Yesterday, 08:04 AM
Hi Lukas,
Thanks for reaching out, and great to hear you’re diving into NAS for your photography workflow. You’re in a pretty ideal position for making the move - especially since you’re already thinking about backups, performance, and long-term growth.
You’re absolutely right about Synology’s drive compatibility being more restrictive in the 2025 generation (DS1825+, DS1525+, etc.). If you go down this route, I would strongly recommend keeping at least one spare Synology-compatible drive on hand, just in case of failure. This avoids delays and ensures rebuilds happen as quickly as possible. That said, Synology drives are becoming more available across major retailers now, but they do cost more and limit flexibility.
Performance & Lightroom Workflow
Your thinking about performance scaling with more bays is spot on. An 8-bay NAS (like the DS1825+) using RAID 6 will generally give you better sustained read/write performance than a 5-bay (DS1525+) in RAID 5, thanks to more concurrent disk access and distribution of I/O. That said, for your use case - scrolling and previewing lots of RAW images in Lightroom - the real bottleneck is often random read speed and latency.
This is where SSD caching (or even an SSD volume for active projects) can make a big difference. While Synology’s SSDs are overpriced, you can use unofficial ones by using a workaround (there’s a full guide on that here: https://nascompares.com/guide/how-to-use...-2025-nas/). Just be aware that you’ll get warnings in DSM and some features may not be officially supported - but they do work.
As for storage capacity, yes - keeping 20-30% free space on volumes is generally good practice, both for performance and ensuring smooth background tasks like snapshots or rebuilds. So targeting 70-80% usage is a smart rule of thumb.
Backup Strategy
You’re also spot-on about Backblaze. Their personal plan does not officially support NAS devices. However, backing up your external backup drive that mirrors your NAS is a valid workaround to keep using the personal plan. It’s not a “No No,” but do keep in mind it adds another layer - you’ll need to manage versioning and ensure the drive mirrors the NAS properly.
Alternatively, you could look at Synology C2 cloud backup (integrated into DSM), or something like IDrive or Wasabi. These services natively support NAS and can be automated more cleanly, but they are priced differently than Backblaze Personal.
Synology...
If you want something that works well, is easy to manage, secure, and requires little tinkering - Synology is still the best out-of-the-box option. DSM is incredibly user-friendly, the apps are polished, and it integrates well with macOS/Windows workflows. Other brands like QNAP or TrueNAS offer more raw flexibility but usually require a bit more hands-on work or ongoing configuration.
So no, I wouldn’t say run from Synology - quite the opposite. Just be aware of the limitations on drive choice, and plan your storage upgrades accordingly.
Upgrades to Consider
For your image review workflow, I’d recommend the following:
• Add NVMe SSD cache - even 2x 500GB Gen3 or Gen4 NVMe SSDs can drastically improve Lightroom previews and random reads.
• Upgrade to 16–32GB of RAM - Lightroom and DSM’s background indexing love memory, and more RAM will reduce any caching slowdowns.
• Separate SSD Volume (optional) - if you want premium performance for current projects, consider installing 1 or 2x SATA SSDs in their own storage pool for “active work.” Once done, move projects to the main HDD RAID array for cold storage.
Just bear in mind Synology only allows Synology-branded SSDs for volumes on the 2025 series, so if you want to go non-official, you’ll need to use the above workaround.
Other NAS Options...
If you want a more open hardware platform and are willing to sacrifice a bit of polish, Asustor, Terramaster, and UGREEN NASync are worth a look. These brands offer NVMe storage pool support with third-party SSDs and more relaxed drive compatibility - though the UI isn’t quite as polished as DSM.
Alternatively, if you want a plug-and-play experience but need more flexibility than Synology allows, something like the QNAP TS-664 or QNAP TVS-h674 gives you NVMe storage pools, GPU support, and no-brand-locking - though they do come with a slightly steeper learning curve.
If you end up going Synology, I’d just suggest budgeting for the RAM and SSD cache upgrades early on. It’ll make your Lightroom experience much smoother.
