NAS for photography but over the next 5 years

[Enquiries]

Hi Rob,

Thank you so much for your NAS videos! They are unbelievably helpful. Still, I am torn on what system to consider for my photography business. I am new and growing in the Atlanta area @stephenguyphotography on Instagram, and would hope to have a NAS with which I could start now and grow over the next five years or more. While I don't do video much right now, I have clients who request it and anticipate more. So video will likely be important. I do travel and the ability to send my files to my NAS and edit them from that point, including videos, is important. So I'm torn on the system to purchase, seemingly between Synology and QNAP. My income from my day job is decent and I want a system that is great now and will grow with me over time. I'm drawn towards QNAP for its superior hardware, to Synology for its superior software, but ultimately, bandwidth may be king. I am not a coder (but my brother is and I have a sympathetic brain), so I might be open to some software headaches if QNAP is the way to go. Although I do not need it now, I am not opposed to looking at an 8 bay system. What are your thoughts? And thank you so much for your consideration. I really appreciate it.

[ed]

I would look at models like TvS-873A or 872XT. The 872XT comes with a Thunderbolt connection if you need something faster than 1Gbit connection. The 73A allows 10GbE LAN upgrade and PCIe GPU card if you need to transcode 4K videos for things like Plex streaming etc.
Synology software is easier to use. But things like transcoding is not popular on Synology 8-bays. Local streaming is OK.
Photos can be handled on any Synology device though. You can also upgrade models like ds1821+ with 10GbE card and get those faster speeds.


I hope this helps.