QNAP NAS Setup Guide 2022

[Enquiries]

Your related YouTube guides are great help - thanks. I have just purchased a new Qnap TS-253D NAS J4125 and also 2 x 12Tb WD Red NAS drives. I have a few questions in respect to QNAP Photography, Indexing, Sharing.
1. Presently I have a seperate folder for Photos / Music and Videos. Would it be better to create seperate Volumes rather than folders on my new hdd?

Presently I organise my media by creating folders by Year and then sub- folders labelled by date and event i.e. E:\Photos\221012 New Qnap. This works well for me.

2. When using PhotoStation or QuMagie, when creating new Albums, does it create a new folder on the disk or is this just code used by the QuMagie app?

3. When indexing and working with the Apps, do they in anyway impact or physically rearrange the files on my hdd?

4. The same question for the Qnap music and video apps?

5. I usually work with Cyberlink Power Director for film production. Will Qnap media have any impact on this?

I ask these questions as many years ago I let my Mac iTunes sort my media and my goodness what a mess it made as it mainly reckognises English & USA artists but does not cope with music artists from other parts of the world.

As I have a large photo/video archive, and am in the process of digitizing VHS cassets, (producing films), I really domt want to mess up many years of hard work developing a structure for my data.

Your comments and advice will be much appreciated. THANKS!
Brg, Rolands

[TribalHound]

That's quite a nice setup you've got going on there.

I'll try and get through your questions:

1. Probably - having different volumes will allow you to alter the frequency of snapshots and schedule backup routines to not be one big bang - so say overnight you backup Photos Mon &Thurs, Video Tues & Fri, Music on a Wed.
If you have E:\ Photos E:\Video & E:\Music then your NAS will shadow the same logic, making it easier for you as well.

2. I'm not sure - but as you've spent so long 'getting it right' I'd highly recommend setting up a few files (copies) in an alternate volume that you can test with and remove BEFORE you allow the NAS to index / catalogue / thumbnail your main directories.

3. No - you choose what folders to be added to your library. The NAS doesn't move your data, it just adds everything it finds from where you tell it to look.
There is an option to disable indexing in the Multimedia Console. I have mine disabled and it advises:
"Multimedia Console will stop obtaining multimedia information from QNAP cloud service when indexing after disabling this option. This may cause some features running on limited functionality mode, such as the Places album in QuMagie."

4. QMusic, QPhoto & QVideo are basically apps to view, manage your collection. If you're already managing them in other software, they're kind of not required.

5. If you're working with other media on another device, or your media is stored in a location not added to the Multimedia apps and Console of the QNAP, then no.

I've had a similar issue with Music and Metadata in the past.... most music tagging software messes with variable artist discs or depends on a user database of tag options. So with over 500 albums now I strictly - download / add media to a 'MyMusic\ToCatalogue' folder - once I've signed it off the way I want it, it's moved to a 'MyMusic\Catalogued' folder where it's broken into Genre / Artist / Album folders. I take regular snapshots and maintain version control - the slightest whiff of a change I didn't make and I find the cause, disable it, revert to snapshot and move forwards. But I backup at the MyMusic level.

Hope this was helpful.