Seems a good weapon against ransomware hackers encrypting your data. What do you think?
June 8, 2023
23
-
-
Huge fan of mine. I've got it connected to the interwebz as my own personal cloud storage, accessed through a VPN. And two factor authentication.
On a Gigabit network I set up at home, got the NAS and router on a UPS.
Running it in Synology Hybrid Raid, which is a slightly improved version of Raid 5, it sends alerts to my phone if anything goes amiss. Absolutely love it, best thing I ever built/bought computer wise. No idea why more photographer's don't make use of them -
I have been thinking to have a back up system, I cant decide what to choose. I want to keep my photos and a few bits, I wont need really to access through the internet like a cloud server. I'd like LR to to fetch RAW files reasonably fast from the back up system, I wont play games, stream etc ...
What do you guys advise ? -
From what I understand, the Adobe LR catalogue system won't work on/with a NAS. Saw it mentioned on one of Spacerex's (Synology Youtube tutorial producer) videos. Adobe likes to keep you securely under their thumb.
-
youtu.be/VFCsXuMaS-Y?si=VBqpv2LYD72QRPla&t=142
Found it. Watch the whole video. It's quite interesting.
Edit -for some reason the forum software is doing weird sh!t, the relevant bit to LR starts at 2:30
-
I have raw files which I store on my NAS and can access from LRc. No issues apart from it's not as fast as accessing them locally on my SSD.
Alan
-
I wonder what's changed? He's normally spot on with his technical details. And uses Adobe himself I think
-
Realising that four of my external <=4GB hard drives are over 10 years old and that I have 1.2TB of photos, not to mention lots of wavefiles from recording sessions -- all of which need culling, I costed a Synology DS923+ last night, plus four suitable hard drives, a bit of RAM and a UPS for it, and it came to over €2000, which is about what I paid for the parts for my newly built computer four years ago.
David
-
David,
You have gone for one of the best Synology boxes. If only storing photos, you could get one for much less than that.The speed limitation is the network, not the disks these days. I've got a 916+ with 4 x 12Tb disks and I can saturate the network (1Gb/sec with CAT 6 wiring) writing to my NAS box.
Alan
-
If you're only storing photos & video etc, transcoding/streaming & such, a DS 423+ would be ample. Throw in some 7200rpm Enterprise HDD's, & your network is the limiting factor. You can't really add the UPS onto the price, as you don't have one now, and things can go wrong with your current setup.
-
The 8 year old DS916+ is hardly available here anymore, and I consider that buying a current model is more future-proof. I am not bothered by speed of transfer -- I can always work on something else while that is happening. As I said, I am not just storing photos (no video), but wavefiles. Many of these are 2GB in size, per track. These are professional data, whereas most of my photos are just for my own pleasure!
David
-
I'm joining the Synology club also, In the past had two Netgear ReadyNAS systems (4x3 and 4x4 TB setup)
Those were replaced by a single QNAP 6bay unit with 6x6 TB (2x6 and 4x6 TB pools) and I just bought a Synology DS 1522+ to replace that Qnap
This will be running a 5x6TB setup with 2x 500GB SSD for caching) -
The immutable snapshot feature is fantastic. It’s not available on all Synology NAS boxes, only the newer and faster ones. So be sure to buy the right box if you want that feature.
There’s a YouTube channel called SpaceRex, and that guy has exceptional videos about Synology boxes. He walks you through how to set one up, and configuration of various features such as immutable snapshots.
1 Gb/s Ethernet is really slow, compared to the speed of a directly attached SSD. And 10 Gb/s Ethernet adds expense. I have a Thunderbolt dock which has 1 Gb/s Ethernet, so at least I use the Synology at full speed, rather than WiFi.
There are even more things you can do. For instance, you can buy a Great Big USB external drive, attach it to your Synology, and the Synology will back up to it automatically. OR, you can buy another Synology, put it at a friend’s house, and then your Synology will backup to the remote Synology, over the Internet. This gives you protection in case of theft or fire.
