Affinity V2, external storage (NAS), is it supported or not?

[cgidesign]

Windows 10 - Affinity V2.

Affinity V2, external storage (NAS), is it supported or not?

In the below linked thread users write, they got corrupted files when using external storage. The conclusion of users seems to be, that Affinity's file handling in general has issues with saving to external storage and the APPs should only be used with local disks.

But this is based on individual experience and I am not sure if it is mainly related to external USB disks where the users have not switched off the caching in Windows.

I can't find something in Affinity's specifications page regarding this.

Is there somewhere an official statement or recommendation from Serif regarding the topic?

 

Storage Concept planned:

Files from Affinity should go to an external NAS via 10-Gbit ethernet (= approx. 1 Gigabyte / sec).

Temp, scratch and cache folders are on a local disk (M.2 SSD)

Save as and load from goes to and from the external NAS.
External NAS is a Qnap TVS (a mid level pro NAS) with each storage volume set to RAID 1

Goals:

• Redundancy: Saving to NAS ensures immediate redundancy without the need to handle backup or replication.
• Time saving: Files can be accessed from multiple machines (e.g. texture maps created and saved with Affinity can be used from a Render PC, Notebook etc. without the need to copy, replicate etc.).
• Reducing pipeline complexity: Actually the storing to the NAS is handeled manually or by setting up replication rules in a dedicated software. By saving to NAS directly those steps would be obsolete.

[cgidesign]

Affinity staff or anybody else, do you have experinence with a storing concept like the one above and can give an opinion?

[walt.farrell]

The Staff are quite busy and may take awhile to get to this.

Serif have always recommended not working directly from NAS or any other external drives, suggesting instead that we copy the files to a local disk and work there. This is in part because they do not necessarily load the complete file when you start working, and if they need more of it later and can't get it, the programs do not react well. Also, if they go to Save, and cannot reach the source file any more, the apps don't react well.

I have heard that they may have made some improvements in this area in V2, but I haven't seen any details, and from reports here it seems there may still be problems with using external and NAS drives in some configurations.

[cgidesign]

Thanks Walt for your reply. I assume you are not writing officially in behalf of Serif?

Do you personally have experience with a NAS storage system and can let me know is if works for your or not?

I found a reply from Serif where a moderator wrote, that a user's file was of to high dimension and might have exeeded ram or vram size, which may have caused file corruption.

But I did not find a more general info like:

• "our - Serif's - file save / load algorythms are quite robust and of course support storage concepts that include direct storage to NAS systems (but we can not comment on instabilities of the external systems, operating system or connectivity issues)"
• "our - Serif's - file save / load algorythms do not support storage concepts that include direct storage to NAS or any other external storage. If you use such a concept you risk file corruption"

[walt.farrell]

18 minutes ago, cgidesign said:

I assume you are not writing officially in behalf of Serif?

Correct. You can tell that as the details of my post do not show a Staff badge, or a Moderator notation. (Plus, I referred to Serif and Staff in 3rd person  )

18 minutes ago, cgidesign said:

Do you personally have experience with a NAS storage system and can let me know is if works for your or not?

I have never had issues storing and accessing files on my Windows network, whether they're saved on another computer on the network or on a NAS. But enough other users have had problems that I would hesitate to recommend it. I may simply not have encountered the problem areas.

As I said, the recommendation has always been to work on local copies, and when done to move/copy them to the network.

I did manage to find the Developer comment I alluded to above, but there is still no full documentation on what changes might have been made in V2: 

Perhaps, when they have time, Mark (or another Developer) or one of the QA/Support staff could comment further. They're all quite busy right now.

[Corgi]

If you search for it, Adobe has a detailed description of why, for example, Photoshop supports only local disks. I'd provide a link to that, but it's against forum rules.

[Old Bruce]

1 minute ago, Corgi said:

... I'd provide a link to that, but it's against forum rules.

I don't think it is against the forum rules, as this is for information or education. But with the information you provide people could do a DuckDuckGo or google search.

