accessing metadata on home network raid

[dougal]

here's a situation that my bro told me about as we were discussing ext4 formatting on his new home raid system:
  macbook air running osx 10.13.6 (high sierra) connected to lan via wifi;
  windows7 pc connected to lan via wifi;
  WD My Cloud EX@ Ultra NAS pre-configured with EXT4 connected to lan via ethernet.

copied many image files (.jpg) from the laptop to the NAS.  when i looked at an image file(source) on my laptop, the metadata was there. but when i looked at the metadata of the image file (target) on the NAS via the laptop, the metadata was missing.  or so i thought.  when i look at the same file on the NAS using the win7 pc i can see the metadata, so it's there.  for some reason, the laptop cannot display the metadata.

any ideas on how to be able to see the metadata from the macbook?

[Jason]

Is it as simple as doing this? This answer is 5 years old so no idea if it's still relevant.

[dougal]

thanks Jason....

that's what he gets when he uses  cmd+i (which I believe would be the equivalent to right click with mouse) on an image filename on the laptop (as source), but on the NAS (as source) he has to open the file first in Preview in order to see that info.  so it's 1 step on the laptop (cmd+i) but 3 steps on the NAS (open in preview, cmd+i, close preview) for exactly the same file. 

(so what he's  discovered is that the data IS there on the NAS(and he could access using Win7), it's just more difficult to get to using the macbook.)...so i'm wondering if there are any mac/linux users that know of this glitch and have a solution or suggestion.