Hello, I’m a newbie with NAS but as I p[lan to buy one I have a question.
I need my NAS as a back-up system for my iMac an Macbook pro and I also want to copy my Photo library from Lightroom which at the moment runs on a separate external hard drive.
I opt for a NAS with 8TB harddrives
Question is, is it possible to split all these 3 items on a NAS
Not sure what you mean about splitting. But those things can be done. NAS is an integrated device with operating system and is not like an external hard drive.
You can backup your Mac but not with Time Machine. Synology has ABB, Active Backup for Business that will perform backups. You put the ABB agent in the Mac and settings for the backup are done on the NAS. The NAS handles the rest.
Synology Photos handles photo libraries well and provides external access for family members, if needed. I use it for all photos of the family to be together rather than pass photos around. There are thousands of them in my library.
You should also think through backup for the NAS. You need something. A remote backup can be done with Synology or another NAS somewhere and many will tell you must have a remote backup in another location to protect in case of things like fire. They aren’t wrong. Still, I don’t have a remote backup but I do have an external drive that backups on the NAS daily. The Synology Hyper Backup works well with external usb drives. I have 4-8TB drives on the NAS and use one 12TB drive, same brand/type as NAS drives in a USB enclosure, for the backup. I limit the number of backups on that drive to ensure they fit. My NAS capacity is underutilized. I opted for more drive space than I need intentionally for growth.
I am just adding that I believe there is a way to use Time Machine for backup and you can probably find some stuff online to help on how to set it up. Just not sure that is the most effective way once you have a Synology NAS.
Hi,
With splitting I mean to put a Time Machine back up of my iMac, MacBook Pro and my external Lightroom photocatalogue on a drive in the NAS
A Synology NAS fully supports Time Machine. For instructions on how to set up multiple Macs to back up through Time Machine, please refer to: Time Machine Backup to Synology NAS
SpaceRex also has a video on this topic if you prefer that.
If you have a Synology NAS Plus model, such as the DS725+ or DS925+, you can use Active Backup for Business instead of Time Machine.
Regarding splitting: as already mentioned, you handle NAS differently than external disks. Long story short, once you set up the NAS, which includes the installation of disks, you deal with network shares (or shared folders) and forget about disks altogether. You separate contents into different shared folders.