[gatorguy]

So in a nutshell my plan for my home setup is to eliminate 4 different external drives and simplify sharing of specific photo collections by using a NAS, which I have only enough knowledge of to get myself in trouble.

The current intent is to use a Synology DS-220+ with two 6GB Seagate Exos drives. I had planned to use the 7200rpm 6GB Ironwolf's at $140 each, but Amazon currently has the 5-year guaranteed enterprise-grade Exos (also 7200?) for less than $20 more, way under the $240 list price.

So I'm asking for advice and tips from any of my fellow PF members.

- Any potential pitfalls and/or downsides to using a NAS?
- Is the hardware I plan a good choice?
- Can specific individual photo catalogs be shared with clients by using Synology's cloud features?
- is a NAS going to slow things down? I currently use two external SSD's in addition to a large external 7200RPM HDD for storage.
- I had read that trying to edit files on the NAS would probably be slow, and copying those files over to an SSD and working from there is the way to work. Is that accurate?
- Is a NAS 100% Adobe-friendly?
- Anything else to be aware of?

[ramseybuckeye]

When I used to work with large files (before retiring) it was faster to move them to your machine and work on there. But I think on your own network you are not going to have the traffic that slows things down, still an SSD will be much faster. The advantage of a network is not really speed compared, it's .convenience

[BigMackCam]

I can't help, but I'll be watching this thread with interest, as I've also been thinking along the lines of a NAS solution for some time now.

Out of curiosity, would you be accessing it via ethernet end-to-end, or wifi for one or more hops? If I went this route it would be with the NAS device connected to my router via ethernet, then multiple PCs accessing it through wifi - and that seems like it could be a limitation (or, at least, a consideration), both for the device(s) accessing the storage and for other devices communicating with the router. Perhaps some of the knowledgable responses you get will cover wifi vs hard-wired connectivity...

[vector]

I store all my raw image files on a NAS. It is an actual Dell server running Linux, but the idea is the same as the Synology unit you referenced. I do my PP in Lightroom. I keep the catalogue files local on an NVME SSD and all the image files on the NAS. I don't find any problem working this way but I am also on a wired gigabit network. I would not do this over wifi. I sustain around 100MB/s transfer speed so if you consider a raw K1 file is about 45MB the full image is loaded in about half a second. That is really quite tolerable for me. I don't notice it being a ton faster locally. The delay in Lightroom is the initial generation of the preview image you work from and is stored in the local catalogue. This has to happen whether the file is local or on the NAS and takes longer than the time to transfer the image anyway so overall there isn't a big difference using the NAS or local. The performance seems to be tied to where the Lightroom catalogue lives which for me is very fast NVME SSD.

[gatorguy]

I can't help, but I'll be watching this thread with interest, as I've also been thinking along the lines of a NAS solution for some time now.

Out of curiosity, would you be accessing it via ethernet end-to-end, or wifi for one or more hops? If I went this route it would be with the NAS device connected to my router via ethernet, then multiple PCs accessing it through wifi - and that seems like it could be a limitation (or, at least, a consideration), both for the device(s) accessing the storage and for other devices communicating with the router. Perhaps some of the knowledgable responses you get will cover wifi vs hard-wired connectivity...

I think this is what I'll be doing, and again any comments regarding it from more experienced members is appreciated.

You Tube

You Tube

[vector]

I think this is what I'll be doing, and again any comments regarding it from more experienced members is appreciated.
Synology NAS - How to Connect Directly without a Switch or Router using iSCSI & Mapped Drives - YouTube

My opinion is that performance wise there won't be any noticeable difference whether you direct connect or plug it into a switch on your network. In both cases the hard drives are capable of faster speeds than the Gigabit network interface is, the unknown being how fast the synology cpu's are and whether they can drive full gigabit network speeds. Theoretical max transfer speed for gigabit ethernet is around 120MB/s but various factors will likely keep you a bit under that. My experience is that ~100MB/s is fast enough for my raw workflow whether in Lightroom or Photoshop and the convenience of having mass storage not directly tied to my computer is worth it. I have many computers, all of which can access the NAS. I also run multiple network interfaces in my NAS server so that multiple machines can access at full gigabit speeds at the same time.

[AfterPentax Mark II]

So in a nutshell my plan for my home setup is to eliminate 4 different external drives and simplify sharing of specific photo collections by using a NAS, which I have only enough knowledge of to get myself in trouble.

