OS X iPhoto Migration to my NAS

[phillyman]

I'll look into the reference option thanks Geert...

As for speed in general, I have my iPhoto library also on the NAS. It's certainly a trade off. On my wired gigabit connection the lag is noticeable but doesn't bother me as much. I'd much rather have them on a RAID NAS then any other way. Again certainly external (firewire) backups are more responsive. It depends on what you need. I'm an ambitious point and shoot snapshot guy (can one even call that ambitious?). My main concern is safety. All I do is store, look at on desktop, print/send out for calendars and slide shows for family. The occasional lag does not bother me.

On the other hand if you WORK with pictures or do a LOT of manipulating than storing the library is certainly a NO GO.

Just my two cents worth...

Cheers,
Philly

[randman]

I used to have my iTunes in a Buffalo NAS a long time ago. The disadvantage was that when I had to do bulk modifications (such as changing a lot of files at a time, such as metadata), there was a lag in performance. Granted, the Buffalo NAS wasn't anywhere as fast as my Synology NAS (just got a DS1812+).

For folks using iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes, along with iOS devices (iPad, iPhone) etc., the Apple "ecosystem" really does a great job integrating media with its applications. A NAS isn't going to compete software-wise with this, so the next option would be just to use the NAS for storage and the Apple software over the network. In general, this ought to be fine, but may have a lag for certain activities. For me, I'd just rather buy more storage and connect it to my Mac directly (got a Mac Pro and Mac Mini; the Mac Mini is used heavily for media watching and IMO makes a great server). I'd love to get the Pegasus Thunderbolt storage (wonderful performance), but the cost is a bit much. Now that Apple TV and iOS devices support 1080p, I think I may need more storage for the MAC. Since I have a DS1812+, I can use it for many other things, especially for backing up my Macs' media as they get more and more media files (especially 1080p movies!).

[RavenManiac]

Hi Brad,

What's the postscript on this? Were you able to get this to work? What solution did you ultimately end up using?

Thanks,
Kelly

So.. thinking of taking the plunge and setting up to run Synology Photo Station.
What is the best way to migrate an iPhoto Library to Photo Station?
Thoughts..

The iPhoto Library directory holds so many things..

1. iPhoto's own thumbnails (will Synology create thumbnails of the thumbnails?)
2. The original images -- unrotated (even if camera auto-rotates), unedited.
3. The modified images -- I spent a bazillion hours cropping, color balancing, etc.
4. Dumb Albums - (I just manually grouped together by dragging them to a new folder)
5. Smart Albums - (Say photos taken by XYZ camera and in the state of Missouri)
6. Events - (Photos taken on Dec 24, 2010 are in the custom event "Grandma Gump hosts Christmas Eve at the swamp shack").
7. etc.

To do the deed of migration I could:

1. Drag and drop iPhoto Library onto my public photo directory on my DS411+II running DSM 3.1 build 1742.
2. Select Photos in iPhoto and press Command-A (selecting all photos in edited form), then do a File->Export, FileExport with Kind=Original, File Name=?)
3. Root around and see if I can build a set of the original photo files on my file system and export those].

Looking at the Photo Station page at Synology.com does not look promising in regards to meta-data. Should I expect to lose all my albums, events, etc?

Bottom line:
What is the best way to migrate an iPhoto Library to Photo Station?
I have read and heard about expectations of days or weeks to build the thumbnails.
One tip I heard is to remove Unix file system soft-links (smart tip if Synology DSM isn't going to recognize them and an infinite loop exists). (I will use "find . -type l" on the mac to identify them in iPhoto Library first)

Thanks for any tips or suggestions.

Brad