New to v.10 - Creating a New Mosaic Dataset?!?!?!

Question

I just completed the tutorial for creating a mosaic dataset (http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#/Exercise_1_Creating_a_mosaic_dataset/009t000000p3000000/), and went to re-create it with my own data.  Followed the instructions, but no matter what I do, it only displays one photo in ArcMap.  What exactly am I missing??  Please help!!

JeffreySwain · Answer

The reason you would use UNC paths is to prevent access errors when the SOC account reaches out to pull in the source data or the overviews.  If you utilize drive letters, then the drive letters must be constant.  So if you are accessing the M drive when you create the mosaic dataset, you will have to be sure if you use that path on the Server you can still see the data.  UNC paths are preferred because they allow the server and creator to see the data the same way.  For distributed setups (data on one server, server is on another and the creator is using a different machine), the UNC path method is preferred.   As long as the machine is access by it's name and the permission is there for it to access the data, there should not be an error created through the use of UNC paths.  Here is some help documentation that discusses why you would use UNC paths.

Per the help, Another way to make your data available to all SOC machines is to use the operating system tools to share the directory in which the data is stored. Shared directories are commonly referred to with Universal Naming Convention (UNC) paths, which contain the name of the server (for example, \myServer\data). When you use UNC paths to reference your data, all SOC machines will look to the correct machine for the data.

Magnusson · Answer

Hi
Struggling with mosaic's myself. Not the easiest beast to tame.
Gayu; why do you say to use a UNC path? This would mess with our internal map services data structure requirements. Is there documentation on this or have you tests that show that this works best? Please elaborate.
Björn

MarkBrooker · Answer

Nevermind...no one said I was the brightest crayon in the box...  Thanks for your help!