View Static Version
Loading

How to Move Your Photos to a Synology NAS on a Mac My STEP by STEP PROCESS

Deciding to move your photos from an External Hard-Drive or a DAS (Direct Access Storage) to a NAS (Network Access Storage) is a big and scary decision for many photographers. There is terminology to learn. What is a NAS? How does it work? Will my photos be accessible? How hard is the process?

To give you an idea of where I started from, when I first heard the term NAS, I naturally thought of the rapper Lil NAS and the song Old Town Road. I guess I was a bit off base lol.

Most photographers keep their photos on an External Hard-Drive. The problem, is that at some point, those drives will fail or will not be large enough to hold all your images. Of course you could buy bigger and bigger hard-drives. But moving to a NAS is a more cost-effective solution since you could buy much larger storage space like 16 TB, 24-TB, 48-TB NAS hard-drives or even bigger drives for less money.

Since the Synology NAS is constantly monitoring the health of both the system and the hard drives, it can immediately determine if something seems to be going wrong, such as a hard drive malfunctioning. If it picks up that a drive is starting to fail, it automatically starts copying all of the contents of that drive to one of the other attached drives. When it’s done, it deactivates the faulty drive so we can take it out and replace it, keeping everything safe on the spare drive.

What’s a NAS? (Network Attached Storage)

NAS stands for Network Attached Storage and that’s essentially what it is. Without getting too technical, basically a NAS is a series of hard drives placed in one unit, working together and connected to a network. Instead of having your files and folders on a locally attached drive (an external HD) that only one computer can access at a time, a NAS can store your files somewhere on your home network and providing they have access, anyone on your network can edit and store files on it.

A NAS is made up of two parts – the unit itself, and the hard drives that install inside it. You can’t have one without the other.

In this post I will go over how I made the transformation to the NAS. It took a lot of reflection before I made the plunge, especially, since I did not know how hard the setup would be. I was also nervous about keeping my photos safe and easily accessible.

Step 1 - Buying a NAS

After finally deciding to buy a NAS, I purchased a Synology DiskStation DS920+ 4-Bay NAS enclosure from B&H. They had a great sale on Black Friday. I also bought 4 Hard-Drives (WD 4TB Red Plus 5400 rpm SATA III 3.5" Internal NAS HDD (CMR).

The Synology DS920+ is the unit that I installed the hard drives into, but it doesn’t come with the hard drives themselves. I had to get these separately.

There are 2 things that I kept on hearing before making the purchasing decision. The first thing is that most people seem to use Synology but there are other good brands as well such as QNAP. The second point that I repeatedly heard was to make sure to buy CMR hard-drives and NOT SMR. This article explains the difference between the two types. So I bought CMR Hard-Drives as advised.

Step 2- Preparing for the NAS to Arrive

Before the NAS arrived, I made sure to have 2 Copies of my Photos, on 2 different External Hard-Drives. I was using 2 4-TB hard-drives and they were almost full. It is not a good idea to use up all the storage on your External Hard-Drives since it can lead to problems. Keeping somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of your drive empty should leave you with plenty of spare space for virtual memory and temporary files.

I use the software Carbon Copy Cloner to make sure I have 2 exact copies of my Photos on the 2 External Hard-Drives. Knowing that I have 2 backups I felt comfortable to begin setting up the NAS.

Step 3 - THE NAS Set-Up

Since this was the first time I set up a NAS I did a lot of research to understand how it works and the appropriate set-up. The problem is that a lot of the material is very "techy" and hard to understand. Also, since I use a Mac, I wanted information that it's Mac oriented.

So let's get started. As a first step, you will also need to install your Hard-Drives into your NAS Enclosure. This is a very easy process that requires no tools. This YouTube Video will show you how to do it.

Next, you will need to connect your NAS to your home Router. I keep my Router in a Coat Closet. Luckily, I have an Electrical Plug right next to my router. So I plugged the NAS into the Wall Socket (See below). Then, using the Ethernet Cable that comes in the Synology box, I connected the Ethernet wire from the NAS Ethernet Port into the Router Ethernet Port. Everything you need is in the Synology box. See the photo below.

Next, you need to turn on the NAS, set-up Disk Station Manager (DSM) 7.0 and configure the NAS. DSM 7 has made the process much easier to implement. After a lot of searching I finally found a fantastic YouTube Channel to follow, SpaceRex, by Will Yarborough. He is also a photographer and an incredible source of information on Synology Systems and Lightroom.

Will made a video that guides you step-by-step on setting up the NAS. Here is the link to the SpaceRex Video Set-Up. He goes through each step and it is very easy to follow. I basically watched, paused, configured the Synology, came back to the video and repeated until it was done.

A NAS also allows for different RAID (0, 1, 5, 6) Configurations. RAID means (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks or Drives). The two most common options to use are either a RAID5 or RAID6. I chose a RAID5 configuration that provides better performance and safety if a hard-drive goes bad. Put simply a RAID5 protects you against a single drive failing. You can read more details here on what are RAIDs and the different types of RAIDs.

