New lenses and cameras are always fun to purchase, but equally important is finding a way to store those photos you’re making with those cameras and lenses. Here’s why you should consider network attached storage before you spend that money on another lens.
I get it — cameras are sexy and hard drives are not, but network attached storage is much more than just a simple hard drive to store your photos on. I started using a NAS unit that uses Synology’s DSM (Disk Station Manager) a couple of years ago and it was life-changing. Instead of shuffling around external hard disks and waiting forever to make backups of backups, I had a much more reliable option that gave me a lot more flexibility to store and retrieve my photos.
Reason 1: Flexibility
With standard external hard drives, I’m limited to what I can physically plug into my computer at all times. The beauty of a network attached storage unit, such as Synology’s DS718+ or DS1618+ is the network part. Instead of plugging directly into a computer, which would need to be powered on to access files, I’m plugged into my router with a Cat 6 cable. I can then access the NAS unit directly on my home network by plugging into the same router or connecting to my wireless network. I can even access my files remotely though the DSM interface. I can’t count the number of times I’ve needed to grab an old file on the road and a NAS unit with Synology’s DSM lets me do that with ease. I’m also able to use any computer or laptop in the house without having to physically plug in or unplug drives.
When I’m transferring a massive amount of files, I can plug things directly into the NAS, set up the transfer through the DSM web interface, and walk away without worrying about my computer losing power or going to sleep and interrupting the transfer. It requires much less thought and effort.
Reason 2: Expandability
Before switching to a 2-bay NAS Unit, I would buy increasingly larger hard drives until I was hitting the limit of what’s possible in a standard external drive (which was about 10 TB when I switched over). That’s a lot of data to carry around on one platter, but more than this, it took forever to back up that drive, even with a fast USB 3.1 connection. I also finally hit a point where I hit the limit and couldn’t even fit everything on one drive anymore.
The DS718+ out of the box supports 2 hard drives (but with the DX517 expansion unit, it can go to 7) and the DS1618+ supports 6 out of the box. Depending on your needs, you can configure for maximum storage (in my case, I have 2 12TB Seagate Iron Wolf drives set up to give me 24TB) or for redundancy in case one drive fails. While this redundancy shouldn’t necessarily be considered a backup, Synology’s DSM makes it easy to seamlessly sync to another NAS Unit offsite or the cloud using Hyper Backup to offer a true backup solution.
All in all, it’s much easier than having multiple hard drives and having to separate which files are on what, and then backing that all up to another set of hard drives.
Trading in a pile of hard drives and flash drives for a NAS unit made life a lot more organized.
Reason 3: Hard Drives Will Fail
When you put all your eggs in one basket, you are destined to lose or break that basket. Using a NAS gives important peace of mind for photographers always worried about calamity striking their photos. A common saying among IT professionals is that there are two types of people: Those who have had a hard drive failure and those who will have a hard drive failure.
Even if a NAS is the main unit or secondary unit in a backup system that includes hard drives, it’s a valuable upgrade.
Giveaway
If you’re looking to get your hands on a unit yourself, Fstoppers is giving away a Synology DS718+ with two 14TB Seagate drives. Just leave a comment about something you wouldn't want to lose in a hard drive crash, and you will automatically be entered in the draw.
This giveaway is open those with a US address. Winners will be selected in one week.
Losing vacation and pet photos
Don't want to lose all my travel photos.
just ONE thing I wouldnt want to loose?! Ive been trying to figure out a NAS and the clouds and backups for awhile now and this looks like it would do the trick quite nicely :) at least much better then a ton of different little external drives all over the place...
I have about 20 TBs of footage I would HATE to lose, not just for client work but because I periodically learn new things and edit old content in a new way. I would have to build my library for demo content from scratch...
I scanned all the film that has survived fifty years of photography (everything serious I did up to last year) and loaded all my digital images onto a 4 TB drive which I back up onto another 4 TB drive. I never want to do that again.
I don't want to lose tens of thousands of RAW files and hundreds of hours of work.
Would be terrible to loose photos of newborn granddaughter.
School projects, papers, photos.
I'd hate to lose photos of our daughter's first year of life!
I traveled the US in a van for 6 months. have thousands of photos id hate to lose from it. have them on my laptop only right now, need to get them backed up!
Family photos and videos for the last decade.
Every film I have made is special (to me) - Can't keep all the footage I used to make them. So I sure wouldn't want to lose those finished films...
