How do you use your NAS?

[Anton Largiader]

I'm offloading some older photo folders from my laptop to my smallish NAS and am wondering what the next step will be for me, so I'm trying to gather a few real-world NAS usage cases that might guide me. What I have now is a Synology DS220j with two redundant (RAID 1) 2TB drives; max throughput is 120 GB/sec which is common because it corresponds to 1 Gbps network speed. So far it's fine because I don't work directly from the NAS. It's just cold storage. It's OK with me for now if it takes a long time to move files to it.

However, some people do fork with big files directly from the NAS and next time I overhaul the system I may want to up the game a bit. Going over 1Gbps would mean a faster NAS and a faster ethernet adapter for my MBP.

How do you use your NAS? How often do you move files, for what reason, at what speed and how? Do you run apps on it, like Docker?

 

[Mike_d]

I have a 5 bay Synology. I keep as much data there as possible. That includes my documents, music, ripped DVD collection, and edited personal photos and videos that can be viewed by the family. When I import videos and photos into LR, they initially go to a folder structure on an SSD in my PC. After editing, I move them within LR to a folder on the NAS with the same structure. Editing with the originals local is faster, but editing off the NAS isn't bad.

 

[Anton Largiader]

@Mike_d what kind of transfer speeds can you get? Which synology, drives, and RAID?

This came onto my radar about a week ago reading about someone's xfer speeds to NAS. Unifi claims "10 Gbps performance" for their NAS products, but it seems that getting anywhere close to that - or even faster than 1 Gbps - means having the exact right drives, a certain RAID level, and of course connections that support that speed. I doubt I am even getting the 120 MBps that Synology cites.

 

[Mike_d]

@Mike_d what kind of transfer speeds can you get? Which synology, drives, and RAID?

This came onto my radar about a week ago reading about someone's xfer speeds to NAS. Unifi claims "10 Gbps performance" for their NAS products, but it seems that getting anywhere close to that - or even faster than 1 Gbps - means having the exact right drives, a certain RAID level, and of course connections that support that speed. I doubt I am even getting the 120 MBps that Synology cites.

It's an old DS1512+ running SHR with WD Red hard drives ranging from 3-6 TB. It will max out my gigabit network at approx 120 MB/sec on large file transfers. It does have two Ethernet ports that can be aggregated but that's really only a benefit if you have multiple clients trying to max out the LAN at the same time. I don't think any consumer level NAS is going to hit anywhere close to 10 Gbit on spinning drives. Maybe some enterprise level storage array but that's well beyond this. I haven't bothered to upgrade anything I own past 1 Gbit because it just hasn't been necessary.

 

[Bobtographer]

I use my NAS as a media server, I don't keep RAWs on it..

 

[Mike_d]

I use my NAS as a media server, I don't keep RAWs on it..

I keep my raws on it for cost reasons. 1 TB of spinning storage was a lot cheaper than 1 TB of solid state storage when I built this computer.

 

[Bobtographer]

I keep my raws on it for cost reasons. 1 TB of spinning storage was a lot cheaper than 1 TB of solid state storage when I built this computer.

Oh I use spinning rust to store my files, just not on a NAS

 

[Dragonspeed]

@Mike_d what kind of transfer speeds can you get? Which synology, drives, and RAID?

This came onto my radar about a week ago reading about someone's xfer speeds to NAS. Unifi claims "10 Gbps performance" for their NAS products, but it seems that getting anywhere close to that - or even faster than 1 Gbps - means having the exact right drives, a certain RAID level, and of course connections that support that speed. I doubt I am even getting the 120 MBps that Synology cites.

120 MBps is slightly MORE than 1Gbps... careful to match apples and oranges.

 

[Anton Largiader]

I'm using manufacturers' numbers. For logical reasons, Synology talks bytes while Unifi talks bits. I assume people in this thread are fluent in both. The small difference between 120 MB/s and 1 Gb/s isn't what I'm after here. Getting 30 MB/s vs 120 MB/s vs 300 Mb/s... now you have my attention!

