Working remotely.

[ingeborgdot]

My brother-in-law has a Synology 418. He wants to be able to remotely access jpegs and be able to edit them in lightroom. Is the only way to do it by downloading it from the NAS into the computer he is remotely accessing it from?
He also wants to get his excel documents and be able to edit them also. Again, is the only way to download them first.
I have never done this so I don't know what the answer would be so I could not tell him what to do.

 

[L&LD]

Editing images (in most programs like Lightroom) requires them to be in local storage. Just too many issues when editing even on a NAS on a local network.

For document editing (like Excel), OneDrive is a much better option. The 'free' one with all MS accounts is 5GB, the 1TB paid version includes indefinitely upgradeable programs too, including ever-increasing features not available on the 'buy once' offerings. The family plan is good for 6 users and each user can install Office on 5 devices and OneDrive on 10 devices.

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If the 1TB is enough to store his jpg's too, he could edit them just as easily.

 

[Jeffrey Young]

The short answer is yes. You would have to to set up a VPN connection to the remote network with the NAS. Once a connection is made, map the NAS as a local drive (if using windows). Alternatively, if Synology has their own web based solutions, you can use that. I don't use Synology, so I don't know if they offer any kind of brand name solutions.

As L&LD stated, you need a reliable network connection to the NAS or transfer the needed files to the local drive, work on them, then transfer back to the NAS.

Onedrive is a good solution as well. I do use one drive to store/share non sensitive files. Anything sensitive or private though, I want control of who has it.

 

[dosborne]

I concur that the posted solutions are indeed the way to proceed, although I personally prefer Google drive over anything from MS.

Most editing packages are not designed for remote data access and although it may be possible to do it you usually see a performance hit. My scanner software is particularly bad in this respect and it is noticeably faster to copy the file to my local drive, edit it, then copy it back.

Coupling this process with the use of a vpn gives you security as well.

Also, in my case, with a QNAP NAS (I believe Synology has similar capabilities) I run a Google drive sync app that keeps the specified folders in sync, simplifying the remote access part of the equation.

Strictly speaking though, depending on the size of the files and the application, you can edit them "in place" i.e. without copying them locally, in many instances, particularly if on a local lan.

 

[Samir]

Another way to do this is to simply remote control a local system on the same network as the nas--remote desktop is great for this.

 

[byyuan]

I'm doing this via VPN Server and WebDav Server