Lightroom Setup

[LostPhil]

Hi all,

I've hit a bit of a low with regards to my photography and want to pick it back up again. One of the issues I currently have is with my home computer setup. How is everyone else running their photo storage?

My main computer is a laptop with a 128gb SSD as its only storage. I have a Synology NAS with 2TB of storage and Office 365 with a TB of OneDrive space.

If I keep the source files on my NAS, lightroom is slow as every time it loads a preview, it's doing it over the network. Smart previews kinda help, but they take up space on the SSD and it seems like I have to disconnect the NAS if I want to use them.

So, at the moment I bypass Lightroom completely and just shoot in JPG, delete the unwanted ones and save the untouched versions in OneDrive. It's just a pain when I want to edit/play around with a particular photo or manage my collection.

Ideally, I'd build a desktop with a big HDD backed up to the NAS/OneDrive but I can't afford it right now. Any other suggestions?

 

[LostPhil]

Ideally you need to do 3 stages

1 - PC, keep nothing here, so if it gets hit with a virus and your OS dies on its feet your files are okay.
2 - external HDD for processing. Better if you can run this as a dual mirror drive. Something like the WD Duo
3 - NAS for "archive" backup
4 - Cloud/off site.

Perhaps I'll have to find an external drive to use via USB or even just connect the NAS via USB and see if it's any quicker. Always been wary of external drives, but if it's sitting on my desk, not gonna be much worse than an internal drive. I'll probably just keep my output files on the cloud as I won't be doing anything too important.