Hi,
I will buy a NAS unit “Synology DS418”. Can I use this unit with my 4 HDD disks and edit directly from the unit plug-in to my Mac in real time without problems using my Mac Photo Lab 3 copy?
Any know problema with NAS units for this type of use with Photo Lab 3?
Thank you very much.
Best regards.
Hello Atha,
no idea for Mac, but my Synology works with PL3 without any problems, and also performance is good
nice weekend
Guenter
Thanks for your feedback.
Which is you Synology unit, if I may ask?
Do you edit in your NAS live or do you copy the files to your pc, edit and backup again to your NAS?
Photo Lab 3 “sees” the NAS like it sees internal hard disks without issues?
Cheers.
I would think the problem is speed. I use external drives and a server. I tried and PL worked with both but much more slowly than from my SSD drive in the laptop. Clearly you are going to be limited to the speed of the connections. I would think it best to save the images to your local drive and move them after working on them. To keep the data base clean I would delete the originals after copying from PL or many just delete the data base at regular intervals. As long as you have the dop files the information is with them for PL to use. I have never found out if PL does clean up the data base if you delete images but hope it does.
Hi,
I have a Mac mini 2018 and a NAS Synology DSM218 Play.
Until now, I’ve not really tried to work directly on NAS for my raw.
So I just tested, and I’ve been surprised by the response time which is quite good. But as I have mainly 45 Mpix files response time is not instantaneous. And as response time with such big files is not very good already I will keep my current method, working on files on my internal SSD and then backup files onto the DSM.
Hi,
mine is an old NAS DS213+ with 1 Gbit/s Connection, and yes PL sees the NAS as network drive.
For you I’ve made a test with directly editing the photos on NAS and it was fast. Maybe a little bit more slow then local SSD.
But my workflow is like Patahl’s one an I also will keep this
Very kind Guenterm .-) Very useful your feedback.
Now I use my Mac Pro 5,1 with 4 internal HDD and PL sees obviously my folares without issues.
I want to keep working the same way but with the NAS unit; first using my current machine and later maybe a Mac Mini. The NAS as a storage device will make much sense with the Mac Mini. Apart from the backup aspect with Raid.
Hi Panthal,
my files are raw 32mp. Maybe bigger in the future.
You guys have your NAS conectei to your local LAN via your router; right?
Thank you John7
That’s right.
Not to your computer first; but to your router.
Ok I misunderstood.
My NAS is linked by Ethernet to my router, and my Mac wifi to the router.
Hello @Atha ,
you are welcome, but please let me explain one mismatch. Raid system has nothing to do with backup.
Raid gives you improvemnet in write/read speed, fault tolerance and some more but…when your NAS has write failures, you delete data by mistake, your NAS explode 
…your data is away.
Please read for example https://www.backupassist.com/blog/raid-or-backup-is-raid-a-good-backup-substitute or other articles for RAID vs. backup.
I work with nas but I backup also on 3 different medias.
And for your last question … AVM Fritz Router is connected to a switch, NAS, PC and Notebook are also connected to the switch per 1 Git/s Connection so no speed problems.
WiFi for notebook is only used sitting in the garden, but alo with good connection per AVM 1750e Repeater and MESH technology
best regards
Günter
No problem .-)
So your NAS is connected to your router by an ethernet cable; as it should be.
And you say your Mac (which Mac please?) is not connected to your router with an ethernet cable but by wifi? And using wifi you can “see” and use the NAS from your Mac? It is just a wireless way to access your private network?
If so, it will solve one problem to me; I don´t have my router near my Mac Pro and so I use wifi, now.
Thanks for the comment and for the article that is very pertinent. I already know better to distinguish backup RAID.
So far over the past two decades what I have been doing is in fact HDD backups.
RAID is something else and one in fact does not replace the other, whether used on a NAS or DAS.
Exactly.
My Mac is Mac mini:
| Nom du modèle : | Mac mini |
|---|---|
| Nom du processeur : | 6-Core Intel Core i7 |
| Vitesse du processeur : | 3,2 GHz |
| Nombre de processeurs : | 1 |
| Nombre total de cœurs : | 6 |
| Cache de niveau 2 (par cœur) : | 256 Ko |
| Cache de niveau 3 : | 12 Mo |
| Technologie Hyper-Threading : | Activé |
| Mémoire : | 32 Go |
Thank you very much Patrick. Nice machine. I am about to order one just like yours .-) 2020 version.
What do you use to work? Your internal SSD (with the macOS)? Or an external disk?
Thanks.
To work with PhotoLab I put raw on the internal ssd and once done I copy raw and dop to the nas.
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Thank you Patrick. I think it is the safest and fastest way to proceed.
I work with Canon 30mb raw files and I never had to carry them around to edit, because I have everything inside a Mac Pro 5.1, but now that I think about using a new Mac Mini I think really accurate about my internal and unique SSD. 512GB or 1TB?
It is often that, as I work in series, I edit folders with many images and the raw files + the edited exports quickly generate a large folder with many GB.
There is always the possibility to use an external SSD later just for editing, with a fast Thunderbolt / USB connection and enough space, but it is more of a peripheral and more of an investment …
Which SSD disk do you use? Did you ever feel out of space with your current SSD?
P.s. Günter, what do you think? .-)
Hi Atha,
no idea for your environment. I don’t know how often you are on tour, how much photos you will got with every tour and so on.
Taking photos is only one of my many hobbies and at the moment i own 400 GB of photo files (Raw, JPEG, TIFF) and I have some space left. And I’m not a hunter and collector for every bad photo 
greetings
Guenter