Synology NAS: connect direct to Mac and to switch

[Citysnaps]

Do it.

Got a question for ya.... Do you LR edit your RAW image files directly from your NAS? Or from your computer - and then move to your NAS? Or....?

 

[Cmaier]

Got a question for ya.... Do you LR edit your RAW image files directly from your NAS? Or from your computer - and then move to your NAS? Or....?

From my NAS.

My workflow is that I shoot with RAW/JPG, upload it all to the NAS with time-stamped and named folders, then launch LR Classic, go to the Import screen and look through the photos, importing the ones that I want to work with (RAW, obviously) and then editing them. I sometimes use photoshop on them first. I do this even with A1 files, which are pretty huge, and performance is acceptable. (I mean, look, LR has a terribly inefficient import browser. But doing the editing on local files would make little difference in the overall speed of my workflow).

My NAS has 2-disk redundancy, so as long as three drives don’t fail simultaneously, it would be difficult to lose data. (I also back up nightly from 1 NAS to a second, in case the whole NAS crashes). It gives me great comfort.

(I also upload the jpgs to flickr pro, in case my house burns down).

 

[Citysnaps]

From my NAS.

My workflow is that I shoot with RAW/JPG, upload it all to the NAS with time-stamped and named folders, then launch LR Classic, go to the Import screen and look through the photos, importing the ones that I want to work with (RAW, obviously) and then editing them. I sometimes use photoshop on them first. I do this even with A1 files, which are pretty huge, and performance is acceptable. (I mean, look, LR has a terribly inefficient import browser. But doing the editing on local files would make little difference in the overall speed of my workflow).

My NAS has 2-disk redundancy, so as long as three drives don’t fail simultaneously, it would be difficult to lose data. (I also back up nightly from 1 NAS to a second, in case the whole NAS crashes). It gives me great comfort.

(I also upload the jpgs to flickr pro, in case my house burns down).

OK, thanks!

I guess that means your LR catalog always stays on your computer and edits point to the RAW files on your NAS, right? And you then, maybe via an automatic task, send your LR catalog to your NAS for solely for backup purposes?

In addition to using NAS 2 for backup, do you use the USB connector on NAS 1 for making additional HD backups (for offsite safety)? Or...shove a disk into either NAS 1or 2 and backup to that for offsite storage?

 

[Cmaier]

OK, thanks!

I guess that means your LR catalog always stays on your computer and edits point to the RAW files on your NAS, right? And you then, maybe via an automatic task, send your LR catalog to your NAS for solely for backup purposes?

In addition to using NAS 2 for backup, do you use the USB connector on NAS 1 for making additional HD backups (for offsite safety)? Or...shove a disk into either NAS 1or 2 and backup to that for offsite storage?

Yeah, the LR catalog lives on my computer. When you exit LR, about once a week, it asks if I want to make a backup, (which I do), and the backup goes on the NAS.

I don’t use the ports of the NAS to make offsite backups - if my house burns down or something I’ll have to rely on the jpgs that live on flickr.

Though you have me curious - I’m checking right now to see how much space my Pictures subdirectory takes on the NAS (My Mac right now: “calculating size”). If it’s small enough I may consider getting a couple of drives and rotating them off site to my office or something. (The NAS also supports all sorts of off-site backups to lots of different services, but I’m not interested in renting disk space).

I use synology, but in the future I may migrate to QNAP because of things Synology is doing with their most capacious boxes and limiting full support to their own hard disks.

 

[Cmaier]

OK, thanks!

I guess that means your LR catalog always stays on your computer and edits point to the RAW files on your NAS, right? And you then, maybe via an automatic task, send your LR catalog to your NAS for solely for backup purposes?

In addition to using NAS 2 for backup, do you use the USB connector on NAS 1 for making additional HD backups (for offsite safety)? Or...shove a disk into either NAS 1or 2 and backup to that for offsite storage?

Looks like Carbon Copy Cloner (which I now use for the NAS-to-NAS backups instead of the built in rsync capabilities, for various reasons) says the photos take up only about 3.5 TB. So maybe I will pick up a couple drives and do some rotating backups via USB.

 

[Citysnaps]

Yeah, the LR catalog lives on my computer. When you exit LR, about once a week, it asks if I want to make a backup, (which I do), and the backup goes on the NAS.

