The NAS Backup Workflow – How Execs Backup Pictures In 2026
The whole information to how we use a NAS backup workflow to guard our photographs and movies, and what system we use.
FULL DISCLOSURE: Synology and Seagate offered us the NAS system and laborious drives with a view to enhance our workflow and speak about our outcomes with our viewers. They didn’t pay us to advertise them, they usually have had no management or enter over the content material on this article. All ideas, opinions and our new workflow are completely our personal.
Again in 2014 we purchased ourselves somewhat point-and-shoot digital camera to doc our most bold journey so far: Travelling from Thailand to South Africa with out flying.
We knew nothing about images, however through the years it began to show right into a little bit of a pastime of ours. From a pastime it become a ardour, and shortly sufficient from a ardour right into a job.
Quick ahead to 2019 and we now work as skilled journey photographers, and have over 50 terabytes of photographs and movies from greater than 70 nations in our digital media assortment.
Through the years the necessity to maintain this digital media protected has change into an ever-growing concern for us, particularly as we tackle an increasing number of shoppers who contract us for creating photographs and movies.
Past the work facet, these footage and movies are additionally our reminiscences of journey, holding moments in time the place we’ve met unbelievable individuals, explored outstanding areas and achieved unbelievable feats.
To lose this might be tragic not only for our enterprise, however for private causes as effectively.
However regardless that we realise simply how helpful our digital media is, it isn’t till very just lately that we really established a correct workflow to again these up utilizing a NAS backup system.
Right this moment we wish to share with you what we used to do, and what we do now, to professionally again up our photographs and movies.
READ MORE – Try our detailed information for the finest journey images suggestions.
How We Backup Pictures – From No Methodology to Professional Workflow
Once we took our first journey to Antarctica in 2017, we captured over 2TB of photographs and movies in 11 days. That’s plenty of footage.
There’s two causes we took shot and filmed a lot. The primary was that it was Antarctica, a spot so lovely that phrases don’t do it justice.
The second is that it was a piece journey, and we had been making an attempt to get the very best content material doable for our shopper. And as such this digital media was extraordinarily necessary for all events concerned.
Dropping it wasn’t an possibility.
Sadly we’re additionally full-time travellers, and after we disembarked from the ship in Ushuaia, we spent the following 4 months wandering round Patagonia and the remainder of Chile, with two laborious drives stuffed with our most dear content material ever.
Importing it to the cloud wasn’t an possibility. Web was barely adequate to publish a photograph to Instagram half the time, so making an attempt to place 4K video footage and hundreds of RAW recordsdata right into a cloud storage system would by no means have labored.
If we had have misplaced these laborious drives, had them stolen, or if they simply turned corrupted, we’d have had plenty of explaining to do to our shopper…
Fortunately nothing occurred, and once we lastly settled into an AirBnB for a few weeks with a stable web connection we managed to get crucial media into the cloud.
Ever since then although we’ve realised that our workflow of backing up photographs and movies was simply horrendous, and it’s been a sluggish journey looking for the proper technique.
Lastly, after years of trial and error, we have now it discovered, and with our NAS storage for dwelling and a redundant backup answer we’re feeling assured with our media.
We’ll be the primary to confess that our outdated workflow of backing up photographs was fairly dangerous to say the least.
Right here’s what we used to do:
First, Take a Million Pictures and Movies
We aren’t very conservative relating to the variety of photographs and movies we seize.
With two of us strolling round with full-frame cameras round our necks taking pictures in RAW, a GoPro every videoing 4K footage and our telephones taking fast pics and movies for social media, it’s not unprecedented for us to finish up with over 100gb of footage in a single single day.
Particularly if we’re on an task someplace lovely like South Georgia, our cameras are continuously firing, and we’re at all times filling up SD playing cards.
Once we stuffed one up, we’d put it into our digital camera bag and exchange it with an empty one, then repeat the method.
Again As much as a USB Onerous Drive
As soon as we stuffed up all of our SD playing cards (which may take wherever from a day to per week, relying on the place we’re), we’d lastly empty them onto a transportable USB laborious drive.
NOTE – We used to make use of WD MyPassport 4TB laborious drives, however we have now now switched to LaCie Rugged 4TB laborious drives
Usually we’d be drained or in a rush to exit for dinner or do some extra taking pictures, so this might be a quick-and-dirty technique.
Our organisation wasn’t too dangerous (we’d have two laborious drives, one for picture and one for video, and we’d kind the folders out like this: Nation > Metropolis > Day), however it might fairly actually simply be a duplicate and paste affair. This meant we’d find yourself with lots of of hundreds of recordsdata referred to as DSC*******, the place the celebs are only a quantity sequence.
