Award-winning Photographer C.S. Ling

I am pleasantly surprised by Synology DS713+ and DX513 expansion unit as they have served their intended purpose of centralizing my data storage in a reliable and high-performance fashion. C.S. Ling

The Company

C.S. Ling is a professional wildlife photographer in Singapore. Her works are regularly published around the world, most notably in BBC Wildlife websites and National Geographic Explorer magazine. She is endorsed as Nikon Singapore Professional Photographer, SanDisk Extreme Team Member, and X-Rite's Colorati, and emerged as the Grand Prize Winner of the Windland Smith Rice International Photography Awards in 2012.

The Challenge

As a professional wildlife photographer, C.S. Ling found herself in need of sufficient storage for her priceless works. In the early days, C.S. Ling tried a well-known NAS brand, but soon got frustrated by the unresponsive system and substandard performance.

"Since I've gotten a new home office and studio a couple of months ago, I started looking again, seeking to find added assurance to all my life's works," said C.S. Ling.

The Solution

After thorough investigation, C.S. Ling noticed that Synology products are often commented as the most user-friendly NAS equipped with exceptionally high performance, and selected the Synology DiskStation DS713+ along with the DX513 expansion unit as the ideal solution.

The Benefits

Ease of setup

One thing that keeps a lot of photographers away from adopting NAS as their storage solution is the hassle of setup. "As a creative who uses most of my brain cells on creation, it's very easy for tech products to fail my techno-phobic test," said C.S. Ling. With the help of Synology Assistant, the installation process is highly streamlined. "It's relatively easy to do the set-up, and it took me only 15 minutes for the initial setup. Can't get any easier than that," C.S. Ling added.

High-performance and efficient storage

The high performance of DS713+ not only saves time in data transmission, but also expedites the workflow of managing a huge photo collection. "The folders and files show up almost instantaneously on the DS713+, which is way faster than the previous NAS," said C.S Ling. She is also very impressed by the efficiency and backup capability of DS713+. With the flexible Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR), an automated RAID management system that fulfills both the needs of maximized storage space and data redundancy, and seamless support of Time Machine®, Apple's proprietary backup program, setting up volumes and backing up data are simply a few clicks in one go. "Thought? Everything runs and works on auto-pilot and the best part is I don't really have to bother with it for a long time. Macbook Pro, Synology DS713+, DX 513+, and Time Machine live happily ever after," commented C.S. Ling.

Highly energy-efficient

For a professional wildlife photographer like C.S., being away for a long period of time is not an uncommon occurrence. "Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM) allows me to create power schedule to help extend hard disk life, save money on my wallet, and reduce the impact on the environment by reducing power consumption. This is something which I couldn't do before, so I am eternally grateful for this thoughtful feature on Synology DSM," said C.S Ling. Apart from the Power Schedule, DS713+ also features Power Recovery to automatically reboot after a power failure, HDD Hibernation to preserve energy usage after a period of inactivity, and Deep Sleep to save even more energy by powering down the expansion unit. "Synology DiskStation is really designed and developed with energy efficiency in mind," C.S. Ling commented.

Recommended Models

  • DS713+
  • DX513

Recommended Features

  • Easy setup
  • Synology Hybrid RAID
  • Time Machine support
  • Energy efficient
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