I don’t use the ports of the NAS to make offsite backups - if my house burns down or something I’ll have to rely on the jpgs that live on flickr.

Though you have me curious - I’m checking right now to see how much space my Pictures subdirectory takes on the NAS (My Mac right now: “calculating size”). If it’s small enough I may consider getting a couple of drives and rotating them off site to my office or something. (The NAS also supports all sorts of off-site backups to lots of different services, but I’m not interested in renting disk space).

I use synology, but in the future I may migrate to QNAP because of things Synology is doing with their most capacious boxes and limiting full support to their own hard disks.

Thanks, again...

At this moment my mind is set on Synology - a 5 to 8 drive configuration (leaning towards 8)- but am also researching QNAP. One thing I'm seeing a lot of on forums about QNAP are comments about internet hacks and data hostaging/extortions (assuming NAS is exposed to internet). Don't know how accurate that is.

Overall, Synology software appears much more polished and robust. But clearly that's from a noob's perspective.

One conclusion I've come to is my future NAS doesn't need to be exposed to the internet. And certainly not 24/7.

And rather than putting it in the closet with router/switches/MacMini used for home automation/security stuff, I'll likely put it in my home office with my main computer direct connected to one ethernet port. And potentially using another NAS ethernet port connected to my office wall RJ45 that goes back to the closet (it's tiny) where I can patch that into a switch for having NAS access throughout the house (either wired Ethernet or WiFi).

Any reason why the above wouldn't worK?

 

[Cmaier]

Thanks, again...

At this moment my mind is set on Synology - a 5 to 8 drive configuration (leaning towards 8)- but am also researching QNAP. One thing I'm seeing a lot of on forums about QNAP are comments about internet hacks and data hostaging/extortions (assuming NAS is exposed to internet). Don't know how accurate that is.

Overall, Synology software appears much more polished and robust. But clearly that's from a noob's perspective.

One conclusion I've come to is my future NAS doesn't need to be exposed to the internet. And certainly not 24/7.

And rather than putting it in the closet with router/switches/MacMini used for home automation/security stuff, I'll likely put it in my home office with my main computer direct connected to one ethernet port. And potentially using another NAS ethernet port connected to my office wall RJ45 that goes back to the closet (it's tiny) where I can patch that into a switch for having NAS access throughout the house (either wired Ethernet or WiFi).

Any reason why the above wouldn't worK?

I think as long as you turn off all the optional internet stuff on QNAP security should be fine. But I’d do the same with Synopsys.

As for the rest, you got me wondering. So my setup is I have the NAS plugged into a gigabit switch, which feeds around the house by wire and wifi links to various computers and the other NAS.

But just now I did the following:

1) on my “server” Macbook pro which I use for streaming videos to Apple TV’s and handling NAS-to-NAS backups, I plugged in a second thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter. I ran a cat 6 cable directly to the fourth NAS Ethernet port (I’m using two other ports to connect to the switch).

2) on the NAS, I gave port 4 a static IP address on a different network than my house network. On the MAC I did the same thing (so both start with the 169.22.110. Or something).

3) I disconnected the shares on the now-directly-connected Mac.

4) I connected directly to the share by IP address (connect to server, smb://[ip address])

5) I confirmed i could view the files on the NAS. I ran Carbon copy cloner to do a backup. It recognized that it was the same NAS even though the IP address is different. All good.

6) I went to another Mac on the network, and confirmed it could still connect to the NAS by name (eg. Smb://BigBox.local). Works fine.

Speed for the direct connect seems great! I will likely keep it like this and see if anything goes awry over the next few days.

 

[Cmaier]

Thanks, again...

At this moment my mind is set on Synology - a 5 to 8 drive configuration (leaning towards 8)- but am also researching QNAP. One thing I'm seeing a lot of on forums about QNAP are comments about internet hacks and data hostaging/extortions (assuming NAS is exposed to internet). Don't know how accurate that is.

Overall, Synology software appears much more polished and robust. But clearly that's from a noob's perspective.

One conclusion I've come to is my future NAS doesn't need to be exposed to the internet. And certainly not 24/7.

And rather than putting it in the closet with router/switches/MacMini used for home automation/security stuff, I'll likely put it in my home office with my main computer direct connected to one ethernet port. And potentially using another NAS ethernet port connected to my office wall RJ45 that goes back to the closet (it's tiny) where I can patch that into a switch for having NAS access throughout the house (either wired Ethernet or WiFi).