Once we had the content material backed up, we’d then format the SD card in-camera, prepared for the following full day of taking pictures.
Edit
If we had a while we’d edit a few photographs for social media, export them at 2048 pixels huge to the laptop computer, then share them on-line.
We wouldn’t undergo each picture although. It will simply be a fast edit of the one or two photographs that we thought had been the very best from that day, then we’d transfer on with our life.
From time to time we’d sit down to put in writing a weblog publish, or put collectively a set for a shopper, and solely then would we return and discover the photographs that we’d want for that individual activity.
We’d edit and export them at low-res, importing to them to this website, or high-res and attempt to get them to the cloud.
Automated Dropbox Sync for Edited Pictures
That is fairly actually the one time we uploaded something to the cloud, as a consequence of at all times having crappy web wherever we travelled.
Our folder of edited photographs on the laptop computer had an auto-sync to Dropbox linked. At any time when we ended up someplace with an honest web connection, we’d sync the folder to Dropbox.
All of our different RAW recordsdata and video clips although would proceed to reside on the laborious drive eternally.
Consumer Media
If we had plenty of photographs or movies we’d should ship to a shopper, we’d edit these by the deadline then add them to a shared folder on Dropbox. However that was the extent of our cloud storage options.
Pray
After the photographs had been backed as much as an exterior laborious drive, then we might actually repeat the method day by day or week, praying that the drives didn’t fail us or get stolen.
We’d journey all over the world, taking photographs, taking pictures movies, and simply gathering transportable laborious drives. These would refill, then we’d purchase one other one, stashing the total drive into certainly one of our day packs.
We hardly ever made double copies of any digital media, until it was a very necessary shoot for a shopper. However even then we’d simply have the identical content material on two laborious drives, or make a folder of ‘finest photographs’ that lived with us always.
This wouldn’t be an enormous challenge if we solely travelled for per week at a time. However that’s not how we journey. For almost 5 years we had been utterly nomadic, shifting round between totally different nations with simply the gear on our backs, gathering an increasing number of laborious drives.
READ MORE – Don’t miss our record of the finest journey cameras for any finances.
Going Dwelling – Bulk Backup
From time to time we’d come again to Australia to see household, and once we did we might exit and purchase a few bigger desktop laborious drives, with capacities round 6TB or 8TB.
We’d take our transportable laborious drives and duplicate the entire media straight throughout to those new bigger desktop drives. Then we might take that massive drive, put it right into a drawer at a member of the family’s home, and go travelling once more.
Afterwards we’d do certainly one of two issues with our full transportable laborious drives – we’d both retire them, inserting them in a drawer stuffed with no matter media was already on there, or we’d take them with us on the highway if we thought we’d want the media from a specific vacation spot sooner or later (if we wished to put in writing a weblog publish sooner or later for instance).
That is just about how we operated for years, and we all know we had been playing with our content material the whole time. If a tough drive received corrupted or stolen whereas we had been on the highway, all of these footage and video can be gone eternally.
If any person contacted us and wished to purchase a high-resolution picture from a couple of years again, we simply needed to apologise and say we didn’t have entry to it. This occurred manner too many occasions, costing us enterprise.
We put this horrible workflow down to a few elements:
- We had been at all times travelling
- We hardly ever had good web
- We didn’t know any higher
Fortunately this workflow is a factor of the previous, and we’ve now improved our techniques with a NAS backup to make sure we’re now not playing with our media.
Bettering Our Workflow – Introduction of a NAS Backup System
This has all modified in 2019 as we lastly step up our horrible technique of backing up and introduce knowledgeable workflow, doing every little thing we are able to to make sure we are able to’t lose our media, and so we are able to have entry to it always from wherever on this planet.
The very very first thing we did was introduce a NAS (Community Entry Storage) backup system into our workflow. In case you don’t know what that is, don’t fear – we didn’t have a clue both till we began closely researching the way to finest again up our photographs.
With out getting too technical, mainly a NAS is a sequence of laborious drives positioned in a single unit, working collectively and linked to a community. These are often called RAIDs, or Redundant Array of Cheap Disks.
This complete system of drives can then be accessed on your property or workplace community, or you probably have it linked to an web router, accessed on-line as effectively.
Sounds fancy, and maybe it’s in comparison with how we used to work, however when it comes to knowledge storage it’s really fairly customary, and lots of enormous places of work use comparable setups on a bigger scale.
Think about having all your photographs and movies you’ve ever taken sitting on a couple of huge laborious drives at dwelling, after which having the ability to entry these laborious drives when you’re abroad as in the event that they had been plugged straight into your laptop computer.
