Photos on NFS Share

[hifimac]

I'm currently using Aperture with a local library on my Mac using referenced images on my Sinology NAS. I'm interested in Photos.app, but I'm not ready to completely trust cloud services, and I don't have enough local storage for all of my photos. I know I can work with reference images in Photos.app, but it's not as easy as it was in Aperture to import and move as reference, and it seems I'd have to copy the images externally using Finder or Image Capture, THEN import them into Photos as reference images.

I saw this article about using NFS with FCPX libraries, and was able to set up a NFS share on my Synology NAS. I know there are potential issues using a Photo library over AFP or SMB and it is recommended against it. I'm not a networking expert, but does NFS handle complex databases and lots of files better than the other protocols? Am I asking for trouble using a NFS share for photo storage?

 

[kenoh]

I'm currently using Aperture with a local library on my Mac using referenced images on my Sinology NAS. I'm interested in Photos.app, but I'm not ready to completely trust cloud services, and I don't have enough local storage for all of my photos. I know I can work with reference images in Photos.app, but it's not as easy as it was in Aperture to import and move as reference, and it seems I'd have to copy the images externally using Finder or Image Capture, THEN import them into Photos as reference images.

I saw this article about using NFS with FCPX libraries, and was able to set up a NFS share on my Synology NAS. I know there are potential issues using a Photo library over AFP or SMB and it is recommended against it. I'm not a networking expert, but does NFS handle complex databases and lots of files better than the other protocols? Am I asking for trouble using a NFS share for photo storage?

I think the key is that NFS is a unix filesystem and so can maintain the extra file permissions a d attriubutes that the mac OS needs to maintain the files. Normal NAS shares are typically served as microsoft filesystems which are not aware of the extra attributes used by the mac and other unix devices. This is why you get files beginning with a period appearing on a windows share used by a mac. On unix based OSes, a file named with a period at the front is a hidden file. Windows doesnt understand this so you see these weird files everywhere.

Now typically NFS is a little insecure but thats the compromise. In terms of being more robust, it is a remotely accessed filesystem so network glitches will affect it the same as any other.

Undrrneath the share on the synology, if you protect the underlying filesystem that is shared by journalling it or mirroring it etc then you can protect it within reason.