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Best cloud storage in 2020? Why I switched to the Synology DS418 NAS
Is a NAS the best personal cloud storage in 2020 for photos and videos? A Network Attached Storage, or NAS, is a less a known storage solution that is perfect for content creator. Photographers and filmmakers are constantly creating more data that can be a nightmare to safely store and backup. With my Synology DS418, I give 5 reasons why I think photographers and filmmakers should switch to a NAS instead of using hard drives or cloud storage.
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📖 CHAPTERS 📖
00:00 - Intro
00:39 - 1. Easy access to the files
01:57 - 2. Personal Private Cloud
04:39 - 3. Google Photos like AI photo organization
05:30 - 4. Working with Adobe Premiere Pro & Lightroom
06:24 - 5. Price comparison
09:08 - Bonus!
10:36 - Thanks for watching!
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are you like me and you have a bunch of these hard drives leaning around in your house or are you paying a crazy amount every month for online storage if this is the case i want to give you five reasons why the synology nas might be the storage solution you didn't even know existed let's fill the intro and get right into it for those who don't know me yet i'm like ben malford a young photographer and filmmaker on the journey to become better at design a few months ago i bought the synology ds14 with the goal to replace my five terabyte lightroom cc plan and also centralize all the content from these drives and i couldn't be happier with the result first reason i like using a not so much is that you can quickly access your files from anywhere nas stands for network attached storage and this means that you can quickly connect this to the internet and have access to your files wherever you are there's two main ways to access the file the first one is using a network drive and this works inside of windows and mac os and it's just like if you were connecting a usb drive inside of your computer and then you can use file explorer on windows or finder on mac to access your files in any normal program that works with finder or file explorer is also going to work with the nas and read and write speed are pretty good actually with this technique because you're using your network inside of your house to access the file so i get about 50 megabytes seconds on the wi-fi and over 100 megabyte seconds when i'm on the cable network another way of accessing your files using a technology they call quick connect and this is using a web browser you can access the files from anywhere so there's a web interface where you can go in and look at all your files and also use the few apps they have on this and this is really great because wherever you are you can always have access to your files the third way of accessing your files is actually using their apps and they have us for photos videos music so yeah you can access any file on the nas wherever you are even using your mobile devices the second thing i really like about the synology drive is they can act as your personal cloud so in our family we're five family members and every person can have their own personal cloud using the synology nas and when i'm talking a personal cloud this works just like any other uh online cloud services like onedrive icloud dropbox google drive or whatever technology you're using right now so this means you can sync all your files on your computer using a two-way sync or you can get more control and only decide to sync the files from the nas to your computer or from your computer to the nas so this is really great because you have a lot of flexibility on how you want to set it up just like any other software you can also select which folder you want to sync and this is really great when i'm working on video projects because i don't have all the files all the time on my computer i only want to select the projects i'm working on to have them sync two ways another really great thing about the synology technology is that you can use a technology called files on demand and this is just like inside of onedrive where on windows you can have all your files appear in the file explorer but only have them synced down when you double click on them so this is really great we have a lot of files on your nas but you only want to have them on your computer when you're ready to use them for real another great thing about this technology is that you can actually have shareable links so they have an app that's called drives and instead of that you can put your own files and you can share a link to a folder or to a file to people so you can send it and collaborate on your projects for people that are outside of your home and they don't have access to an account on the not so this is really useful when you need to collaborate on a project another great thing is that like just any other uh backup technology you can actually have backup your photos on your phone automatically so there's an app called movements that allows you to backup all your photos automatically as you take them and this is really great because you don't have to send them to another cloud service to be sure that they're backed up the last thing but