I am trying to finally move from entirely depending on Google Photos to a proper backup strategy. I have my photos and videos downloaded from Google which are a mess right now but as long they’re with me I am fine, at least for now.

So, what I have planned is 3 way backup with Mega Drive-Google Photos- Local storage. Local storage, I will start off with storing on a pendrive and my router has a usb port so will make use of it for time being.

I know my way of doing things is noobish for a piracy community (and in general too, I am kinda embarrassed as well sharing this “strategy” of mine). Hence I’m asking for suggestions to improve my strategy. Yeah, in the future I will move to HDDs and NAS but for time being I am starting out this way.

So how do you manage your personal media? Are there any noob-friendly tools/techniques you know which drastically improve my strategy?

  • The fact that you have some sort of plan for managing your photos is one step ahead of me. I have no plans and my photos are a very messy collection.

    I would caution against using a flash drive (a.k.a. pen drive) for any permanent storage. I’ve had multiple flash drives fail on me. Usually it’s this super cheap kind that gets distributed as branded swag, but I’ve had some others fail too.

  • Immich is a selfhosted photo management server with a user interface that’s similar to google photos. Also has mobile apps.
    Their motto is “privacy should not be a luxury”.

    I was planning for long to try it out because it looks very promising, but I was waiting for… I don’t know what? Fuck it I’m installing it today.

    •  Kissaki   ( @Kissaki@feddit.de ) 
      link
      fedilink
      English
      9
      edit-2
      1 year ago
      • ⚠️ Expect bugs and breaking changes.
      • ⚠️ Do not use the app as the only way to store your photos and videos.

      Well that’s not very confidence-inducing…

      • To be fair though, those warnings are not really representative of the current user experience. I’ve had Immich running for about 6 months by now, and apart from the very frequent updates the only annoyance was when they recently changed their database scheme, and I had to manually add two extensions to my Postgres. Everything else has been rock solid, and has been improving at a massive pace

      • Have you ever logged in to a linux shell? If so, the below or similar may be familiar:

        Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law.

        As I see they are just

        • covering their asses legally, in case someone wanted to go to court over losing family pictures
        • making sure that the admin knows that they really really should do backups of the data stored there
        • “no warranty” is very different from “expect bugs and breakage”

          It tells me they’re not confident in or trying for stability. Which means I have to expect issues and fix up time requirements. Which I’m not willing to invest regularly.

      • Yeah the warnings are there for a reason, it is very new. However, only had to change my docker compose once, and that’s it. Otherwise everything has worked flawlessly.

        The warning serves to make you aware that it is beta software, and to have 3-2-1 backup solution.

  •  Xirup   ( @Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
    link
    fedilink
    English
    8
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    At first I simply used Syncthing to sync the directories where the pictures from my phone are stored in a directory on a HDD on my PC, but then I got tired up with the constant problems and started using ente.io, although you can also use Filen.io (although the photos are not uploaded automatically, you must enter the app) or some instance of Nextcloud, although Ente is the best option.

  •  Philip   ( @lemmy@endlesstalk.org ) 
    link
    fedilink
    English
    7
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I selfhost PhotoPrism.

    I use a folder sync app, to upload all my pictures from my phone to a directory on my server, which PhotoPrism imports from every 15 mins(Might be a bit more or less).

    I have used it for a couple of years and it has worked fine for me.

  •  DLSantini   ( @DLSantini@lemmy.ml ) 
    link
    fedilink
    English
    2
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I am using immich as a replacement for Google photos, which syncs my phones and tablets. I just wish it had any kind of photo editing.

    I then also have Photoprism, which I use for my actual photography stuff. When I pull raws and videos from my DSLR, I dump them into a share on my NAS, mapped to a drive in Windows. They then get automatically imported into and managed by Photoprism.

    Still trying to work out the best way to edit/work with the raws in Lightroom, while keeping them in Photoprism, and also up-to-date.

    I also use Duplicati to do nightly encrypted backups to Google drive.

  • Synology NAS with DS Photo and their app on my phone… And then I activate photo backup in there And to keep Connected i use a wireguard vpn

    Alternatively I justt saw, that proton drive now supports photo backup… Maybe I’ll give it a spin