And, you can login to your Synology remotely to access your files, and you can give colleagues their own account on your Synology.
-
That's why I have a 2TB SSD in my NUC, as a working drive. That will hold at least a couple of years worth of photos for me to quickly access locally, after that I've pretty much lost interest in editing them, and they get shuffled off to the NAS, for storage purposes. Then I just browse the NAS with Windows file explorer, right click individual files & "open with" my raw converter. Which is plenty fast enough for me. I've got my own directory setup, with folders for year, camera, month & week -if it's a slow month, I don't worry about the week folders, and sometimes save directly to the NAS.
-
That is basically what I do as well. I use a Mac which “only” has 512 GB of storage.
First, I dump the memory card to the Mac.
Then, I rename the folder to “Subject - Date.”
I do my PhotoLab edits and exports.
I MOVE the folder to my Thunderbolt SSD drive
I manually backup to the NAS.Same as you, I backup into folders of Year. In my case, I then break down by event, because I don’t shoot as much as you these days.
Separately, I use Apple’s Time Machine to keep my Mac backed up to the Synology NAS.
I have a USB backup drive attached to the Synology, and also a UPS, which will shut down my Synology gracefully in case of power failure and it keeps my Internet running as long as possible. We frequently get short power outages here.
-
QNAP NAS
This is an interesting subject for me at the moment, since I’ve just bought, and I’m in the process of installing a NAS at home.
I chose one from the company QNAP. Apparently QNAP and Synology are “about the same” in most respects.It’s true that it was expensive. It is also probably true that it is “over the top” for my needs,… My son is working in a small company responsible for their IT and said to me “what on earth do you need that for?” 😊
It is also true that it is very complicated to set it up in a good way, especially considering that I’m not in any way a NAS expert 😉
Perhaps I just wanted the challenge and enjoy the fun of learning how to get something new up and running and working for me.
With that aside,
I now have a :
-QNAP TS-673A, 6 bay NAS, running at the moment with 4 x 8TB 7200 rpm NAS drives in a RAID5 configuration.
-A 1TB M.2 SSD in the NAS is used as a cache drive (in “read only” mode at the moment)
-An additional external USB 3.2 drive with 18TB is to be used as a removable backup for the NAS.I intend to make full image backups from 3 PC’s at home onto the NAS. Probably using the Acronis software to schedule them automatically.
In the computer where I process my photos I have 2 x 2TB of fast M.2 SSD drives which are nearly full, and also external drives full of photos.On the NAS I’ll have one area just for PC Backups and a separate area for storage of other files. (e.g. older photos and documents and music and movies etc. )
I’ve tested it and it works fine with my ACDSee Ultimate RAW photo editing program.
The NAS will also make automatic snapshots so I can revert back to a previous version of a file if need be.A NAS with a RAID5 config provides some hardware redundancy, protecting it against hardware failure of any one of those 4 drives, but it doesn’t help to protect against disasters like fire, theft or ransomware attacks.
So the whole NAS itself will be backed up (with a one button push) onto the external (removable) 18TB USB driveThat is at least the plan I’m working towards.
It’s already been mentioned that the bottleneck for speed is the home network. At the moment I have only a Gigabit network, and I get a transfer speed of just under 100MB/s, but the Network will soon be upgraded to a 2.5G network and I’m hoping to more than double that speed. It will then be fast enough for my needs. A 10G network would be nice but would be very expensive to upgrade all the components
-
I am not up to the level of sophistication on this topic shown here, but I sprang for a Synology DS923+ last week. I have it up and running and have transferred a folder of photos to it. These are Leica raw files of about 70MB. I can edit them in PhotoLab directly on the NAS without any noticeable lags.I save the results there as tiff files (116MB), which also display quite quickly. At present I am using single ethernet cables from the 1MB/s ports on the NAS and the computer to my ISP's internet modem. I can also connect to it quite satisfactorily from my laptop using wifi.
I need to do some serious thinking and planning to load all the files that are currently on the many large hard drives connected to the computer. As some of these are 11 years old, they are perhaps a bit geriatric. I intend to group files on the NAS by type in separate folders, with backups on the hard drives.