Any reason why the above wouldn't worK?

One additional thing that may help. I just did a ”sudo vim /etc/hosts” and mapped “BigBox.local” to the direct IP interface address, and then did flushed the dnscache and it worked - now I can connect by using bigbox.local, same as before, but it uses the direct connection. Sweet.

 

[Citysnaps]

I think as long as you turn off all the optional internet stuff on QNAP security should be fine. But I’d do the same with Synopsys.

As for the rest, you got me wondering. So my setup is I have the NAS plugged into a gigabit switch, which feeds around the house by wire and wifi links to various computers and the other NAS.

But just now I did the following:

1) on my “server” Macbook pro which I use for streaming videos to Apple TV’s and handling NAS-to-NAS backups, I plugged in a second thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter. I ran a cat 6 cable directly to the fourth NAS Ethernet port (I’m using two other ports to connect to the switch).

2) on the NAS, I gave port 4 a static IP address on a different network than my house network. On the MAC I did the same thing (so both start with the 169.22.110. Or something).

3) I disconnected the shares on the now-directly-connected Mac.

4) I connected directly to the share by IP address (connect to server, smb://[ip address])

5) I confirmed i could view the files on the NAS. I ran Carbon copy cloner to do a backup. It recognized that it was the same NAS even though the IP address is different. All good.

6) I went to another Mac on the network, and confirmed it could still connect to the NAS by name (eg. Smb://BigBox.local). Works fine.

Speed for the direct connect seems great! I will likely keep it like this and see if anything goes awry over the next few days.

Nice! Though not quite the same, it seems like what I want to do (having the NAS near my main computer) should work with a second Ethernet port of that NAS going back to the switch which then would distribute the NAS everywhere else.

My motivation is the closet is really small and cramped. And I'd rather not deal with the NAS moving drives, doing USB backups, etc in there.

Speaking of Synology USB drive backups, I assume the attached drive can be Apple APFS formatted for the backup. And it looks like a normal Apple formatted disk?

If everything goes to hell, and the NAS fails, I'd like to be able to take that USB backup and plug it into any Mac and there'd be no weirdness to deal with. Just plain old APFS files that can be read by any Mac. Is that a fair assumption?

 

[Cmaier]

Nice! Though not quite the same, it seems like what I want to do (having the NAS near my main computer) should work with a second Ethernet port of that NAS going back to the switch which then would distribute the NAS everywhere else.

My motivation is the closet is really small and cramped. And I'd rather not deal with the NAS moving drives, doing USB backups, etc in there.

Speaking of Synology USB drive backups, I assume the attached drive can be Apple APFS formatted for the backup. And it looks like a normal Apple formatted disk?

If everything goes to hell, and the NAS fails, I'd like to be able to take that USB backup and plug it into any Mac and there'd be no weirdness to deal with. Just plain old APFS files that can be read by any Mac. Is that a fair assumption?

I *think* I’ve done what you plan to do? The NAS is now directly connected via one Ethernet port direct to a mac near the NAS, and via a second port to a switch which distributes it everywhere else. Takes a lot of load off the switch in my case.

As for the USB drive, I doubt it can be APFS formatted if connect directly to the NAS? I believe these are your choices, depending on model:

Synology NAS recognizes the following formats: Btrfs, ext3, ext4, FAT32, exFAT, HFS, HFS Plus, and NTFS

That said, in my experience you can do backups quite reasonably by plugging a drive into your mac and using the mac to run the backup. Some penalty, of course, but may be worth it if you want to stick with APFS.

 

[Citysnaps]

I *think* I’ve done what you plan to do? The NAS is now directly connected via one Ethernet port direct to a mac near the NAS, and via a second port to a switch which distributes it everywhere else. Takes a lot of load off the switch in my case.

As for the USB drive, I doubt it can be APFS formatted if connect directly to the NAS? I believe these are your choices, depending on model:

Synology NAS recognizes the following formats: Btrfs, ext3, ext4, FAT32, exFAT, HFS, HFS Plus, and NTFS

That said, in my experience you can do backups quite reasonably by plugging a drive into your mac and using the mac to run the backup. Some penalty, of course, but may be worth it if you want to stick with APFS.

