Nas suggeation for a photography studio

[Enquiries]

Hi,
I am a photographer and we are a team of 5. My requirement is i want to build a Nas with a used workstation pc like the hp z800 where i want to keep my event photos and videos so that my media team can access them for editing from both windows and Mac.i am planning for 20TB of storage. Max of 5 will be accessing the storage. Can u please suggest me the best NAS software and filesystem and raid configuration which suits my requirements and also suggest me wether i should use smb or iscsi for editing. My main priority is data safety,performance. I also considered synology but it will be costlier and i dont need the wonderful software packages and features that it offers as i use the nas to access data in my local network only.
Thanking you.
Sitaram G

[ed]

Here’s what I’d suggest for your needs:

NAS Software:
Go with TrueNAS SCALE. It’s open source, well-supported, and ideal for media-heavy environments. SCALE also supports SMB and NFS sharing out of the box, along with excellent ZFS integration for data safety. You don’t need Synology-style apps, and TrueNAS gives you powerful storage management and snapshots without the cost.

Filesystem:
Use ZFS. It’s the most stable and resilient filesystem for NAS use today. It’s copy-on-write, supports snapshots, self-healing, scrubbing, and strong redundancy — perfect for a shared editing pool.

RAID Configuration:
If you’re aiming for 20TB usable, you’ll probably need around 6 x 6TB or 5 x 8TB drives. I recommend:
• RAIDZ2 (ZFS equivalent of RAID 6) for best balance of performance and safety. You can lose 2 drives without losing data.
• If speed is more important and you’re okay with slightly less redundancy, RAIDZ1 (single-parity) can give you more usable space but is less fault-tolerant.

Protocol (for editing):
• SMB is your best bet. It works natively on both Windows and macOS, and it’s ideal for large files (RAWs, video).
• iSCSI is better for block-level access or mounting as a local drive, but it’s more complex to set up and maintain. For direct editing by multiple users, SMB is simpler and well-optimized.

Additional Tips:
• Use 2 x SSDs (mirror) as a boot pool or system apps/cache if your board supports it. This can help with read/write burst performance.
• Set up regular snapshots and replication, even locally, so you always have rollback options.
• If using HDDs, consider ZFS compression (lz4) — it won’t hurt performance and saves space.