not the least is you can have shareable albums uh and this is really great when you're a photographer because you want to be able to share your pictures quickly with clients or with just with friends and family and they actually have two apps are not allowed to do this the first one i talked about moments that is more like a google photos version so it's really user friendly and intuitive to use and then they have a more professional version which is called full stations and that one allows actually to do proofing with your clients and more advanced features i'm not going to go into much details about these two apps right now because they're gonna be releasing this new version of their desktop operating [ __ ] system soon where they're gonna merge these two apps inside of one called photos so i'm gonna do a whole video on that when it comes out talking about photo apps this brings me to my next point which is the onboard ai to process pictures so just like lightroom cc or google photos whenever you upload a picture they analyze the picture to determine what's inside of it so they find what's the scenery what are the objects what are the people what are the location and it takes all this information to allow you to search for your pictures in an easier way so you can either go through the folders that they create automatically or use the search bar and use a keyword to find exactly the shot you're looking for and this is really great when you have a huge photo library and then you're searching for a shot and you know what it is but you don't necessarily know when it was captured it's also really great because all the ai is happening on board and this means nothing is sent to an external server to be analyzed everything can be done really quickly on board on the device right away my next point is actually the one that made me hesitate the most before buying a nas because i wasn't sure how my workflow would work using a nas for lightroom and premiere pro so i would have all my files for a video project on one of these drives that i would bring around all the time with me and for my pictures i would back everything up inside of lightroom cc and this meant that wherever i was i had access to my files so without changing much i was actually able to still use lightroom plastic to access all the files on the nas and now i think i have even a better workflow when i'm working for my projects because you don't have to have this with me all the time i can have access to all the files i need on demand when i'm working on a project instead of premiere pro so i'm going to be making two videos about these two workflows later on so be sure to subscribe below if you want to learn more how to set up lightroom or premiere pro to work with a synology nas my last point is the one where i disagree with most people and i actually think it's cheaper to buy a synology nas than to be buying all these hard drives or using an online cloud storage to store all your files so if i take my cell phone here with a few numbers i actually was paying the full creative cloud suite and also 5 terabyte of storage to adobe before and this was coming just over a hundred dollars a month or a thousand two hundred dollars a year which is a lot of money when you consider you have to pay it continuously every single year if you're a little bit better and you're only paying for the lightroom plan at ten dollars a month and some extra storage let's say two terabytes this is still thirty dollars a month or three hundred and sixty dollars a year if you have the five terabyte plan it's still seven hundred and twenty dollars a year and if you're paying the 20 uh the 10 terabyte plan it's still a thousand three hundred and twenty dollars a year that's a lot of money when you consider you have to pay it every single year to store all your files and it's only gonna be coming bigger and bigger so you'll be paying more and more every single year if you take a little bit cheaper options let's say google photos it's actually only hundred and twenty dollars for two terabytes or six hundred dollars for ten terabytes but six hundred dollars a year is still a lot of money you have to invest for years over years um to store all your files that are gonna be becoming bigger and bigger and non-stop so i have the synology the s418 which is a cheaper version of the drives it's not as fast and i cannot connect connect it directly inside of my computer which would be a lot faster but i thought it was a good budget option with still plenty of storage so this unit without the the drives inside of it is 390 dollars and i decided to go with two four terabyte drives and i can actually add more afterwards and each four terabyte drive was about a thousand a hundred dollars so this brings the total price to 590 which is a lot cheaper than most of the other options whatever i was paying before was actually uh paying the whole solid drive right away within a year or two but the really great thing about a drive like this one is you're not buying it for one or two years you're buying it apart for 10 15 years and it's because you can add so much more storage inside of it so this unit can go up to 64 terabytes or um 48 if you're using it in raid and you probably want to