Thanks, that should work. Maybe I don't even need to convert after the backup and just leave it at HFS+. Need to think about that.

Thanks a ton for all your help - I really appreciate it!

 

[Citysnaps]

I *think* I’ve done what you plan to do? The NAS is now directly connected via one Ethernet port direct to a mac near the NAS, and via a second port to a switch which distributes it everywhere else. Takes a lot of load off the switch in my case.

Yes, my mistake - that's what was on my mind.

 

[Citysnaps]

Thanks, that should work. Maybe I don't even need to convert after the backup and just leave it at HFS+. Need to think about that.

Yikes, I misinterpreted that, too. Long day. Got it, just do the backup right from my Mac in APFS.

 

[Cmaier]

Yikes, I misinterpreted that, too. Long day. Got it, just do the backup right from my Mac in APFS.

Yep. Use super duper or carbon copy cloner and it’s easy as pie. Yeah, it gets your mac involved when it really doesn’t need to be, but it does make it easier to mount and unmount, monitor the backups, etc. And you can then use APFS.

And thanks for triggering me to look into the direct connection. Never occurred to me. And it’s making video streaming much smoother - before the traffic had to pass from the NAS through a switch to a mac, and then back through the switch to various Apple TVs. Now it goes directly from the NAS to the mac, then out through the switch. It’s a cheap switch (and other things are passing through it all the time too), so this is making everything run very smooth so far.

 

[Citysnaps]

Yep. Use super duper or carbon copy cloner and it’s easy as pie. Yeah, it gets your mac involved when it really doesn’t need to be, but it does make it easier to mount and unmount, monitor the backups, etc. And you can then use APFS.

And thanks for triggering me to look into the direct connection. Never occurred to me. And it’s making video streaming much smoother - before the traffic had to pass from the NAS through a switch to a mac, and then back through the switch to various Apple TVs. Now it goes directly from the NAS to the mac, then out through the switch. It’s a cheap switch (and other things are passing through it all the time too), so this is making everything run very smooth so far.

Great, glad that it worked out for you. And I can move forward on the NAS.

I recently switched to CCC after using SuperDupr for ages. That was spawned by having recent TimeMachine failures on my M1 MBA and iMac, apparently related to still being on Big Sur (but with some recent incompatible OS updates).

So before updating both computers to Monterey (especially from some having adverse upgrade experiences), I wanted to make clones. Took another look at the new CCC and decided to give it a whirl. Worked great. Fast and a nice UI. My wife likes it too.

 

[Pumbaa]

How about splitting off the LR storage discussion and give it a thread of its own?

Interesting stuff, but most posters interested in that won’t find it hidden here later.

Edit: Own thread, yay!

 

[Cmaier]

Great, glad that it worked out for you. And I can move forward on the NAS.

I recently switched to CCC after using SuperDupr for ages. That was spawned by having recent TimeMachine failures on my M1 MBA and iMac, apparently related to still being on Big Sur (but with some recent incompatible OS updates).

So before updating both computers to Monterey (especially from some having adverse upgrade experiences), I wanted to make clones. Took another look at the new CCC and decided to give it a whirl. Worked great. Fast and a nice UI. My wife likes it too.

To be clear by the way , my experiment had the Mac also connected by a second connection to the switch to receive internet. There’s probably a way to make it get internet via the nas’s connection to the switch, but I didn’t try. It occurred to me that maybe you wanted that setup.

 

[Citysnaps]

To be clear by the way , my experiment had the Mac also connected by a second connection to the switch to receive internet. There’s probably a way to make it get internet via the nas’s connection to the switch, but I didn’t try. It occurred to me that maybe you wanted that setup.

I'm good on that. Macs are connected to internet via APs <-> Switch <-> Router.

 

[Cmaier]

I'm good on that. Macs are connected to internet via APs <-> Switch <-> Router.

Perfect.

Now I’m considering whether I want to replace the PCI cache board in my NAS with a high speed ethernet/SSD board and connect directly to the mac at higher speed. See what you’ve started?

 

[Citysnaps]

Perfect.

Now I’m considering whether I want to replace the PCI cache board in my NAS with a high speed ethernet/SSD board and connect directly to the mac at higher speed. See what you’ve started?

Reminds me of my youth when I'd take a few playing cards and clothespin them on to my bicycle's fork so they'd snap against the spokes when riding. Sounded great and I could go much faster.