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Hey, I would love to upgrade my data management workflow, and I'm looking for some expert help. First of all, I don't know anything about NAS and how they work. Neither FTP, servers, etc. I just would love to find a simple-ready solution (hopefully, it's possible). So far, I have "all my life data" in two (6+10TB) G-Technology thunderbolts drives in Raid 0. Plus DropBox. In my G-drives I have EVERYTHING; in my Dropbox, everything but all raws. Easy. I worked this way since 2000, and I have to say I'm happy and I can always find everything I want, I'm organized. But I know I can do better. Let me explain to you where the issue is. My DropBox has 2TB data, while my G-Drives have the same 2TB Dropbox + 4TB WORK files, so far so good. The only thing I can't do without messing up with some files is keeping the G-drives automatically updated. Every time I have new jobs to back up, they go all in the G-drives (C1 catalogs, jpegs, raws, and miscellaneous). But my Dropbox it's not synced with my G-drives. So, every week, when I launch my G-drive1, I update the Dropbox folders manually. This is good enough for me, until a very few times, I messed it up 😞 No big deal. But I'm sure I can do better; I just don't know-how. When the new job is backed up, my Carbon Copy Cloner automatically clones all the info from G-drive1 to G-drive2. So, I have two clones of EVERYTHING backups, just in case. Plus everything online on DropBox (except the raws). Did you understand? I hope it's not so messy. 🙂 My idea was to buy a new desktop hard drive, maybe 12TB, but more like a NAS solution. In addition to all my backups, I would love to have another one with EVERYTHING I have (so far, it's 6/7 TB). FWIS, a NAS is like a desktop hard drive, permanently ON and connected with an ethernet cable to the network. And I can access my files everywhere online, right? Pro and cons? I just need a simple automatic solution. Maybe, I can make it easier. I could only put WORK in my G-drives and have a new small NAS drive dedicated backup of my iMac and Dropbox (which is the same). Does it make sense? 🤔 What do you suggest? Any tip or advice that can change my life? Thank you in advance for your help

I'd like to hear of members's practical experience of using a NAS drive not just for archiving and back-up, but as a working drive for post processing as well. I'm considering getting rid of my separate desktop (+integral drives) and MS Surface Pro, and getting a single, small but powerful laptop that I can use for travel and for connecting to my large monitor when I'm back home. My images are stored in the Adobe cloud where I edit them in LR CC and PS CC. But there are still some things that only Lightroom Classic can do (e.g. batch file renaming). So I maintain a catalogue locally on my desktop where I may do some editing - it then syncs back to the Adobe cloud. The local catalogue thus has two functions: local back-up and specialist editing. My catalogue is about 1.4Tb and growing, so I'd rather use a NAS drive than pay to get a laptop with a 2TB (or greater) drive. Some questions: - Can a NAS drive work (or be configured as) as a simple external drive where you can work on files using Lightroom or Photoshop? - If so, is it practical to have it connected by the wifi network, or is that too slow for direct access for editing? Is a hard wired ethernet connection necessary? - Does LR Classic (running on a desktop/laptop) have any problems working on files on a NAS drive? Or does it treat it just as another external drive? - Are there particular NAS drive brands/models which are particularly suited to this usage as an external drive and as a networked drive? I have no experience with NAS drives, so I know I may have asked these questions in the wrong way (e.g. I'm assuming there is a real difference between how a drive behaves when it is configured as a NAS drive vs as a simple external drive, but I may be wrong). Any advice from those who already do something similar would be welcome!