That’s mainly how we have a look at our NAS unit.
We have now our NAS put in at our grandparent’s home in Sydney, Australia. That is the place we quickly name dwelling each time we’re again within the nation, and as of this yr it lastly has a secure web connection (web in Australia has at all times been at midnight ages).
A NAS is made up of two components – the unit itself, and the laborious drives that set up inside it. You possibly can’t have one with out the opposite.
These are the manufacturers and fashions that we use in our NAS picture backup system.
Synology DS1618+ NAS
The model and mannequin of NAS we use is a Synology DS1618+. Synology are top-of-the-line makers of NAS techniques on this planet, with top quality merchandise and a unbelievable help workforce in place, so if we ever have any questions, we are able to get a solution nearly instantly.
In addition they have years of analysis and growth behind them, and have continuously been innovating the trade at a shopper degree, so we all know that their merchandise are as much as scratch.
The DS1618+ is a 6-bay NAS, which means we are able to set up 6 laborious drives into it. It may additionally join on to the web utilizing an ethernet cable.
As soon as it’s all arrange and linked, which does take a couple of hours intially, we are able to entry the precise NAS through the use of Synology’s consumer interface, which could be achieved by means of the community perform on our computer systems, or remotely utilizing a devoted and password-secured IP handle and login.
The place this Synology system actually stands out for us although is the usage of their nice software program and purposes, permitting us to work together, monitor and management the NAS while not having to know any technical abilities.
These do issues like mechanically sync the media on our NAS to our cloud storage of alternative, lets us rearrange all of our recordsdata, monitor its well being, share folders with shoppers and even entry recordsdata from our telephones.
It additionally has a bunch of technical options, reminiscent of quad-core CPUs, 4GB of RAM (expandable as much as 32GB), elective SSD cache, the chance to put in a 10gbE community card, and many others.
However we’ll be trustworthy, most of this goes straight over our heads. All we care about is that if it really works effectively and improves our skilled images workflow. And it undoubtedly does.
Seagate IronWolf 6TB NAS Onerous Drives
The Synology DS1618+ is the unit that we set up the laborious drives into, however it doesn’t include the laborious drives themselves. We needed to get these individually.
After chatting on to the workforce at Synology they really useful Seagate IronWolf laborious drives. We checked out the opinions they usually undoubtedly appeared like the best choice.
We ended up getting 6x Seagate IronWolf 6TB NAS laborious drives to put in into our system. This may give us a complete of 36TB of storage in a fundamental RAID setup.
Nevertheless we didn’t use a fundamental setup. After some extra analysis and suggestions from the 2 groups at Synology and Seagate, we ended up utilizing a double-drive-redundancy setup.
Principally what this implies is 4 laborious drives are in regular use, whereas the opposite two are used as spare backup drives.
As a result of the Synology DS1618+ is continually monitoring the well being of each the system and the laborious drives, it might probably immediately choose up if one thing appears to be going improper, reminiscent of a tough drive malfunctioning.
If it picks up {that a} drive is beginning to play up, it mechanically begins copying over the entire contents of that drive to one of many spare ones. When it’s achieved, it deactivates the defective drive so we are able to take it out and exchange it, preserving every little thing protected on the spare drive.
The double-drive-redundancy provides an additional spare drive in case one thing goes improper earlier than we get an opportunity to interchange the defective drive, or if one other drive fails whereas one is backing as much as the opposite.
It would seem to be overkill, however the factor is it’s not a matter of if a tough drive fails, however when. Plus with our work schedule seeing us at all times abroad, the possibilities of one drive failing whereas we’re someplace distant like Central Asia is fairly excessive.
After years or operating the gauntlet, we don’t wish to take any extra probabilities.
How We Backup Pictures Now – A Skilled Photographer’s Workflow
Now that we have now a NAS system arrange in our dwelling workplace, we have now made it a degree to make our workflow as skilled, seamless and superior as doable. It took a little bit of observe and self-discipline, however we’ve lastly managed to attain this.
Copying and Importing Utilizing Adobe Lightroom
We nonetheless take 1,000,000 photographs and movies, however now we’ve made it a degree to correctly again these up at each likelihood we get with up to date organisational instruments.
The primary change we’ve made is we now again up our SD playing cards to 2 separate laborious drives the second we get again to our laptops, even when it’s between shoots.
No extra ready till we’ve run out of SD playing cards to lastly again them up!
For our photographs we now organise and import them to exterior laborious drives by means of Adobe Lightroom. Right here’s how.
Buy the Inventive Cloud Suite of Adobe merchandise, together with Lightroom and Photoshop, right here.
