Photoshop Lightroom with a NAS

I'm going to be making the jump from my MacPro desktop to a MacBook Pro laptop, and as such, I'm wondering if anyone has had any experience using a Network Attached Storage device (NAS) with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

My big questions are:

1. How is the performance accessing a library over the network?
   
2. Have you found any brands of NAS devices which work better than others?
   

I tried it with a NAS and get this image creating a catlogue. But it says you cannot use removable drive as well, which apparantly Ihave been doing without issue, so I guess its only network thats the problem

I use a NAS with Lightroom and CS6. I keep my Lightroom catalog local and back it up to the NAS. I import my images onto a local drive and do my editing before I move them to the NAS. I have in the past and on occasion still work from the NAS and it works fine. There is a slight delay while the image loads. I would not recommend trying to work with your images wirelessly unless you are very patient. Viewing is fine. I have a gigabit connection for all devices. My NAS is a Western Digital My Book Live Duo and I am totally happy with it.

Do you have both NAS files and local files in the same Lightroom library? Or are they separate?

I have files in both locations. As long as you move them within lightroom everything works fine. If you move them outside of lightroom you have to import them back into lightroom. I find moving them within is easiest and cleanest.

With LR5 you should be OK with the images on the NAS, and the library file local. If you use smart previews you should still be able to work on images even when the NAS is not connected.

Alan

I use a Synology NAS. Catalog is on a local, all files on the NAS. I edit straight from the NAS. I would recommend a hard wired connection for the speed.

tomholman wrote in post #16681880
I have files in both locations. As long as you move them within lightroom everything works fine. If you move them outside of lightroom you have to import them back into lightroom. I find moving them within is easiest and cleanest.

If you move the original files outside of Lightroom, you won't have to re-import them. Lightroom will still show thumbnails but it will have a ? on them and you'll be unable to open or edit until you point it to the file. Moving files within Lightroom is definitely best.

My experience with NAS drives is they can be extremely slow if used on a WIFI network, get much quicker and reliable response when use on wired network especially if Gigabit LAN. If storing photos on the NAS and catalogue local, does the NAS need to be mapped to a drive letter for better response in LR ?

I do have mine mapped, at this point not really remembering why I did. Mapping a drive is not a big deal though.

I believe a drive mapping is required. I know mine is mapped.

It sounds like having the local catalog with the NAS storing the images themselves would work best, and I've heard good things about Synology's products, so I might end up going that route.

In regards to Lightroom however, BigAl007, mentioned using "Smart Previews" and editing offline. I don't have the latest version of LR. Has anyone had any experience using the offline feature with a NAS? Its it cumbersome or pretty seamless?

I use a drobo 5N for my editing.

Files live on the Drobo, catalog is local. The drobo isn't the fastest currently, but that is dependent on the type of drives you use and if you install an mSata card to pre-cache the data. I haven't added the mSata yet but I can live w/ the performance I currently get out of it.

Mapping a drive is not required. Lightroom accepts UNC paths just fine. This is how mine is setup.