# Photo Editing with Lr & PS directly from images stored on a NAS



## Gargoy (Nov 7, 2020)

Am a photo enthusiast and novice techie with a bulging photo library.

Rather than just adding more drives and more Catalogue’s, am looking to merge to a ‘Master Catalogue’ with a single photo library residing on a NAS (while keeping the LrC Catalogue on the PC SSD (D: Drive))

After moving a copy of the files to a NAS folder, LrC couldn’t ‘see’ the photos because the drive is networked.

Looked for solutions and found a way was to set up an iSCSI volume formatted to NTFS. The tutorial was for re-locating the Catalogue to a NAS so not exactly what I used it for but helpful just the same.

Reference tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaCKA1YaOoM

Have done that and now LrC can see the images on the NTFS formatted iSCSI networked drive. Speeds are fine and it all seems to be working. But, before committing further, am second guessing and wondering if this iSCSI method is a good way or, is there another, more simple way to have LrC ‘see’ a networked drive?

Ideally, would like to not have to use this method. One reason is the back-up strategy gets complicated because the NAS can’t see the folders within it’s own iSCSI volume. Therefore, simply backing up the contents of one NAS to the other probably isn’t an option anymore. I’ve also read that if there’s a PC crash then restoring isn’t simple because of iSCSI needing to be re-done on the PC before LrC can recover.

My set up is a W10 PC attached directly to a 10GbE Synology DS1819+ (not via a switch). Total drive capacity 34TB with duel 400GB SSD used for caching. The PC is also networked to an older, similar sized Synology in a different location with 1GbE link (via a switch) which is used for back-up purposed only.

Any help is most welcome.


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## DCBolton (Nov 7, 2020)

I have my images on a Synology DS 918+ connected to my Netgear 8300 router using the link aggregation feature (2 ip addresses) and Win10 computer. Some older images are on ADS 916+ on the same network without link aggregation. LrC (current version) sees both drives as network drives, no problem. I don't know if there are performance disadvantages; the PC is i7 4-core / 8 logical processors, 64 GB RAM, NVIDIA GTX 745. I do a lot of composite images, HDR panoramas, focus stacks, etc that can involve hundreds of raw files. Some processing is done in LrC and some is passed through PS, then back to LrC as PSD, TIFF (or PSB flattened to TIFF) files. Some processes understandably take many minutes to complete but data connection/access via NAS is not an issue.

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## Gargoy (Nov 8, 2020)

Interesting. Your workflow and image types are the same as mine. I expect performance is better with iSCSI on 10GbE but isn't the primary issue and gives me hope that there is a solution whereby iSCSI isn't required.

You mention LrC sees your drives as networked drives. This helps because I realise what I’ve done is make LrC see a ‘mapped network drive’ on the PC with it’s own drive letter eg E: Drive, instead of seeing a ‘network volume’ on the PC under ‘Network’.

Discovered in LrC > Import > Source > then + to ‘add a network volume’. Now my PC can see NAS2 on the 1GbE network but not the direct attached NAS1 10GbE. That’s a promising development!

Currently the 10GbE NAS1 is an ‘unidentified network’ on W10.

Now I will need to work out how to make the PC find the NAS1 and have it listed as a Network!


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## DCBolton (Nov 8, 2020)

I think the direct connection is seen by the OS as essentially a regular drive, but I could be wrong about that. Good luck getting the setup you want.

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## johannes.raspe (Nov 8, 2020)

how could you connect one NAS without a switch and the other one via switch? Are they in different subnets? Would be an explication for the reason that LR only finds the one attached to the switch.


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## DCBolton (Nov 8, 2020)

My router has 4 regular ports, 1 WAN port and 2 ports dedicated for link aggregation. Elsewhere on the network, I have regular (dumb) switches and and another router that acts as a switch and WiFi repeater. The main image NAS is connected directly to the main router through 2 Cat6 cables from the DS to the 2 link aggregation ports. That doubles the band width from the NAS to the router. My computer is connected to the router through one of the normal switch ports. Most of the 4-bay or larger DS units (maybe all) support link aggregation. So all traffic goes through the router and devices are assigned local IP's by the router. I have my NAS units assigned static IP 's for management purposes but they could easily be assigned dynamic IP's.

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## DCBolton (Nov 8, 2020)

I forgot your subnet question. No subnet. There is no need since I will never have more devices on the network than the available addresses. 

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## johannes.raspe (Nov 8, 2020)

Hey DC Bolton, I referred to the TO. He said, that one NAS is connected directly to his machine and the other one by a switch. This made me wonder about his network topology...


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## DCBolton (Nov 8, 2020)

Yes, I think tried to point that out in one of my earlier posts. I don't believe a direct connection is seen as a network device by the OS. I played with similar connections years ago (at work) so the details are a bit fuzzy in my mind. Maybe someone else has better knowledge. It was also not clear what the OP meant by that.

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## haleszarz (Jul 31, 2021)

I always had troubled with NAS when I first started using Lightroom. It always seemed that it would be much easier and practical just to use an app to change product background or automatically add filters, but now I realize I was wrong. Even though Lightroom can be tricky (especially with the NAS stuff and all), it's worth it. I didn't even know that NAS was short for Network Attached Storage for a few months, lol. I also work on a Synology DS 918+ that's connected to my Netgear 8300 router, so I guess we all pretty much have the same workflow, lol.


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