that my J: drive (which is on S3) is a device that it should access, and it does that before giving me a choice of drives to import from. I don't want it to ever access that drive. Unfortunately, backups are done by copying to that drive, so I need it to be defined. I just want Lightroom not to reference it.

Unfortunately, it shows in Windows as a removeable device.
The thing is, I don't want lightroom ever to read a removeable device. I copy from flash cards to my hard drive before importing into lightroom.

The current behavior makes it very painful to import into Lightroom. I honestly wish I could use the LR2 import dialog with LR3. The new import is prettier, and it may have more functionality - but that's really hard to see when I have to wait minutes for it to respond to me.

--- Denise

Icebear

Hmmm . . . here's another thought. Are you certain that LR is not using the "last backup catalog" or some such thing as your working catalog. I'm sorry, I don't know exactly what it's called, but my LR3 did that to me when I first set up my automatic Catalog backup, and I was able to change it after I figured out what was going on. I wonder if the reason it's going to that drive with such "purposefulness" is because that's where your backup catalog is? Yes, I'm shooting a scattergun in the dark here.

denisegoldberg

Icebear wrote: »

Hmmm . . . here's another thought. Are you certain that LR is not using the "last backup catalog" or some such thing as your working catalog. I'm sorry, I don't know exactly what it's called, but my LR3 did that to me when I first set up my automatic Catalog backup, and I was able to change it after I figured out what was going on. I wonder if the reason it's going to that drive with such "purposefulness" is because that's where your backup catalog is? Yes, I'm shooting a scattergun in the dark here.

I don't think it is - my automatic backups are going to an external drive, but that's an actual drive. I think the problem is that Windows looks at the drive as a "Device with Removeable Storage" - and that's the same category a device with a flash card is in.

I suppose I could unmap my S3 backup drive then remap it when I'm done with Lightroom. I'd prefer not to do that, but I guess it is an option.

--- Denise

jfriend

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I don't think it is - my automatic backups are going to an external drive, but that's an actual drive. I think the problem is that Windows looks at the drive as a "Device with Removeable Storage" - and that's the same category a device with a flash card is in.

I suppose I could unmap my S3 backup drive then remap it when I'm done with Lightroom. I'd prefer not to do that, but I guess it is an option.

--- Denise

At the upper left of the import dialog is something you can click on that offers a "sub-folders" option. I don't actually know what it's for, but I wonder if you uncheck that, will it keep Lightroom from trying to build a folder list on that remote S3 drive?

denisegoldberg

jfriend wrote: »

At the upper left of the import dialog is something you can click on that offers a "sub-folders" option. I don't actually know what it's for, but I wonder if you uncheck that, will it keep Lightroom from trying to build a folder list on that remote S3 drive?

I think I tried that, but I'll try it again tonight.
Problem is it starts to build a photo list from that drive before I can even make any choices.

Thanks.

--- Denise

jfriend

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I think I tried that, but I'll try it again tonight.
Problem is it starts to build a photo list from that drive before I can even make any choices.

Thanks.

--- Denise

I think the setting is sticky so the next time, it might not try to read so much.

denisegoldberg

jfriend wrote: »

I think the setting is sticky so the next time, it might not try to read so much.

Unfortunately that made no difference.

I just had a very annoying phone call with Adobe support. It took quite a bit of explaining to get them to understand the problem. Their response? "Unplug the drive". Grrr!

I know I can disconnect the drive and then reconnect it, but I find that quite annoying.

Luckily I just looked at the remote devices list again and realized that my flash card reader comes before my S3 drive. Turns out that keeping a flash card in the reader is a reasonable fix for the problem - I just need to make sure that I have a flash card in the reader when I want to import. That opens quickly and it no longer defaults to the S3 drive. That's a relief.

I'm blown away by the fact that they took a simple dialog that worked really well and replaced it by a dialog that makes the wrong decision by default.

Thanks to both of you for your suggestions.

--- Denise

Icebear

HA!! Denise Goldb(G)rrrrrg . . .

chasgroh

...I'm in kinda the same boat; I prefer to do my own backup and really don't want LR to do *any* of that...I'm musing, after messing with the program for a couple of weeks, about how to go about de-enabling the backup system, yet still leave the import dialogue in a usable state. I like to copy my RAW files into me-created folders from the CF card, these I place into a SSD drive that I use as a scratch pad...after manipulating said files, and maybe creating another folder or two, I ship them all off to another drive on the computer and copy them to a remote drive...card has gone to an epsom backup HD and from there to another remote. It gets kinda crowded and confusing within the LR program so I like to keep it pretty clean, ad-hoc usage mainly. I've got Kelby's book and keep thinking that I'll make a stab at using it as designed, but I've got this system down and it's comfortable...sheesh, what to do...

cg

Sam

Hi Denise,

As you know I ain't no computer genus, but I just tried to duplicate what happens to you and can't.

I am on a Mac and when I click on the import button the main, center screen / window area has the message "Please select a source" It does not automatically search anything?

Good luck with this.

Sam

denisegoldberg

Sam wrote: »

As you know I ain't no computer genus, but I just tried to duplicate what happens to you and can't.

I am on a Mac and when I click on the import button the main, center screen / window area has the message "Please select a source" It does not automatically search anything?

Thanks Sam.

From your description it sounds like the Mac version works properly and the windows version doesn't.

I did find a workaround - apparently LR3 lookes for removeable devices and opens the first one it finds. In my case that was my Amazon S3 backup drive which is not on my computer but on the web. I discovered that if I put an empty compact flash card in my flash reader, LR3 found that first and didn't attempt to open the Amazon S3 drive. As far as I'm concerned it is really stupid behavior - I don't ever want a program to decide what I want to open.

--- Denise