He also discusses Setting Up User Accounts and Admin Accounts, Security Settings, Packages to Download, and Backing up the NAS to either BackBlace B2 Cloud or Synology C2 etc. He explains everything in a very clear and straightforward manner that is easy to understand.

Step 4 - Moving your Photos to the NAS

It is now time to open Lightroom and Connect to your NAS. The NAS looks like an external Hard-Drive on your Mac or Windows computer.

To connect Lightroom to your NAS--click the + Sign in the Library Panel of Lightroom. Under Folders, there is a Plus Sign in the Right Corner as shown Below. Click on the Plus Sign, ADD FOLDER, and then you should be able to see your NAS since it looks like another External Hard-Drive on your computer. Now you are hopefully linked to the NAS.

The next step of the puzzle is to move your photos to the NAS from your old External Hard-Drive. There are many ways to do this but I think the best is to do "within" Lightroom. This way Lightroom knows what you are doing and your photos will not have the Missing Photo (?) mark. You also want Lightroom to keep your collections and all your edits. Once you have your NAS connected and your External Drive Connected to Lightroom you simply drag the photos from the old External Drive to the NAS. I would advise dragging a few files or folders at a time.

If you have a lot of photos this could take a LONG time. It took me about 24 hours to move all my photos. Afterwards, it's always afterwards, I learned that I could have connected my External HD directly into the USB port in the front of the NAS. It would have been much faster and safer process to move the photos this way.

Now that your photos are on the NAS it is a good idea to back up the NAS to the cloud. You always want to keep 1 copy of your photos in the cloud as per the 3-2-1 data storage rules (3 copies of your data) on (2 different media or hard drives) and 1 (copy of your photos in the Cloud).

Put simply, the 3-2-1 backup strategy provides an easy-to-remember approach to how many copies of your data you should have and where those copies should be stored in order to protect against the most likely threats to your photos such as drive failure, theft and house fire, etc. It is recommended to have at least 3 separate copies of your photos. Why 3 copies? 3 copies are the minimum number needed to be able to fully adhere to this 3-2-1 strategy.

While most people make 3 copies of their photos if you are OCD, you might want to add 4 as shown below.

There are 2 options in terms of backing up your NAS to the Cloud. There is Backblaze B2 Cloud or Synology C2. After discussing back-up options with Will he strongly recommended backing up to Synology C2--here is the video link on how to do it--it is very very easy.

Step 5 - Your Lightroom Catalog Location

Since you moved the photos "within" Lightroom, your Catalog should point or redirect your Lightroom catalog to the new photo location. You can also do this by opening Lightroom and right clicking on the image folders. If not, read this blog by Rob Sylvan on how to do it.

Where should you store your Lightroom Catalog with a NAS? The answer will depend on how many computers you use. Probably, most people only use one computer so the catalog is stored on the 1 computer. For me, I wanted to easily switch between my iMac and my laptop. So how do I do this easily without confusing Lightroom? Again, there are many different ways to do this (using Dropbox, OneDrive etc) but I keep my Catalog on a Samsung T7 SSD. This way when I want to use my Laptop I just close Lightroom on the iMac and plug the SSD into my laptop. Is it a perfect solution? No!! But its easy and works for me.

Step 6 - How to View Your Photos from Anywhere

Before switching to the NAS, I was using my External Hard-Drives, and I would just carry them with me when I was traveling. So I always had ALL my photos with me. Now that my photos are on the NAS I am changing my workflow.

While you can connect to the NAS from outside of your home it will be slow. So instead I am syncing Collections so that I can access the Collections I want to work on from Anywhere on Any Device. Sean Bagshaw has an excellent YouTube video on how to do this easily. It is really easy to do and this way you can edit photos from anywhere. The only downside is that Synced photos from collections are not at a high enough quality level to print But you edit your photos and can definitely post to Social Media in this workflow.

Step 7 - The Final Step (Hiring SpaceRex)

After getting my NAS to work with Lightroom I was able to breathe a huge sigh of relief.

At this point, I wanted to make sure everything was set up correctly so I would not have any unpleasant surprises. So I decided to hire Will from Spacerex, for 1 hour, to just double check everything. I would highly recommend doing this since it will save you hours and hours of headaches.

Will, is a very smart, friendly guy and he is very easy to work with. He will ask you to fill in a short online questionnaire before the Zoom session so he knows what you want to discuss. Then you will receive an email Zoom link meeting invite. Meeting over Zoom was great since I could share my screen with him and he could see all my settings. He checked and made sure that all my settings are correct, checked security settings, went over back-up options, answered questions I had, set-up a VPN Access to the NAS, and finally checked on the NAS connection to Lightroom.

Will, is also a Photographer. So he understands exactly the workflow of photographers with Lightroom and the Lightroom Catalog. He will make sure it all works. I strongly recommend taking this last step.

I have found a NAS to be a great solution that was easier to implement than I thought. If you are still on the fence I hope these steps will be the encouragement you need.

Created By
Vito L Tanzi
Appreciate
NextPrevious

Anchor link copied.

Report Abuse

If you feel that the content of this page violates the Adobe Terms of Use, you may report this content by filling out this quick form.

To report a copyright violation, please follow the DMCA section in the Terms of Use.