How to set Adobe Lightroom Catalogs to work with a Synology NAS (or any similar Network Attached Storage)
You probably started using Adobe Lightroom and have been thinking if you should save all your RAW files and your LR(Lightroom) Catalog at the same place, more often than not, this means at your boot or fastest internal hard disk drive. A second option consists of using a Network Attached Storage unit (NAS, or any storage drive in your network actually) so you avoid eating up all the space at your computer, ideally without sacrificing a lot of performance. A NAS is a great option to store files and backups, stream media, and other stuff. A NAS can also store all the RAW files from your camera in a secure place that will not slow down your workflow if you set it up correctly. You can work with a NAS in two ways, the first one is as a pure cold storage unit, meaning that once you finished editing your pictures, you dump them at the NAS and free that space at your computer. If you have, for any reason, to do additional edits to those pictures, you can work those files directly from the NAS, LR performance will take a hit based on the data speed that your network can handle, but if you are working only on two or three files, this should not be a problem at all. Now for the second way of using a NAS, If you prefer to work with your LR Catalog on your computer drive while transferring the RAW files to the NAS before starting to do all your edits, you can certainly do so, my workflow is set in this way. Just so we are clear, I run LR on Windows, I am using a Synology NAS DS718+ with two WD 4TB HDD working in RAID1 for storage, this means that each HDD has a full copy of the same information. Both HDD act as one, in case one fails, I can replace it with a newer one and have peace of mind that my files are backed up. If you decide to give it a try just remember that it is at your own risk. Also, I do not have experience using this setup with MAC OS, but I believe that it should work just the same. I’ll give you a list of the things I did after I purchased and configured the NAS in my private network, and how I added it to my photoprocessing workflow(I am going to assume you know how to set up the NAS since that is not the reason why you are reading this):
I set up a disk partition just for the RAW files (this step is optional, I did not want to mix them with other stuff I store at the NAS).
I mapped the recently created partition as a Network Drive on my computer, allowing me to browse it from my file explorer, just like any other external disk or USB.
I dumped all my RAW files from my computer/external drive into the mapped network drive, leaving my LR Catalog at my computer.
Once I had everything in place, I opened LR. I got a warning letting me know that the RAW files were no longer at the last known location, so I just took the time to give LR the new location of each of my folders in the Catalog (at my NAS, browsing the file explorer once LR prompted me to).
After every folder in my Catalog got updated with the new NAS location, I was able to work just like before.
As far as performance goes, you are going to have some drawbacks. Not having the RAW files at your computer means that depending on your private network speed, LR will take some time retrieving the necessary data from the RAW files to let you do your edits. The way I understand it, in "LR Preferences" you can define how your Catalog behaves, usually, it saves some data of each file in it and the cache, like the small preview images you see in the library and the reel, that's how you can see a picture in your screen even if the file is missing and you are unable to edit it. To get back some of that performance, I instructed LR Catalog to Build previews at a 1:1 Ratio upon import, you will get a larger amount of data from each picture in your Catalog and cache to work with, the data stays in your computer drive, that way you minimize the data going from your NAS to your computer while working and vice versa; After updating this adjustment I noticed the performance improvement the most while zooming in at a 1:1, before doing 1:1 previews each time I zoomed into a pic to do some edits it would take a while to get the data from the raw file and build the preview, so I would end up waiting 3-7 seconds to be able to see the picture at the required resolution, but now since most of the data for the files I intend to edit lives also inside the Catalog, it takes almost no time to zoom in and let me do my edits.
Your next thought here would be: "Well, but that defeats the purpose of the NAS, the Catalog is going to be as huge as all the RAW files at the NAS", and you would be right if we don’t perform a final adjustment to the Catalog behavior, if you go to the Catalog settings you will see there is an option to discard 1:1 ratio previews after a set amount of time, this way you can decide when you think you won't be working on that specific session/folder/collection/files. I have the Catalog set to discard 1:1 previews older than 30 days, after that period if I want to go back to a given picture and work on an edit I only rebuild that specific preview, which will take no time. Applying the previously mentioned steps, I can keep the Catalog size relatively small, while being able to work at a fluid pace, with almost no delays or noticeable performance issues.
If you would like me to add extra detail regarding any part of this post or if you would like me to answer a related question please let me know in the comments, cheers!
