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NAS drives and image processing


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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!

Edited by LocalHero1953
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16 minutes ago, John McMaster said:

Then it becomes DAS 😉  NAS are accessible to multiple devices.

john

This was one of my questions (more or less🤔!): can such a device function as both a NAS and DAS? I.e. can it be available on the network, but also as a directly accessible drive by connecting a cable?

Edit: @Frame It's link implies that the answer, in that case, and with Final Cut Pro, the answer is Yes.

Edited by LocalHero1953
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A DAS can be shared on the network by the computer it is connected to. A NAS is connected to a computer (the NAS box) so cannot be connected to another one, it can only be shared on the network.

I would use a USB disc for the catalogue and NAS for photo files (or two USB discs if your laptop has the ports). Wired or wireless NAS would be acceptable if you are not impatient.

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You may want to look at a Drobo Mini.  It holds four laptop drives, acts like a RAID, holds an additional mini-SSD for high speed file transfer, and is small / easily portable.  It is probably the priciest option though.

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22 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

- 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!

I have a Thunderbolt Drobo Mini attached via Thunderbolt 2 (20Gbps) to on my Macs (iMac and MacBook Pro) and I started with four conventional 7.200 rpm hard disks. The performance was sub par before I installed a mSata flash module.

Therefore, I don't think the performance will be good using NAS, even if you use 10 gigabit ethernet.

 

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1 hour ago, ckuwajima said:

I have a Thunderbolt Drobo Mini attached via Thunderbolt 2 (20Gbps) to on my Macs (iMac and MacBook Pro) and I started with four conventional 7.200 rpm hard disks. The performance was sub par before I installed a mSata flash module.

Therefore, I don't think the performance will be good using NAS, even if you use 10 gigabit ethernet.

 

Was that for the pictures or the catalogue?

i think I could live with NAS for the pictures.

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4 minutes ago, Exodies said:

Was that for the pictures or the catalogue?

i think I could live with NAS for the pictures.

My Drobo Mini hosts both, catalog and pictures.

As a second thought, it may be feasible to use NAS just for pictures. The catalog shall be put in a local/fast DAS storage.

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I never used the Drobo Mini without the SSD buffer storage.  So I can't comment on the speed without an SSD buffer.  I find the Drobo Mini with SSD to be as fast as any attached storage I've ever used.   I keep all my photos on it, all 2.3 TB of photos, with each file stored on three hard drives.  I do not use LR, so I don't know anything about catalogs, libraries, collections, etc, whatever those are.

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7 hours ago, zeitz said:

I never used the Drobo Mini without the SSD buffer storage.  So I can't comment on the speed without an SSD buffer.  I find the Drobo Mini with SSD to be as fast as any attached storage I've ever used.   I keep all my photos on it, all 2.3 TB of photos, with each file stored on three hard drives.  I do not use LR, so I don't know anything about catalogs, libraries, collections, etc, whatever those are.

You actually do know all about catalogues. The file system (directories, indexes, etc) on your discs is a catalogue. LR catalogue is an extra one of those, pointing to the same files, and containing a bit more data.

Edited by Exodies
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Some routers will allow you to directly connect a drive via usb for example Apples Airport (now discontinued but still available used).  Not the fastest but workable and it should allow all your devices either hard wired or via WiFi to access the drive.  If you also use smart previews in Lightroom then you don’t need a network catalogue as it ‘should’ all sync together via the previews.

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I do know files and folders because that is what I work with for all my programs, not just image processing programs.  I do not know indexes.  I open files from Finder or Bridge and then save them and close them.  I have never understood why the terms Import and Export were invented.  Bridge is a great front-end for ACR and PS and works great without the LR jargon.

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A number of threads elsewhere on the internet lead to the Qnap TS-453BT3 for photography, which seems to allow direct connection  by Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C as well as by network over 10GbE. As far as I can tell, Synology doesn't yet do Thunderbolt 3 interfaces. I have yet to look at Drobos.

Does anyone have experience of  this Qnap device?

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