Regarding NVMe - DWPD scores help a lot https://nascompares.com/answer/best-nvme...r-caching/
Thanks for reaching out, and great to hear you’re diving into NAS for your photography workflow. You’re in a pretty ideal position for making the move - especially since you’re already thinking about backups, performance, and long-term growth.
You’re absolutely right about Synology’s drive compatibility being more restrictive in the 2025 generation (DS1825+, DS1525+, etc.). If you go down this route, I would strongly recommend keeping at least one spare Synology-compatible drive on hand, just in case of failure. This avoids delays and ensures rebuilds happen as quickly as possible. That said, Synology drives are becoming more available across major retailers now, but they do cost more and limit flexibility.
Performance & Lightroom Workflow
Your thinking about performance scaling with more bays is spot on. An 8-bay NAS (like the DS1825+) using RAID 6 will generally give you better sustained read/write performance than a 5-bay (DS1525+) in RAID 5, thanks to more concurrent disk access and distribution of I/O. That said, for your use case - scrolling and previewing lots of RAW images in Lightroom - the real bottleneck is often random read speed and latency.
This is where SSD caching (or even an SSD volume for active projects) can make a big difference. While Synology’s SSDs are overpriced, you can use unofficial ones by using a workaround (there’s a full guide on that here: https://nascompares.com/guide/how-to-use...-2025-nas/). Just be aware that you’ll get warnings in DSM and some features may not be officially supported - but they do work.
As for storage capacity, yes - keeping 20-30% free space on volumes is generally good practice, both for performance and ensuring smooth background tasks like snapshots or rebuilds. So targeting 70-80% usage is a smart rule of thumb.
Backup Strategy
You’re also spot-on about Backblaze. Their personal plan does not officially support NAS devices. However, backing up your external backup drive that mirrors your NAS is a valid workaround to keep using the personal plan. It’s not a “No No,” but do keep in mind it adds another layer - you’ll need to manage versioning and ensure the drive mirrors the NAS properly.
Alternatively, you could look at Synology C2 cloud backup (integrated into DSM), or something like IDrive or Wasabi. These services natively support NAS and can be automated more cleanly, but they are priced differently than Backblaze Personal.
Synology...
If you want something that works well, is easy to manage, secure, and requires little tinkering - Synology is still the best out-of-the-box option. DSM is incredibly user-friendly, the apps are polished, and it integrates well with macOS/Windows workflows. Other brands like QNAP or TrueNAS offer more raw flexibility but usually require a bit more hands-on work or ongoing configuration.
So no, I wouldn’t say run from Synology - quite the opposite. Just be aware of the limitations on drive choice, and plan your storage upgrades accordingly.
Upgrades to Consider
For your image review workflow, I’d recommend the following:
• Add NVMe SSD cache - even 2x 500GB Gen3 or Gen4 NVMe SSDs can drastically improve Lightroom previews and random reads.
• Upgrade to 16–32GB of RAM - Lightroom and DSM’s background indexing love memory, and more RAM will reduce any caching slowdowns.
• Separate SSD Volume (optional) - if you want premium performance for current projects, consider installing 1 or 2x SATA SSDs in their own storage pool for “active work.” Once done, move projects to the main HDD RAID array for cold storage.
Just bear in mind Synology only allows Synology-branded SSDs for volumes on the 2025 series, so if you want to go non-official, you’ll need to use the above workaround.
Other NAS Options...
If you want a more open hardware platform and are willing to sacrifice a bit of polish, Asustor, Terramaster, and UGREEN NASync are worth a look. These brands offer NVMe storage pool support with third-party SSDs and more relaxed drive compatibility - though the UI isn’t quite as polished as DSM.
Alternatively, if you want a plug-and-play experience but need more flexibility than Synology allows, something like the QNAP TS-664 or QNAP TVS-h674 gives you NVMe storage pools, GPU support, and no-brand-locking - though they do come with a slightly steeper learning curve.
If you end up going Synology, I’d just suggest budgeting for the RAM and SSD cache upgrades early on. It’ll make your Lightroom experience much smoother.
Regarding NVMe - DWPD scores help a lot https://nascompares.com/answer/best-nvme...r-caching/