Network volume troubles
Since some time, I got a really annoying problem, I presume it started after a very troublesome upgrade to macOS Catalina, in the mean time, I made a fresh install twice, but the problem stays...
The situation:
- I got a Late 2014 iMac 5K, top off the bill machine, with the exception of the storage space (4 GHz i7, 32 GB Ram, 4 GB graphics, 1 TB Fusion drive)
- Because my storage capacity was too low (I'm an amateur photographer) I expanded my storage using a QNAP TS-431P with 4x 4TB WD Red hard drives
I put some larger photo libraries on my NAS, the older pictures I need less access to, and the actual ones, I keep on my internal drive for speed.
Since the upgrade to Catalina (which was already very troublesome), it seems to be almost impossible to access my old photo libraries: almost every time during accessing, the connection to the network volume gets lost (a window "Serververbindungen wurden unterbrochen" appears), and from then on, almost everything gets troublesome: Time Machine doesn't work properly anymore, the Finder has troubles, and the only thing that helps is a hard reboot (holding the power button until the iMac switches off), restarting from the Apple menu doesn't work, since the Mac hangs during shutdown. I just did another clean install, and the same happened again...
What could be wrong? In this stage, the only thing that the iMac is usable for is actually just surfing the web... I had a look at the S.M.A.R.T. status of all my drives, both in the Mac and in the NAS, but everything seems fine there. Also, the hardware diagnostic test says my iMac is OK. Has anybody else experienced this? It's the worst experience I've had since 20 years of Mac, if there seems to be no solution I would be willing to try Linux as main OS, although that lacks too much functionality for photography...
iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS 10.15