First we open up the import instrument on Lightroom, select ‘Copy’, and verify all of the photographs. We’ll then undergo every picture tremendous shortly and uncheck any pictures which might be clearly ineffective (out of focus, dangerous composition, and many others).
On a full 64gb card taking pictures that’s about 1500 compressed RAW photographs from our Sony A7Riii, however going by means of all of them takes lower than 10 minutes. That’s how briskly we transfer.
Bear in mind, that is the import and backup stage, not the modifying stage.
Then we modify the listing that it’s getting copied to in the identical manner we at all times have achieved. That’s straight onto a tough drive, utilizing the folder construction: Nation > Metropolis > Exercise or Day.
After all that folder construction will probably be totally different for everyone. We’re full-time journey photographers, so having every little thing sorted by nations and cities works for us, however do no matter feels finest to you.
Subsequent we select the choice to rename our recordsdata to one thing apparent from that individual shoot. We do that with ‘Customized Identify – Sequence’. That manner we aren’t left with hundreds of DSC recordsdata adopted by random numbers.
For instance we would change the file identify to: “Proper Whale Bay A7Riii – 1”, with the 1 being the sequence quantity. We additionally add within the digital camera that it was shot on, as we at the moment use a Sony A7iii and a Sony A7Riii.
As well as we add it them to a set (often the primary vacation spot we’re in, reminiscent of South Georgia) and add key phrases to make trying to find photographs faster and simpler within the Lightroom Catalogue.
There’s additionally an possibility so as to add photographs to a subfolder utilizing dates within the ‘Vacation spot’ tab of Lightroom’s import characteristic, however we don’t at all times use this until we really feel it’s necessary.
Hit import, and all the pictures will copy over to the brand new laborious drive.
As soon as it’s all backed up, we then plug in one other laborious drive and duplicate these image folders straight throughout from the primary laborious drive to the second. This fashion we have now a precise duplicate of every little thing we’ve simply captured.
Lastly we double verify that each laborious drives have the identical content material because the SD card, and we do that by evaluating folder measurement and ensuring the numbers match precisely. Then it’s time to format the playing cards and prepare to shoot once more.
Movies
You should use the identical manner of copying and importing movies out of your SD card to your laborious drive utilizing Lightroom, however we at the moment don’t use this as we don’t like having movies in our Lightroom catalogue.
As a substitute we copy these from the SD playing cards into folders utilizing the identical construction, however with the father or mother listing being ‘Video’.
Backing As much as the NAS
This stage utterly depends upon whether or not or not we’re someplace with first rate web. If we’re someplace like Patagonia or Central Asia, this isn’t probably. But when we’re in a giant metropolis staying in an AirBnB with nice web, we then comply with this step.
At evening earlier than we go to mattress we connect with our Synology NAS system utilizing their distant connection technique. Then we open up the File Station software.
We plug in our fundamental transportable laborious drive, then actually drag and drop the latest backup folders throughout to the File Station app.
We have now our NAS folder construction the very same as we again up on our transportable laborious drives, so it’s straightforward for us to navigate.
Now it’s a matter of ready, and that is the place having an excellent web connection is necessary. If we’re someplace with quick web, the folders which have been dragged throughout to the File Station will now start importing to the NAS remotely.
That is our third type of file backup, and this fashion if something occurs to 1 (or each) of our laborious drives whereas we’re travelling, the recordsdata at the moment are on our Synology NAS DS1618+ again in Sydney, which could be accessed remotely.
It’s necessary to notice right here that this actually does rely on web connection, so earlier than we start this we at all times do an web velocity take a look at to see if it’s one thing we are able to even handle.
READ MORE: We’re dashing up our course of now by including a transportable exterior monitor to our workflow. Try our evaluate of the Espresso Show to see what we predict.
Coming Dwelling – The Ultimate Backup
As soon as we’re again from a visit we head again to our momentary base in Sydney and join our laptops to our dwelling community, the place the Synology NAS system resides.
We will simply entry the NAS utilizing Finder on our Macbooks. From right here we plugin our exterior laborious drives into our laptop computer, then copy and paste (drag and drop) the folders of recent media from our final journey onto the NAS.
The NAS additionally has a couple of different apps like USB Copy which lets you plug the laborious drive straight into the NAS and arrange an import, however we’ve had points with this so don’t hassle doing it that manner.
Our web connection at dwelling is kind of quick for Australian requirements (95mbps obtain, 35mbps add), so importing the recordsdata to the NAS occurs surprisingly fast.
One necessary observe – we don’t copy the whole father or mother folder over in a single go. We’ll do it little by little, solely importing one folder at a time, simply in case one thing occurs like we have now an influence outage or the community drops out.