Last night I dumped a bunch of RAWs to the NAS. At first I was hooked up iMac - router - switch - NAS. For those who care or know the Unifi line, the router is a UDM-Pro which has some convenience switch ports that all bottleneck down to 1 Gbps before reaching the true backplane. There's little else on that switch with any demand, but I swapped cables with the other iMac which was connected directly to the 2.5 Gbps switch. No difference in speed; I was not close to 1 Gbps either way; it was more like 180 Mbps. Two 2TB WD Red drives in RAID 1; not sure of the exact drive specs. So, if/when upgrade the NAS, I will definitely want better performance there.

 

[Mike_d]

I'm using manufacturers' numbers. For logical reasons, Synology talks bytes while Unifi talks bits. I assume people in this thread are fluent in both. The small difference between 120 MB/s and 1 Gb/s isn't what I'm after here. Getting 30 MB/s vs 120 MB/s vs 300 Mb/s... now you have my attention!

Last night I dumped a bunch of RAWs to the NAS. At first I was hooked up iMac - router - switch - NAS. For those who care or know the Unifi line, the router is a UDM-Pro which has some convenience switch ports that all bottleneck down to 1 Gbps before reaching the true backplane. There's little else on that switch with any demand, but I swapped cables with the other iMac which was connected directly to the 2.5 Gbps switch. No difference in speed; I was not close to 1 Gbps either way; it was more like 180 Mbps. Two 2TB WD Red drives in RAID 1; not sure of the exact drive specs. So, if/when upgrade the NAS, I will definitely want better performance there.

Hard drives never reach their stated speed when transferring multiple files and there also more network overhead compared to copying a large file like an ISO. I believe WD Reds are 5400 rpm so they're even slower than 7200 rpm drives. My Synology can max out the Gigbit link, but that's with data spread over 5 drives and transferring a large file.

 

[Dragonspeed]

I'm using manufacturers' numbers. For logical reasons, Synology talks bytes while Unifi talks bits. I assume people in this thread are fluent in both. The small difference between 120 MB/s and 1 Gb/s isn't what I'm after here. Getting 30 MB/s vs 120 MB/s vs 300 Mb/s... now you have my attention!

Last night I dumped a bunch of RAWs to the NAS. At first I was hooked up iMac - router - switch - NAS. For those who care or know the Unifi line, the router is a UDM-Pro which has some convenience switch ports that all bottleneck down to 1 Gbps before reaching the true backplane. There's little else on that switch with any demand, but I swapped cables with the other iMac which was connected directly to the 2.5 Gbps switch. No difference in speed; I was not close to 1 Gbps either way; it was more like 180 Mbps. Two 2TB WD Red drives in RAID 1; not sure of the exact drive specs. So, if/when upgrade the NAS, I will definitely want better performance there.

Synology, sadly, is not known as a powerhouse NAS. That being said, that's not great throughput. NFS? SMB?

 

[Anton Largiader]

This is a low-end one. I think they get a lot better.

So how do YOU use your NAS?

 

[Dragonspeed]

This is a low-end one. I think they get a lot better.

So how do YOU use your NAS?

We use them in our corporate backup structure as an intermediary storage repository for backups local to the endpoints. (If it dies, it’s not end of game the world) Then we shuffle that data into our Datacentres onto HP Apollo servers with bulk disk. Then we spin it off to tape for air gapped protection from nastiness.

 

[Joeseph]

I've just bought 2x 8TB SAS drives for my HP microserver, not entirely sure they'll be supported but if all goes to plan I'll use this as storage to back up the 8TB drive in my main P.C occasionally.
Microserver has a 2.5G network card as does my main P.C so be interesting to see what thrughput it gets, I'm not needing anything other than overnight copy speed <runs away to do the math for incremental backups>
Once a backup is taken I'll shut down the microserver.

I also keep an 8TB drive copy at work.

 

[saraspics]

I have a 2x4TB (RAID) DS218j that I used primarily for media storage (playback), backup and shared household documents. And after 7 years, with hundreds if ripped cds, tens of thousands of pictures (raw and jpg) and a few hundred videos, it's still got 1.6 TB (the raid has a total capacity of 3.6 TB) free.

The backup area contains the Lightroom "copy on import" copy to a folder I specify for each year; a regular automated backup of all audio & video files as well as data/document and system files. I also have two USB drives attached for backup of the backup.

