What gets written.
Whatever the source handed over — landed on the share exactly as it arrived. SyncShot treats a NAS the way it treats any other destination: the files are originals, the structure is yours to define, the verification is non-negotiable.
- Originals
- Files arrive byte-for-byte intact — no recompression, no name mangling. What the camera or card handed over is what lives on the share.
- Folder structure
- The source layout is preserved by default — or apply a workflow path template (something like /YYYY/MM-shoot-name/) so the NAS grows the way your archive expects.
- Metadata
- EXIF, file times, attributes — preserved on the share where the destination supports it. The provenance survives the network hop.
- Job report
- Alongside the files (or in a side log, your choice) SyncShot writes a job report — a record of what landed on the share, when, and which verification check it passed.
What it pairs with.
NAS is the long-term home — the destination that outlasts individual shoots. Your NAS is one of many destinations, and SyncShot writes to it in parallel with the local drive and the cloud bucket, so the archive is never the slowest leg of the workflow.
- Studio shoots
- Multiple cameras, multiple cards, a whole day's work coming off the kit at once — funnel it all onto the NAS without the studio Mac becoming a bottleneck.
- Backup automation
- Save the NAS as one of the standing destinations in a workflow — every job written to the local drive is also written to the share, automatically.
- Long-term archive
- The shoots you'll come back to in two years. The NAS is the canonical copy; SyncShot's job is to keep getting more work into it without losing fidelity.
- Studio handoff
- An assistant offloads on a laptop, the NAS receives it, the editor pulls from the share. SyncShot is the part that gets the files there intact.
How it works.
- 01
Add the NAS
Paste the SMB or AFP URL once — smb://nas.local/photo, the same string Finder uses. SyncShot remembers it and lists it as a destination from then on.
- 02
Choose destinations
Pick the share — and every other place this shoot belongs. Save the set as a workflow if you'll use it again; next time it's one click.
- 03
Hit start
SyncShot reads the source once and writes to every destination in parallel. The local drive finishes first; the NAS keeps going over the network in the background.
- 04
Trust the report
Every byte is hash-checked end to end. When the job finishes you get a report — what landed on the share, every verification mark. The byte that left the source is the byte on the NAS.
NAS, on the wire.
Synology (DS923+, DS1522+, DS1821+), QNAP (TS-464, TVS-h674), TrueNAS SCALE and CORE — the specific box matters less than the protocol, and every one of them speaks SMB3, which is the protocol macOS Finder handles natively. NFS is supported by all of them and by SyncShot, but SMB is the path with the fewest edge cases on a Mac. Write speeds track what the network gives you: gigabit ethernet caps around 110 MB/s sustained, 10-gig around 1 GB/s if the NAS's underlying array can push that much.
One quirk worth naming: macOS Finder has a long-standing bug where SMB shares “sleep” after inactivity, and the first byte of the next write blocks three to five seconds while the connection wakes. SyncShot's writes stay open through the whole offload, sidestepping the wake-up penalty entirely. On a jumbo-frame network (MTU 9000), double-check the NAS and switch both advertise it — one path defaulting to 1500 costs real throughput without any obvious error.
Common questions.
- 01
Does it work with my Synology, QNAP, or TrueNAS?
If macOS can mount the share — SMB, AFP, anything Finder treats as a network volume — SyncShot writes to it. The NAS vendor doesn't matter; the share protocol does, and they all speak SMB.
- 02
Can I write to multiple NAS units at once?
Yes. List every share you want to write to and SyncShot writes to each one in parallel — your NAS is one of many destinations, fed from a single read of the source.
- 03
What if the NAS goes offline mid-copy?
SyncShot pauses that destination and retries when the share comes back. The local copy continues uninterrupted — a flaky network never holds up the disk that's right in front of you.
- 04
Will it verify the network copy?
Yes — hash-verified end to end like every SyncShot copy. The byte that left the source is the byte that landed on the NAS, and the job report tells you exactly which files passed.
- 05
Why does Finder feel slow when SyncShot doesn't on the same NAS?
macOS Finder has a persistent quirk where SMB shares 'sleep' after inactivity, and the first byte of the next write blocks three to five seconds while the connection wakes. Finder hits that penalty every time. SyncShot keeps its writes open through the whole offload, so the wake-up cost is paid once at the start of the job. On a jumbo-frame network, verify the NAS and switch both advertise MTU 9000 — one path defaulting to 1500 costs real throughput.
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