Information on the internet (particularly on youtube) is very frustrating. Most of it gets as far as from A to B, without any consideration of what to do next in arriving at C, which is my next destination. Any advice from those of you who are ahead of me would be welcome.
David
-
David,
I am one of the admins of this FB group www.facebook.com/groups/195677985612721 - it seems to have some knowledgeable people on it.
Alan
-
My workflow is something like this:
I have a folder (with sub folders) on my PC, synchronised via SynologyDrive to my NAS (and therefore to my laptop as well). Two way sync. In there, I create a folder for each photoshoot I do. Under that, I have a folder for Raw & one for JPG (I shoot both). My tesktop has a 2Tb hard disk and my laptop has 1Tb.
I can then edit & play with the raw files (having seen what it looks lke in the JPG) using whatever s/w I want. I save as DNG and JPG generally into the same folder structure so that it's all self contained.
When I am finished, I then "archive" the while folder structure to a file share on my NAS and fix any issues with Capture One and Lightroom Classic where the databases can't find the files. That way, I recover the space on my local PCs, and I can still 'get at' all the files if I need to play some more.
Alan
-
Sorry, Alan, unfortunately I’ll have to pass on that offer: I refuse to have anything to do with the enterprises of Mark Zuckerberg on account of his business model.
Nothing personal towards you!
David
-
Thanks for this, Alan. So you dont edit files directly on the NAS. Is this only because your software wont let you, or is there a more important reason?
David
-
It's because I take my laptop away with me and I might not be connected to my NAS (and even if I am, it will be slow...)
Alan
-
Update:
I am now 158 pages through Nicholas Rushton's excellent 435 page book Synology NAS Setup Guide for Home and Small Business. (There is a lite version of this by same author -- 326 pages), but the cost saving is not large and I reckon it is better to just skip the sections in the larger book that you find unnecessary.) Both these books are printed on demand in Poland, which enables the author to keep track of updates to the software -- the update I received is from June 2024. The only disadvantage to this publishing method are the lack of running headers on the pages, and an index, as these would have to be rebuilt every time the book is revised.
The book itself is well-written: it describes the set up process step by step, with many screenshots, without insulting the reader. I gave up on the many disorganised and lengthy YouTube videos, and also got half way through Synology's own comprehensive documentation in which I felt quite overwhelmed with the detail and the many links to other documents. Rushton avoids this by first describing a minimal working set up and then going through one by one the enhancements that can be added later to improve/enlarge the operation and security, so you adapt the configuration to your own needs without needing to incorporate everything from the beginning of the setup process. This works because the Synology OS allows you to change most of your settings at any time, and Rushton has accurately identified those that you need to deal with from the beginning,
David.
-
What a rabbit hole these NAS devices has opened up! In addition to the NAS itself, one needs to be able to back it up. Then for real security, a UPS is needed. In the case of Synology, who makes the NAS I have bought, one is counselled to use only accessories that have been approved by them, or they take no responsibility for anything that goes wrong. This includes the hard drives and the UPS.
I forgot about this when shopping for my UPS, decided that APC was a good company and ordered one on Amazon, only to realize that it was not on the approved list. Cancel and order one that is on the list. Further reading told me that the battery inside this one, also APC, cannot be changed by the user when it wears out, so cancel that one. Eventually I got one made by Eaton that Synology had tested themselves. Unlike the amply documented APS UPS devices, this one comes with a user manual that has more information on safety, etc, in 38 different language, some of which I have never heard of, than on how to install and use the device. I had to resort to Youtube to discover how to make the NAS turn itself off when the power fails, and turn itself on again when power is restored. I can now understand the previously unintelligible instructions hidden away in the Synology "Knowledge Base". I expect to spend most of tomorrow relocating all this gear, and running cables to make it tidy. The claimed advantage is that I should be able to access data on the NAS over the Internet -- assuming I left it turned on at home, and there isnt a power cut...
As I said, a rabbit hole; but we live and learn!
David