The current intent is to use a Synology DS-220+ with two 6GB Seagate Exos drives. I had planned to use the 7200rpm 6GB Ironwolf's at $140 each, but Amazon currently has the 5-year guaranteed enterprise-grade Exos (also 7200?) for less than $20 more, way under the $240 list price.

So I'm asking for advice and tips from any of my fellow PF members.

- Any potential pitfalls and/or downsides to using a NAS?
- Is the hardware I plan a good choice?
- Can specific individual photo catalogs be shared with clients by using Synology's cloud features?
- is a NAS going to slow things down? I currently use two external SSD's in addition to a large external 7200RPM HDD for storage.
- I had read that trying to edit files on the NAS would probably be slow, and copying those files over to an SSD and working from there is the way to work. Is that accurate?
- Is a NAS 100% Adobe-friendly?
- Anything else to be aware of?

I have all my pictures on a NAS, but catalogs that is what the Adobes and other PP-program make and they better be on your C:\ drive. So my question what do you mean by catalogs as some of the answers talk about the actual RAW's. Having the RAW's and JPG's on your NAS might slow down PP. It differs with the program you use. I would use the NAS as a backup for the photo's and have the originals to work with on the computer, works way faster.

[Michail_P]

We'll be setting a NAS with my brother soon...I'm not as familiar as he is, due to professional expertise , but ...seems like a good idea for local network archiving. I don't think I'll be getting in trouble that way. Having a bunch of externals is really getting inconvenient. It's worth the transition imho. Time management comes second, as the body of work is not that extended.

[MossyRocks]

- Any potential pitfalls and/or downsides to using a NAS?

One piece of info is that a NAS, even with redundancy, is not a backup

- is a NAS going to slow things down? I currently use two external SSD's in addition to a large external 7200RPM HDD for storage.

Probably as it is limited by your network's throughput. Things only get worse if on a wireless network too.

- I had read that trying to edit files on the NAS would probably be slow, and copying those files over to an SSD and working from there is the way to work. Is that accurate?

Yes this is what I do.

My setup is that my old computer became a NAS when I built the new one. The old computer now runs TrueNAS and has 7x4TB Seagate IronWolf drives in it that I picked up at microcenter for like $109 each when I built it a couple years back giving 24TB of redundant storage. The machine has a 3rd gen Intel i7 in it with 32GB ram. It is connected to my wired 1gbps network as wired bandwidth isn't shared and you get the full 1gbps both directions (full duplex) unlike wireless where there is X total bandwidth for all devices and is shared between upload and download (half duplex). .

I am a linux user and run RawTherapee so the Adobe database magic they do behind the scenes with lightroom isn't a concern since RawTherapee uses a side car file to store the settings for edits of each image.

[Paul the Sunman]

I am a linux user and run RawTherapee so the Adobe database magic they do behind the scenes with lightroom isn't a concern since RawTherapee uses a side car file to store the settings for edits of each image.

I use ON1 Photo RAW on a mac, and the problem there is that ON1 doesn't allow moving the raw files to a different drive. That is, all the albums point at a particular location that cannot be changed. I have no idea why anyone would design it that way! The edits are in sidecar files though, so they are fine.

[MossyRocks]

I use ON1 Photo RAW on a mac, and the problem there is that ON1 doesn't allow moving the raw files to a different drive. That is, all the albums point at a particular location that cannot be changed. I have no idea why anyone would design it that way! The edits are in sidecar files though, so they are fine.

I have no idea why they would design it that way either. I'm surprised there isn't a way to move things as I do believe people have figured out how to do that with the Adobe software.

[Paul the Sunman]

I have no idea why they would design it that way either. I'm surprised there isn't a way to move things as I do believe people have figured out how to do that with the Adobe software.

LR actually has the Find All Missing Photos utility, that allows this to be done quickly and easily.

[mlag]

About NAS:
- Synology or QNAP are two leading brands, can't be wrong.

- direct connection to your pc will always be faster and wired will be better than wirelless (thunderbold>USB>LAN>Wifi). Please note that LAN cable replacements (like home plugs (ethernet over electricity cables etc...) behave like Wifi (are as slow as wireless). So avoid putting your NAS behind such slower connection. If you have a 10+ year old wifi gateway and you use it to connect your NAS, replacing might improve speed (LAN ports would go from 100mbps to 1Gbps and also Wifi evolved to faster standards).

- for security/backup protection, I recommend to use the two discs in a 1+1 mode (if a disc fails , there is left a working copy !). This 1+1 duplication is called RAID 1. (with more discs , other protection schemes are possible like raid5).
If you do not need this protection (you could keep your old discs as backups, and instruct your NAS to make the backups weekly or daily) you can join the two discs in large volume (JBOD : just a bunch of discs) or do RAID 0 (striping : by alternating writing data on the two discs, the writing speed to the NAS increases).
Note: i have been using NAS since 2003 and had 2 disk failures (my first generation NAS used simple standard discs) but never lost data thanks to the RAID1 scheme.