Syncing to the Cloud
Now for the cream on prime! The Synology NAS DS1618+ has an excellent software referred to as Cloud Sync. You put in it onto the NAS, then as soon as it’s all arrange you’ll be able to mechanically sync whichever folders you’d wish to your favorite cloud storage answer.
For us personally we have now limitless cloud storage with Google Drive and G Suite, so we have now our NAS synced with that.
When you begin the sync it mechanically uploads your recordsdata and folders to the cloud so long as it’s linked to the web, which for us is 24/7 at dwelling.
Now every little thing on the NAS is duplicated on Google Drive, which we are able to additionally entry from wherever on this planet.
This step can be crucial to us, as a result of on the finish of the day, one thing may occur to the NAS (home will get flooded, somebody breaks in and steals it, and many others), and in that case all of our media would nonetheless be gone regardless of our greatest efforts to backup.
By having them within the cloud on Google Drive, utilizing the identical folder construction we all know and love, there’s even much less likelihood of that occuring.
Now that we have now all of our media backed up on the NAS, and likewise synced to Google Drive, we take our two laborious drives that we journey with and format them, able to go on the following images journey.
And that’s how we now professionally backup all of our photographs and movies!
Execs of This Workflow
We’re so glad that we lastly have this workflow for backing up our photographs and movies in our lives now. It’s taken away the stress we used to have of preserving our digital media protected.
We realise it’s not good, and there’s nonetheless some parts we are able to high quality tune to make it rock stable, however for now we’re very joyful.
Right here’s what we take into account a number of the advantages of utilizing the Synology DS1618+ NAS system and Seagate laborious drives:
- Organisation: Now that we have now a devoted workflow it retains all of our media clear and organised, making it simpler to search out in case a shopper wants entry to a few of our recordsdata (like if we promote a picture).
- Redundancy: The Synology NAS system makes use of a redundancy drive in order that if one of many different laborious drives fail, it is going to mechanically recuperate and backup the pictures onto the spare drive. That is golden!
- Cloud Sync: The NAS mechanically syncs all of our recordsdata to the cloud 24/7. Always remember to do it!
- Helpful Functions: The Synology DS1618+ has an excellent assortment of purposes put in on the system, making entry to our media painless.
Cons of this Workflow
Now in fact it isn’t all roses, and there are few damaging elements of this workflow.
- Numerous Steps: This actually depends upon what you take into account ‘plenty of steps’, however with a view to backup our digital media correctly we do have a listing that we have to comply with in a sure order. As soon as it’s been learnt although, it’s straightforward, however it might probably take a couple of occasions to get within the rhythm of issues.
- Previous Media Isn’t Organised Correctly: We may at all times return and reimport/backup our outdated photographs and movies utilizing our new organisation system in Lightroom, however this might take plenty of time that we simply don’t have. For now we’re simply coping with our outdated file and folder construction on the NAS from earlier years.
- Want Good Web to Entry Remotely: Not simply at your property base the place the NAS is linked, but in addition if you journey if you wish to add recordsdata on the highway or obtain some from the NAS. After all you’ll be able to nonetheless use a NAS with out an incredible web connection similar to any laborious drive backup answer, and it’s way more safe than desktop laborious drives.
- Too Gradual to Work Straight From the NAS: This may simply be the best way we have now our community setup, however in the meanwhile we haven’t discovered a quick approach to work straight with recordsdata from the NAS. For instance if we wish to edit a video on Adobe Premier, we have to copy the recordsdata over to a transportable SSD drive reasonably than entry them from the NAS. Fortunately it’s fast and simple to repeat them over.
Ultimate Ideas – Is the NAS Backup System Value It?
A NAS system is a giant funding, and relying on which manner you go it might probably price wherever from $1000 as much as $3000 or extra. It’s not an inexpensive backup answer.
Nevertheless for those who work as knowledgeable photographer or videographer, or use enormous quantities of digital media in your life or enterprise, then the safety of getting your recordsdata protected on this technique is invaluable.
Even for those who’re a hobbyist who loves images or videography, a NAS system is a good instrument to have in your workflow to guard the content material you shoot.
That being mentioned, they’re not for everyone.
If you’re a newbie photographer or don’t seize plenty of content material, your cash can be higher spent simply shopping for two transportable USB laborious drives and backing up your media on there.
For us, as those who seize plenty of content material and make a residing from doing so, a NAS system is now one thing we couldn’t think about not having in our images instruments.
Once we refill the present system, we’ll exit and purchase one other one, that’s how a lot we adore it.
