I need help choosing the right one.

[Enquiries]

I was thinking of a 4 bay nas for storing and editing photos via Lightroom and Photoshop. Today I have 20 TB of photos divided into 5 external disks and backup to the cloud. Works with a Mac Book Pro M1 with 1TB of SSD and 16GB of memory. This feels insecure and slow the way I work now, what about connecting via Thunderbolt? Do you have any good suggestions, preferably a budget and a standard cost, incl. HD?

[ed]

For your needs of storing and editing photos via Lightroom and Photoshop, moving from multiple external drives to a NAS is a great idea. Given your budget of $1500 and the requirement for 25TB, the Synology DS923+ is an excellent option. It offers robust performance with an AMD Ryzen R1600 CPU and 4GB DDR4 ECC, which can be expanded. This NAS can also handle potential future needs with the option for a 10GbE upgrade, ensuring faster data access and transfer speeds, crucial for photo editing workflows. For Thunderbolt connectivity, consider the QNAP TVS-h674, which supports a Thunderbolt expansion card, offering even higher transfer speeds and a seamless connection with your MacBook Pro. Both these NAS devices are well-suited for your current and future needs, providing reliability, scalability, and the performance needed for intensive photo editing tasks.

[Ekky]

For your needs, a 4-bay NAS with Thunderbolt connectivity would be an excellent choice. It offers high-speed data transfer and the ability to store all your photos in one place, improving both security and workflow efficiency. I'd recommend looking into models like the QNAP TVS-472XT or the Synology DS920+. Both are great for photo editing via Lightroom and Photoshop, and they support Thunderbolt connections for your MacBook Pro M1. In terms of budget, you’re looking at roughly $800-$1,200 for the NAS itself, plus the cost of hard drives. Standard 4TB drives are around $100 each, so for 20TB, you’d need about five of them, costing around $500 total. Overall, you’re looking at an investment of around $1,300-$1,700.

On a related note, I recently read an article about the Top 20 FREE Video Editing Software with NO Watermark. It mentioned several options like DaVinci Resolve, HitFilm Express, and Shotcut, which offer great features for video editing without any watermark. This could be particularly useful if you ever decide to dabble in video content to complement your photography work. Among the software mentioned, Movavi was highlighted for its user-friendly interface and robust editing tools, making it a solid choice for both beginners and advanced users. If you’re interested in learning more, you can check out the full article here https://www.movavi.com/learning-portal/f...rmark.html