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. πŸ™‚ 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. πŸ™‚

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.

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.

Videos

Complete Beginner’s Guide for Synology NAS
Every Synology Feature Explained
The NAS That Permanently Changed My Privacy Life
NAS is Better than Cloud – Ditch Your Google Drive, iCloud, DropBox
Don’t RISK your photos & videos: Get a NAS today!
What Hard Drives Should you Buy for your Synology NAS?

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. πŸ™‚ I am not ready to drop Office.com/OneDrive/iCloud just yet, but am closer as this proves itself out.

Read More: Synology NAS
Drawer Full of Drives
NAS

Comments

One response to “Synology NAS”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.