be using it really because it means that if one drive fails you cannot you're not using any data you can recover them quite easily so that's probably how you want to use it but you can add a free 16 terabytes drive for 16 terabyte drives which brings up the total to 48 terabyte and 48 terabyte is more than enough for most people because you decided to stick up to now i wanted to give you a few other bonus points and the first one is that you can have better control with permissions and that means that you can have every folder assigned to different users so if you're multiple users using the same nas you can actually quite easily control who can have access to what the second thing is that you have better organization using network drives and this actually allows to have replicate these type of drives so i have one for editing i have another one for like in catalogs one for time lapse and you get the idea where you can really organize all your files instead of different virtual drives the next thing is that you have encryption so this is really great if you want to have protected files or whatever you put on that drive everything becomes encrypted and safely stored the last one and that's probably one of the very important ones is that it's really easy to backup your files using this nas it can either backup things to cloud storage if you decide to do it that way or you can back up to another synology drive or like i do i simply take one of my drives plug it inside of here and it backs up everything automatically so this is really important because always i want to have a few copies of your file to be sure to be safe one thing i do not like about this nas and i probably make another video on what i don't like about it it's a little bit complex to set up so i'm good with technologies but for the beginning user it might be a little bit complex to get everything set up as they want but once you get used to it it's actually quite easy to use thank you for watching this video if you liked it leave a like below and also don't forget to hit the subscribe button if you want to learn more about the synology drive or photography and filmmaking see you in the next one bye you
Video Links
- 🔗 Synology DS418 NAS
- 🔗 Seagate IronWolf 4TB NAS Hard Drives
- My NEW series on astrophotography
- DJI OSMO POCKET Review
- Buy a lens or a the new R5?
- Instagram: @loic.bellemare.alford ()
- My online store
- Affiliate link for Epidemic Sound
- https://kit.co/loic.bellemare.alford/youtube-gear
- DJI Pocket 2 Creator Combo
- 128 gb MicroSD card
- Canon 6D Mk
- Google Pixel 4a
- Canon ZOOM LENS EF24-105mm F4L IS II USM
- Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 Lens
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L-IS II USM Lens
- VANGUARD VEO 2 265CB CARBON FIBER TRIPOD
- DJI MAVIC AIR
- http://bit.ly/loicba
What is this video about?
I used to juggle scattered hard drives and pay over a hundred dollars a month for cloud storage. After setting up the Synology DS418 NAS, I couldn't be happier. In this video, I'm breaking down five reasons why I think photographers and filmmakers should make the switch from traditional cloud services to a NAS.
Easy file access is the first big win. With a NAS, you can connect to your files from anywhere—whether you're using a network drive on Windows or Mac (getting 50-100+ MB/s depending on whether you're on WiFi or cable), or accessing them remotely through their Quick Connect web interface. You can even use their mobile apps to grab files on the go.
Personal cloud functionality is the second reason. The Synology acts like a private OneDrive, Dropbox, or iCloud. Multiple family members can each have their own account with full sync capabilities, selective folder syncing, files-on-demand technology, and shareable links for collaboration—all without sending your data to a third-party server.
The onboard AI photo organization is genuinely impressive. Like Lightroom CC or Google Photos, it analyzes your uploads to identify scenery, objects, people, and locations—but it does all this processing locally on the device. No external server needed, which means faster analysis and complete privacy.
My workflow with Lightroom and Premiere Pro actually improved. I no longer need to carry external drives everywhere; I access files on demand when I'm working on projects. I'll be making dedicated videos on how to set this up properly.
Cost comparison sealed the deal for me. I was paying $1,200+ annually for Creative Cloud plus storage. Even cheaper subscriptions (Google Photos, Lightroom-only plans) cost $300-$700 yearly—and that's forever. My Synology DS418 cost $390 without drives, plus roughly $200 for two 4TB hard drives, totaling around $590. Since a NAS lasts 10-15 years and supports up to 48TB in RAID, the economics are far better over time.
Bonus features include granular user permissions, organized network drives (I use separate ones for editing, Lightroom catalogs, timelapses, etc.), encryption for sensitive files, and easy backup options—either to cloud storage, another Synology, or simply plugging in an external drive for automatic syncing.
The one drawback? Initial setup is a bit complex for beginners. But once configured, it's straightforward to use and maintain.