The media storage folders (standard Music, Video and Photo folders) are used for household media sharing. My first retirement project a few years ago was ripping all of our CDs (500+ CDs, including many operas and multi-disc classical sets) to the NAS. I use Jeffrey Friedl's Lightroom Collection Publisher to publish "developed" photos to be viewed on phones, tablets and tvs at home.

For network photo viewing I use mostly Synology Photos. Regrettably, there's no Fire Stick App for Synology Photos. The older 218j with its limited memory capacity is not exactly a speed demon when it comes to view photos - I am pretty sure that any of the newer models with more memory would be quicker. I have tried Plex as media server a few times over the year and each time have been severely disappointed in it's photo streaming. EXTREMELY slow with my setup.

 

[Anton Largiader]

Thanks for those details. Mine is the DS220j; the successor to the 218j. Still not a speed demon. It sounds like you copy everything from your camera to the NAS, if you are using the Copy on Import function? Where in the process does culling happen?

FWIW I download the camera to the laptop via USB, then delete off the camera. Then I cull the photos (generally sports photos, culling 300+ down to 20~60) and do whatever with them, and then at some point much farther down the line I move them to the NAS and delete from the laptop (using direct file management like Finder). I also use Synology Photos to archive our iPhone photos, and there are a few smart home related files on the NAS as well. But the bulk of it is Canon RAWs.

 

[saraspics]

Thanks for those details. Mine is the DS220j; the successor to the 218j. Still not a speed demon. It sounds like you copy everything from your camera to the NAS, if you are using the Copy on Import function? Where in the process does culling happen?

FWIW I download the camera to the laptop via USB, then delete off the camera. Then I cull the photos (generally sports photos, culling 300+ down to 20~60) and do whatever with them, and then at some point much farther down the line I move them to the NAS and delete from the laptop (using direct file management like Finder). I also use Synology Photos to archive our iPhone photos, and there are a few smart home related files on the NAS as well. But the bulk of it is Canon RAWs.

Sometimes I cull the real duds on import, doing a quick look through and unmarking the baddies from the import batch. But when I import more than 200, like after a day trip or big outing, I don't always take the time to cull at import. Most often though, I do a quick cull on my first pass through the photos after import, and more and more culling and picking of "to be edited" with every step of my workflow. (Assign location & location keywords, keywording, captioning, developing)

Actually, I just realized I made an error in my above post. My raw copies are not made directly to the NAS, rather to a 4TB external USB drive attatched to it. So issue of eating up space on the NAS with lots of raw files is not an issue.

 

[Wilt]

I have long had a Synology NAS. Mine is primarily an Archive copy of data; as for RAW, I do keep archived RAW files there, but my practice is to store current year RAW files in local drive, and have acrchive copy on NAS. I also utilize a USB drive as a third copy of data.
BTW, it is easy to upgrade your disk capacity...(assuming you have RAID1 configuration with disk mirroring) simply remove one harddrive from your NAS (let's call it 'Disk 2') and insert a new larger harddrive in its place. Turn the unit back on and it will automatically copy Disk 1 to Disk 2 in background. After it is done, remove Disk 1 and replace with larger harddrive, turn it on and the NAS will copy Disk 2 to the empty Disk 1. After it is done,, the contents will be identical to the original harddrives, but now on larger capacity units. The benefit is that you still have the original harddrives as yet another copy of data up to that point in time.

 

[ImageMaker]

Ive been running single 20 TB drives. With backups to other 20 TB drives internal and external. Now I’m up to about 15TB of photos…. I’ll be looking to migrate to an NAS sometime this year. I run backups from the moment I shoot - tethered to a Laptop - within a few seconds the shots is backed up to a SSD. My camera runs in backup mode for the cards in camera. Within 20 minutes, my edits are backed up too. GoodSync works well for me to backup/move files around.

Will be evaluating NAS solutions this year and migrate sometime in 2026.

 

[RodS57]

My nas(DS224+ with 2x 4tb drives in raid 1) is for file storage that allows access to files in a mixed OS environment (Windows & Linux) and that is about it. I followed the quick set-up instructions and started using it only to find out the quick set-up left a lot out. I'm the only user so not a big deal.

Rod