Putting Photos library on a synology NAS

Attached and OS extended format only.

What happens if the Synology is connected to a Mac over the iSCSI protocol? Would Photos allow "iCloud Photo Library" to be enabled?

It needs to be formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

But assuming it is formatted as HFS+ Journaled... will Photos for Mac allow one to enable iCloud Photo Library? I don't see why it wouldn't, but would like to know for certain before I switch out my NAS for SAN.

It's not about whether you can enable iCloud photo library, it's about whether anything will work at all, which it won't over a network drive.

Sorry, totally basic question: how does one check to see if the drives are formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)? I just set up a new DS415+ so, learning as I go here...

I am trying to achieve what many others are looking to do: offload pictures from a Macbook to a Synology NAS in order to free up space on the laptop. After some research, I see that using Apple's Photo app can be problematic with a NAS. What is the best practice for doing this now that Aperture and iPhoto have been replaced with "Photos". I am happy to use third-party software (Adobe Bridge?) to view/manage image files. Any suggestions?

Also, I downloaded Synology's "Photo Station Uploader" software and attempted to transfer my Photos image library to the NAS. It ran a while but nothing was transferred to the NAS. My image library is about 350 GB. Should I try importing it in pieces?

A NAS is essentially a headless computer with it's own operating system. Usually a version of Linux. No Synology NAS is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If you reformat it (which you would so with Disk Utility) then it will no longer work as an NAS.

Forget putting the Photos library there. If you want to move to another app by all means do, but you'll need to choose that yourself as only you know what your requirements are. Adobe Bridge is a different category of app from Photos/Aperture/iPhoto. The Adobe product nearest those would be Lightroom.

Thanks Terence. After much research on this topic I have seen your name come up many times. I now understand the requirement that Photos can only work with a directly attached external hard drive formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Once I understood that, this is how I managed the workflow for offloading images from the Photos library on my laptop (after ten years of digital photography it is almost full) to my NAS. I was surprised at how unintuitive the process was considering how many of us have huge amounts of images!

Here is what I did, and a word of caution before I begin, I am not an expert at this and appreciate any comments on how to improve the workflow. So far, things have been working well for me.

My setup:

Macbook Pro mid-2009

OS X Yosemite 10.10.4

Apple Photos 1.0.1

Synology DS415+

- Before beginning, BACK UP ALL IMAGES to an external hard drive and disconnect it just to be safe!

- In Photos, under Preferences/General, check "Metadata: Include location information for published item"

- In Photos, select the images you want to offload to your NAS

- Go to File --> Export --> Export Unmodified Original...

- In the dialog box, make sure to select Subfolder Format: Moment Name

- Navigate to the "Photo" folder on your NAS and hit export

- I created a subfolder for each year in the NAS "Photo" folder and exported one year at a time from Photos

This is working well using Adobe Lightroom as the viewer/manager of the images. All data seems to be there (including GPS coordinates).

Hi,

I'm just starting down this path, so your post is very helpful. An initial question ...

You indicate the need to "Export Unmodified Original...". Can you let me know why you found you had to do this? I assume it means that any edits done to photos (cropping, colour adjustments etc.) are lost?

Appreciate your help.

Derek.

File -> Export -> Export unmodified original

But remember this is not putting a Photos library on a NAS. It's exporting from Photos to the Finder and storing originals only on the NAS.

Hi Terence,

I can see where to find the option, but I'd like some confirmation on exactly what it does, and why in the context of moving a library to a NAS, it's important

All it does is move the original files from the Photos Library to the NAS, where they are no longer managed or available to Photos.

Best answer. I got a Ds 416 this week and did all the settings needed. Am at the Photo Solution now and not sure what to do . After you export all the originals (Raw and JPEG ) from your application Photos , what kind of automatic importing and copying to the NAS, do you use ?

I am trying to see the workflow : import on the computer , copy to the NAS and import again to the Photos application to resume post processing.

Thanks Florence

If you're using a NAS for any part of the workflow, forget about using Photos, its just not reliable in that scenario. Further, with a referenced library you cannot use the iCloud Library feature.

This is an excellent thread. However question: If you want to keep the advantage of the Photos-Functionalities, sync across devices etc. what options do you have if you run out of disk space?