I have dozzen of pictures and videos produced spending a lot of time. Need to extend my storage and never want to lose any.
Hard Drive Nightmares: A back up fail - Losing your contact sheets, pdfs, spreadsheets, templates, creative assets, AND images and video footages (personal and commissioned work) </3
I care about my clients stuff but, I'm not obligated to hold it forever. My family stuff though.....it is my responsibility to keep these photo time capsules and family photo tree.
I wouldn't want to lose ANY of my photos, personal or not. I've put too much work into ALL of them!
Memories, clients, tutorials, libraries, ebooks. The death of a hard drive would be very unsatisfying :|
Would not want to lose all my memories from my life that I have captured in the last 10 years. Backing up to a bunch of USB sticks won't work in the long run.
I would not like to lose photos from my personal life - my memories :-)
I have my ENTIRE video collection, photos, music, and a TON of old software that isn't easy to find anymore.
I've had drives fail, I've accidentally deleted files. Each time the backup drives saved me. My stuff is backed up in at least 4 locations, on-site and off-site.
The wife would murderize me if I lost all our (wedding, honeymoon, Thursday-just-because) photos.
I spent hours scanning and cataloging 40 years of family snapshots. Can't bear to lose that work and content.
My photos are like my kids. I wouldn't want to lose either.
I would hate to lose family photos!
I'd hate to lose not only a decade or more of pictures, but the memories and emotions many elicit on each viewing
I would hate to loose my past 15 years of photography plus my 5 years prior that I have now digitized. I don't know what I would do if I lost all that work!
I'd really like to avoid losing my mind! The constant headaches, fears, and costs never seem to end, so it would be great to have an all-in-one solution!
Losing the 2TB of RAW photos I've shot over the years would be devastating.
Losing client files before delivery would be horrible and I've lived that nightmare in the past. It cost me $2,700 to recover the files and save my reputation.
Blu-ray collection I've been building for Plex. I'd love to not have to rip and transcode everything again.
Countless pictures of family and valuable personal work.
I shoot a lot of cheerleading competitions. Keeping old competitions was not all that important so I would just save them to old hard drives and store them never really expecting to use them. Until last year.... a 13 year old little girl passed away very unexpectedly. Cheer was her life. People reached out to me to see if I had any old pictures of her at all of the previous competitions she was in to give to her parents. I had a few but the old drive that I stored what I considered useless pictures had actually failed. Yes hard drives fail.
photos of my wife and daughter are most important, but the photos i collected from all my family of my grandmother who passed away in January are what I can't replace
Not all of my files are equally valuable, but photos of families and friends as well as family history would all be sad to lose. Images of my life, travels and work need to be safely saved.
Like many, I have all of my photo business on a single hard drive and it would be catastrophic if it went down.
I have an archive of images that I shot while I was the brigade photographer for an Army unit. I have several sessions of units inactivating, including one unit whose history can be traced to the Soldiers who set up the drop zone for D-Day. The unit I was with does not have a backup solution.
Losing a lifetime of memories would be NASty and would hurt the most, not only for myself, but also those I capture for others. PS. I'm in Australia ,but would happily pay the postage if I were to win.
I have digitized all of my family photos for as long as I've been alive as well as photos of my ancestors as far back as the mid 1800's. I also digitize family documents and photos for others as well. And have backup of those. I'd hate to lose any of it.
Photos and videos
I have a bunch of photos I’ve taken of my family that I’d hate to lose.
I would not want to lose the scanned and restored photograph of my father and me from when I was two years old. I spent way too long with Photoshop restoring that old 126 cartridge photo.
Losing any kind of data, sucks! But having years and years of memories stored in photos and videos, that would hurt a lot to lose.
I would hate to lose all of my family photos. This Nas drive would be awesome
I wouldn't want to lose any images I've 5-starred over the years. Those are my favourites.
Lose more than 48TB of data make me sick that's why RAID 6 is the most to have!!!
The most pressure on my drives is not my work I have done over many years, I'm terrify only about thinking that I could lose my family photos and videos lose all pressure memories with my two kids and wife that is my biggest fear and the need for a big hard drive is now bigger and bigger. All the best everyone :)
I think this is the best way to back up all my 3 years old daughter photo and video. Those 4k video really take some space!
A NAS is the best way to protect my photo archive and I need to consolidate from the 20 or so drives I have scattered about into one central system. Synology systems are the best.
I am experiencing growth in images the way you have described. I wouldn't want to loose any of them!