[Corgi]

1 minute ago, Old Bruce said:

I don't think it is against the forum rules, as this is for information or education. But with the information you provide people could do a DuckDuckGo or google search.

Thanks. I was just going by this, under Prohibited Content: links to any other commercial website or store, although moderators may use their discretion.

But yeah, it's not hard to locate! 

[cgidesign]

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

As I said, the recommendation has always been to work on local copies, and when done to move/copy them to the network.

I found the Adobe statement. They don't recommend to save / load over network because the infrastructure etc. can be faulty and they write they don't give support for network storage issues. That's clear. But they don't write that the way how CC products write files hinders a NAS storage concept. Direct attached HDDs (e.g. USB drives) are officially ok for them.

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I have never had issues storing and accessing files on my Windows network

The linked post about Affinity gives the impression it is the App itself that causes the issues. The supporting moderators are very helpful to recover affected files from users but don't say whether external HDDs or network storage is supported or not.

Your @walt.farrell feedback is a hint that the linked post might give a wrong impression and NAS can work without issues.

Anyway, I'll test it with V2 trial for my local work when the mainboard with the 10Gb ethernet arrived.

But there is a company asking me about Affinity and V2 for internal graphics stuff - and they save everything over networks to virtual servers.

So, I still hope to get a feedback from Serif whether they think their software can be used in a network storage environment or not. As said, Adobe does not support it, but maybe Affinity does.

[Corgi]

1 hour ago, cgidesign said:

Direct attached HDDs (e.g. USB drives) are officially ok for them.

Assuming you're looking at the same web page I am, Adobe contradicts itself on this matter. They make the following statements (all direct quotes):

• Therefore, some problems occur more frequently when you work across a network or from removable media than from a local hard disk
• Problems using Photoshop files across a network or from removable media can be intermittent or delayed.
• Adobe Technical Support only supports using Photoshop and Adobe Bridge on a local hard disk.
• External hard drives should work with Photoshop without a problem...
• However, Adobe is not stating that there should be regular problems storing files and working with external hard disks
• Photoshop does not support network or removable drives as scratch disks
• Technical Support strongly recommends working in Photoshop directly on the local hard disk.

So they are saying that using removable hard drives should work, but may not, and are supported by the application, but will not be supported by Tech Support. Got it!

[Calvert]

I have been using Adobe products, (Primarily Illustrator and Photoshop) as well as a few others and saving ALL (100%) of my customers artwork for over 10 yrs on a recently updated Truenas Core server networked by LAN and never had an issue with saving any files from those products. Keep in mind that the software of all of these are installed on my windows machine and just use the nas for storage.

I have been running and saving all my files on my NAS without issue. (I did have a font issue with Affinity, but a reinstall seems to have fixed that). I create very large files as the prints for what I do are large.

SO far, Affinity Design has been working perfectly fine saving this way.

[cgidesign]

Thanks all.

I will post an update here once I tested it.

[Dan C]

Hi @cgidesign,

Thanks for your post and our sincerest apologies for the delayed response here. We are exceptionally busy following the release of V2 and we thank you for your continued patience and understanding here.

On 11/30/2022 at 8:43 PM, cgidesign said:

So, I still hope to get a feedback from Serif whether they think their software can be used in a network storage environment or not. As said, Adobe does not support it, but maybe Affinity does.

Due to the way Affinity loads and saves files (favouring speed, where possible), officially our developers recommend only installing the Affinity app on a local disk and loading/saving files should also be done to a local disk - with saved copies of your documents being uploaded to an external storage drive for backup purposes.

We hope to improve our support of both running the app and opening/saving files to external devices in the future.

I hope this clears things up!

[Calvert]

This may be unofficial and not sure if it helps, but I have ran an installed version of AD2 on a windows machine that saves all the files only to a TrueNas 13.0 LAN connected server without any issue. (Even back when it was FreeNas) Ive been doing this with Adobe for 8+ yrs.