Syncing to a Synology NAS
I have a new Synology DS923+ and am researching what the best workflow is. I work with a Mac Mini M1. My photos currently are stored on an external drive. The Synology uses DSM 7.1. So far I seem to have a number of possibilities. Work on my photos directly on the NAS, backup/copy my work to the NAS, Use Synology Drive to sync my work to the NAS. Does anyone have experience with this type of work flow? Will ON1 Sync work with my NAS? Haven't found a way to do that yet. Any input will be greatly appreciated.
BTW, part of my reason for getting the NAS is that external drives don't work reliably with my Mac Mini M1. My drives sometimes are lost/corrupted after the computer sleeps or even when I reboot. I then have to us WD Drive utility to restore the drive. Does anyone else have this problem? I never had issues like that with my old Windows PC, nor with my 2 year old Mac Book Pro (Intel based).
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Photo Raw will only sync with it's own ON1 cloud sync. Your scenario doesn't appear to need syncing unless I'm missing something.
If you're keeping your photos on the NAS and can access them in Photo Raw from there, that would be the best option. That will of course add a bit of delay every time you want to open a photo, but you'll still be able to create a catalog which will speed up searching. No syncing required since your photos are already on the NAS.
You'll need a Mac guy to comment on the Mac related stuff.
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Thanks Rick,
I suppose I need to try a little editing of photos on the NAS. This is what I originally planned on doing anyway.
"Synology Drive" (an app) has various option, one is that it will sync your work on your computer to the NAS so you have will automatically have your work backed up. I have no idea how well it will work with On1 Photo Raw 2023. The files on the NAS can then also be backed up to a cloud service.
So basically I'm doing my "homework" to find the best solution.
As for the Mac Mini M1, my gut feeling is they might have an issue with that Apple silicon that they don't have a solution for, or my Mac Mini has some kind of defect. It is very fast at photo edits compared with my Windows PC (which actually had a faster processor), but that computer's graphics card was no longer compatible with On1 and new cards are way to expensive. Some cost as much as my Mac Mini!
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I doubt you'll be content for long using a NAS as your primary work drive. It's a great way to to have a local failsafe by setting up a raid on it and and certainly more convenient keeping everything accessible when needed compared to several external drives as they fill up but it is significantly slower.
Your best option for workflow is everything that you're actively working on stays local, make sure local drive as fast as it can be even if its smaller and you can't keep as much on it. SSD will be faster and perform better with any power/sleep management from teh mac better than an HDD, a thumbdrive might even be a good option. Backup everything to the NAS so you have it there but try not to point ON1 at it or the indexing and generating of sidecar files for things you never edited will take weeks/months/years? When you're done with project, make sure everything is moved to the NAS and reclaim the space locally.As far as syncing with the cloud, if you map a network drive the ON1 will treat it just like any other external drive in your browse but you only need this if you're syncing to a machine on a different network since anything on your network can browse to the NAS. This really shouldn't be necessary anyway though since it will all be completed/older work on the NAS and your current work won't be affected. As stated previously, be very careful of pointing ON1 to the NAS or any large volume since there is currently no way to stop or limit indexing.
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Thanks, Paul!
Sounds like good advise! I do have Raid set up on the NAS. Edited files copied to the NAS do seem to have my edits intact, so far!
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