The advent of digital photography has been amazing in that we are no longer limited to rolls of 12, 24 or 36 shots. Memory cards are as cheap as chips these days. The downside of this is that we are all creating a mountain of data with our photos and we need somewhere to store them.
I’ve got a ton of photographer friends who one day may be found buried under a stack of portable hard drives that they have lying around their office. A RAID solution can help prevent this possible fate and, at the same time, prevent many grey hairs from wondering “which hard drive is THAT file on?” and “Did I back that up?”, “When is that drive going to fail?” and “How can I share this with the client easily?”
Designed for small and medium-sized businesses and enthusiasts, the Synology DS918+ is the little RAID that could. It’s compact, but don’t let its size fool you – it’s more than capable of being a great little addition to your storage and server needs.
It’s got all the usual Synology features – built-in AES-NI hardware encryption and capabilities including transcoding up to two channels of 4K videos at the same time, but this little box is probably more suited to photographers or those dabbling in 4K video and content, rather than someone working with 4K video content on a daily basis. It’s a great starter with in-built memory that starts at 4GB DDR3L but it is scalable up to 8GB, so don’t feel like you’re limited at all.
The main reason it may be a bit slow for video editors is that even though it can do 2 streams of 4K, you may need to do more. But if you’re editing in HD, then you should be fine.
Set-up is relatively simple. It’s not entirely idiot-proof though so it’s good if you have some IT experience, or at least if you’re familiar with some terms and troubleshooting. That said, most of my issues were more to do with the fact that we set it up initially using older hard drives which were from an existing Synology so it took the settings from that previous unit. This confused me at first, so mostly user error.
But Synology’s set-up wizard and tools do make it easier than other systems and, if you don’t lose patience (ahem, like me), it’s pretty straightforward. I wouldn’t expect someone with absolutely no IT knowledge to be able to set it up, but if you’re relatively comfortable with computers, you’d be good to go.
As you can see from the screenshot below. Once you log in via a web broswer it looks like the desktop of a computer and works pretty much the same way.
A nice touch is that it is a tool-less process to install hard drives. You simply pop out the bays. Then there are two side panels you need to pop off, put in the drive, put the side panels back on to hold the drive in place. Then insert the drive.
We have it set up at the moment with 12TB of hard drives which gives us 8TB of storage and uses 4TB for redundancy but it can be scaled up or down. There are four hard drive bays and the drives need to be installed in pairs – so you can start with four whatever GB/TB drives and then, if you need more storage, replace two of the drives with larger drives etc etc. And if you find that you need even more bays, well, you’re not limited by the four bays that are built in. If you add the Synology Expansion Unit DX517, you can scale up to nine drives if your photo library demands the space. The DS918+ also supports up to two M.2 NVMe 2280 SSDs, which allows fast system caching without using the internal drive bays – which, in layman’s terms, means that you can install them and the RAID will work even faster because your most used data will sit in the cache while you’re working on it.
Once you’re set up, well, it’s a breeze. Easy to copy content across and it’s a great little server. It’s really great to be able to access on the go, especially if you have big files to share with clients, since they can access them from anywhere if you set up a login for them. I use a range of file-sharing platforms but they’re often limited in terms of storage and access so this is a great way to share photos or videos with clients without having to worry about it. I particularly like the fact that I can set up a limited access account and remove access once the job is complete so I know the rest of my files are secure too. All from Synology’s phone apps.
And remember that 4TB of redundancy I mentioned earlier? This is really quite key because it means that this is a great backup system too. While you wouldn’t leave all your photos on one single RAID (because, as we all know, if it doesn’t exist in at least three places, it’s not backed up) but at least in this situation, if one of the hard drives fails, you can quickly replace it and not lose anything at all. Consider it a bit of “self-care” for your sanity!
But the big question is: can you work directly from the RAID? The TL;DR answer is yes! If you’re accessing the server remotely via a wireless connection, you can work directly on your JPEG files easily, but connect via a wired connection and you can even work on RAW images as if they were on your internal drive. No lag, no issues. This makes it really key for your workflow. And since you can really store everything on the RAID, there’s no more wondering “which hard drive did I keep that client’s work on? Did I label it? Did the label fall off? Am I doomed to check every single drive I own? WWHHHYYYY!!!”
Another nice feature is that the Synology DS918+ has a USB port right at the front which means you can copy images or video – any files really – directly onto the RAID without having to save them elsewhere first. It’s another way that this little RAID that could really simplifies your worklow.
I know there are 2 unit RAIDs out there, and you can look at those. But I would suggest you want at least a 4 bay unit. It gives you far more storage options and better speeds. This is because the more drives you have in a RAID the faster it will be.
The Synology DS918+ is a great entry-level Synology server if you’re starting out with 4K files and want something to back-up your files, store your data and allow you to access your files from anywhere. If you haven’t dipped your toes into the world of RAIDs and you’re looking around at the mountain of hard drives on your desk or your shelves, do yourself – and your workflow – a favour and get the little RAID that could on your desk.
