Every few years I have to buy an additional external drive to hold all of my pictures. It is a ridiculous ritual where I will purchase the drive, previously 2TB and the last three were 5TB, and copy from here to there and try to make sure I had ALL of my pictures. This year, I invested in the Synology DS923+. I had always wanted a Drobo because all of the other photographers had one. 🙂 Upon doing research for which one to purchase, the recommendations all pointed to the Synology.
This is post 7 of #100Posts #100Days of my 2024 #100DaysofIndieWeb #IndieWeb project. #NAS #Synology.
The Need
I have 329,124 Pictures. Not all are photos of beautiful places, there are a few screenshots, and notes, and items for my CV. But it doesn’t matter, they are all pictures that I want to have and keep safe, at least until I delete some of them. 🙂
Doing my close to annual hard drive purchase copy ritual was ridiculous. It took days. And sometimes I had to rely on my online iDrive backup. I even had two new drives that failed.
The Solution
The solution was daunting because it cost as much as a new computer.
- Synology DS923+ 4-Bay NAS Enclosure
- Synology 16TB HAT5300 SATA III 3.5″ Internal Enterprise HDD
- And eventually another Synology 16TB HAT5300 SATA III 3.5″ Internal Enterprise HDD to mirror the first one.
Why Did I Select Synology?
I started to read reviews and viewed a ton of videos. I heard that Drobo was going out of business. I had never heard of the other NAS manufacturers other than Synology. I liked the DSM Operating System and some of the add on applications, especially the Synology Photos App . Not being a NAS expert, I want to share some of the resources I consulted below.
- CNET Top 5 NAS servers
- PC Mag The Best NAS Devices 2024 (Updated from 2023)
- Synology Inc.
- SpaceRex
- NASCompares
Videos
Does All of This Work?
Yes! It was expensive but I can copy my photos straight from my camera to the NAS. The Photos app backs up my cell phone photos to the NAS. Lightroom imports the photos from the NAS into the folders that I have setup on the NAS. My photos are duplicated onto the second drive, as I have them setup as RAID 1 (BTRFS). And additionally, they are backed up online offsite. And I don’t have to do the annual hard drive purchase. I will eventually have to buy two another drives for the NAS, but if I ever delete some of my photos, like the blurry ones, then I might not have to purchase another drive for about two years. That drive should take about 5 years to fill. 🙂 I am not ready to drop Office.com/OneDrive/iCloud just yet, but am closer as this proves itself out.
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