network photo library question
Discussion
Hi folks,
I have over 50GB (and growing at a rate of 20GB per year) of Jpegs (about 4-10Mb each) that i need to store on a network drive but i need to access them from multiple PCs at the same time.
I need to access them to view only and it will be rare that two machines will be accessing the same image but 3-6 machines (windows 10 units) will be accessing the library at the same time - no editing required, only viewing.
I'm currently using lightroom on a single machine, which works fine, but i've run out of space and I need to access the library on multiple machines.
What do you recommend for this?
I also need a simple way to get the images from the camera SD card into the library.
Thanks
I have over 50GB (and growing at a rate of 20GB per year) of Jpegs (about 4-10Mb each) that i need to store on a network drive but i need to access them from multiple PCs at the same time.
I need to access them to view only and it will be rare that two machines will be accessing the same image but 3-6 machines (windows 10 units) will be accessing the library at the same time - no editing required, only viewing.
I'm currently using lightroom on a single machine, which works fine, but i've run out of space and I need to access the library on multiple machines.
What do you recommend for this?
I also need a simple way to get the images from the camera SD card into the library.
Thanks
I have a WD My Cloud. Dont use it much, but we have everything on there. Music and photos backed up, and you can access by a phone app when out and about. Can just scroll through photos like you would on your camera roll. Easy to set up, Havent transferred from a card, but there's USB to plug into so assume you can just use that.
Multi access files is what a NAS is for. There are many, I happen to use a QNAP - I like them as they have many different ones from a simple home one (TS-128A) up to full enterprise devices, but they all run the same software and features. They are probably not the most user friendly for config, but probably allow more options than the 'easy consumer ones'.
I got them for all my family and remote administer them all so easier to have them all the same - they have the small ones, I have a larger one. In fact I'm in the middle of configuring up a TS-128A with a 1TB HDD for a sibling to get at Christmas!
The main feature I like is the automatic sync to the cloud, and the ability to use multiple cloud accounts. This means you can auto backup all files to OneDrive and use all 6 of the OneDrive 1TB accounts you get with a OneDrive subscription. I'm at ~2TB photos so most of the cloud providers with 1TB are not enough.
With a NAS you can easily set user permissions so some are read only. You can also do DDNS and such things that let you access the files on your NAS from over the internet, or from QNAP apps. I like this from when on holiday as my phone will auto backup photos on the phone directly to my NAS even from overseas.
I use Lightroom to manage the files on the NAS and edit them. I've not tried it yet, but I assume if I put the Lightroom library on the NAS too (currently on my local disk) then I can connect multiple computers with Lightroom to the same Library, effectively creating the edit anywhere thing Adobe tries to sell you for much more.
I got them for all my family and remote administer them all so easier to have them all the same - they have the small ones, I have a larger one. In fact I'm in the middle of configuring up a TS-128A with a 1TB HDD for a sibling to get at Christmas!
The main feature I like is the automatic sync to the cloud, and the ability to use multiple cloud accounts. This means you can auto backup all files to OneDrive and use all 6 of the OneDrive 1TB accounts you get with a OneDrive subscription. I'm at ~2TB photos so most of the cloud providers with 1TB are not enough.
With a NAS you can easily set user permissions so some are read only. You can also do DDNS and such things that let you access the files on your NAS from over the internet, or from QNAP apps. I like this from when on holiday as my phone will auto backup photos on the phone directly to my NAS even from overseas.
I use Lightroom to manage the files on the NAS and edit them. I've not tried it yet, but I assume if I put the Lightroom library on the NAS too (currently on my local disk) then I can connect multiple computers with Lightroom to the same Library, effectively creating the edit anywhere thing Adobe tries to sell you for much more.
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