photo archiving to NAS software

[aviphysics]

I am looking for software to help automatically archive my photos to a NAS (synology 211j).

Most importantly it needs to preserve the original version even if the file has been edited and saved with the same name.

Ideally I would like something that can automatically organize the photos (probably into folders by month and year) as well including detecting duplicates.

I would like to be able to do this with photos on my laptop as well as my wifes and preferably keep a single archive though I don't know if that is possible.

I was thinking about ViceVersa which at least can fill my minimum requirements but I am wondering if there is any user friendly software that can do all of those things.

 

[apbtlvr]

For some time now, I've used Adobe Lightroom for for most of my digital photo work-flow (ingestion, editing, tagging and catalogs). It does effective backup of photo catalogs. Many of my images are in RAW format. I'm not 100% sure it will meet all of your requirements, but certainly most so it's worth considering. Lynda.com also has good online tutorials and might also be worth checking out to quickly identify/ learn work flow techniques, especially advanced topics like exporting catalogs. That may help determine if Lightroom will meet your needs. Hope this helps.

 

[rucknrun]

We use Adobe Photoshop albumn. You can save the catalog on the NAS device and use the same catalog with all devices. It works pretty good. The performance can suck if you are connecting over wireless though when working with raw photos.

 

[MrFixit]

I also use Adobe Lightroom and a NAS.

My RAW files are stored on the NAS (just an SMB share). My Lightroom catalogs and cache are on an iSCSI drive also on the NAS - better for performance.

I use Roxio Retrospect to back up these files daily from the NAS to a combination of internal / external drives connected to my backup server. This is an excellent product that I have been using for many years. It provides for incremental backup, keeping old versions (up to a defined limit you specify). That said, my RAW files are never changed because of the way Lightroom works - the editing changes being stored in Lightroom's catalog.