- Some connect the NAS to one pc only and then it behaves like one big disk; others connect the NAS to the home (wifi) router/Gateway and allow access to anybody on the home network, this last option is of course better for sharing pictures with anyone on your home (wifi) network. Accounts and private/shared folders can be created according to your requirements. It is also possible to set your photofolder as edit(read/write) for you and read for other people (hence others can browse photo's but not accidently delete or modify them).

- your NAS setup will be good enough for browsing your photo's or photo managing software , and honestly , I expect editing software first to load images into your pc's internal memory or memory cache on local disc for processing, loading & (auto-)saving hower will be bit slower depending on your connection to the NAS. So might not be that slowly after all depending on your workflow and connection. If you have a dedicated computer for photo editing, keep it on a LAN cable (PC to the router and from router to NAS). A laptop with Wifi is less good (not necessarly bad).

- Some NAS allow adding an extra SSD card for caching and speeding up frequently used files. Might be worth checking if your model supports (bit more expensive model?) , if you find the NAS slow you can add SSD later if the NAS supports it (has a free slot for it). Older NAS required a harddisc SATA slot for the SSD (so you sacrificed a disc slot), but today many NAS have one or more extra SSD (M2 or PCI) slots. Note that a smaller SSD (100..500 Gb) can be used as cache for much larger harddiscs (of several terabyte), it doesn't have to be the same size as the main discs.

- you can use on most NAS cloud features for remote access but you have to setup accounts/folders for each client (unless you open everything for anybody which is not very secure....). Depending on vendor and client apps used, this can be easy or more difficult. If many users, do realise that you will be also the administrator (if password forgotten etc....) which might be a nuisance if you have many accounts to support.
It is also more difficult if your home network has multiple gateways (like first the internet provider (ADSL or Cable) router and then your private Wifi Router; this might require forwarding ports from your providers modem to the internal modem. Many cloud setups assume that your NAS is on the main (internet provider) gateway... (port forwarding is usually explained but it is an extra step).
I advise to download the manual before you buy NAS and check what exactly you can do (and also how - to judge the complexity) if this feature is important for you.
Some NAS allow automatic upload to

- The NAS behaves as a disc , so all software should work with it (Adobe or others). Some older software on windows might require to assign a drive letter to your NAS in stead of linking directly to it in the network section (using a host name or ip address). It is also possible to use these assignements as shortcuts to specific (sub-)folders.

My setup is :
10..30+ connected devices (6 people but many devices) =wifi or wired= Wifi Router (Wifi6) =LAN= NAS(SSD+3Disc in Raid5) =LAN= backupNAS(3DISC).
Photo processing is mostly on laptop/wifi but the office has a wired LAN cable when needed. But both laptop and wifi router support the faster wifi modes... and the main NAS has a SSD cache. The backup NAS is simpler model but both feature RAID5.


2.12.0.0

[vector]

- direct connection to your pc will always be faster and wired will be better than wirelless (thunderbold>USB>LAN>Wifi)

Just want to clarify that while this is correct if using thunderbolt or USB3, the OP posted a video above that details how to direct connect with Ethernet in which case the connection speed is the same as if connected to a LAN with a switch or router involved. Gigabit Ethernet is still Gigabit Ethernet.

[3by2]

All good advice so far. I used to run a NAS over a homeplug network, achieving about 30-40Mbs/s, direct wired is better and how you configure whatever software you're using will make a difference. So if it's Lightroom where you put catalogues etc. matters.

What I will say and the reason I don't run one now, apart from not really needing one, is that they fail. I don't mean the hard disks but the actual device. So if you buy one, configure a backup for it, buy a current model and have a service plan. Even then, if repair isn't possible and you need to replace it under warranty, there's no guarantee that a newer model will read old disks, hence the backup.

I configured mine with Lightroom and the catalogue files locally and the images on the NAS. There was a slight lag on access but nothing serious. When it broke, my stuff was backed up but not current. I couldn't get another device the same and the new ones wouldn't read my disks. I decided I didn't need another NAS so ended up mounting my disks via Linux to recover what wasn't backed up, a faff but ultimately doable.

My use case doesn't really support a NAS, it was fun to play with but ultimately not needed. If you need one make sure you have it covered for all failure cases.