I’ve mostly just relied on Google Photos, and I really like its features. However, I have always been deathly afraid of losing access to my Google photos account and losing all of those, so I need a better way to actually back up my photos. Right now all I do is do a Google Takeout every so often, but that’s inefficient as hell.
How do you do it? How do you backup or sync your photos with a PC/local server?
Syncthing, super easy to set up and use on android and linux. It works with everything, not just photos.
To access files stored on my home server from my phone, I use Material Files with sftp set up
Syncthing is awesome. I’m never losing data to a damaged or stolen device again, and it makes accessing data from a computer and sending data to the phone so much easier.
But we have to keep in mind that syncthing doesn’t protect by default us from accidental deletion, so it’s not a 100% replacement for a backup.
Quote Syncthing! I’ve also a Nextcloud instance shared with my girlfriend in order to share selected photos.
Just gonna chime in and agree with this guy. Syncthing is great! I use it with Android and Windows for my photos and password manager.
I ran out of space on my Google photos 😔 I’ve converted to Christianity and pray every night to God in heaven that my phone doesn’t die.
Google 1. I should really do a manual back up as well but I get lazy.
I use syncthing. Once setup its really nice.
Same here, syncthing is fantastic and I use it for all kinds of stuff - including backing up phone media.
Syncthing is a godsend
I use syncthing to sync my camera folder on my pixel 6a phone with a folder on my NAS.
Then I have an old moto x with pixel experience rom (the rom has unlimited Google photos backup) and syncthing. This phone turns on once a day at night with a smartplug - the folder on my NAS syncs with a folder on phone. The phone backs up the photos to Google photos at full quality.
I’m still mad that Google took away the photo backup for pixel phones. But this seems to work for now
I just use Google Photos.
With my Samsung s22+ I can just plug in a usb-c cable to my PC and then browse the files on my phone to back them up.
I also have a flash drive where one side is usb-c and the other is USB A. SanDisk Dual Drive
Another alternative (more technical) could be to to use Solid Explorer which has the ability to setup remote connections to online backup. It also has a built in FTP server you can start on your phone and then from your PC you can connect and get your photos.
I recently set up an immich server.
Yes! Immich is incredible. It’s a self hosted Google images for anyone that doesn’t know, and it’s really close to being an exact replica.
I absolutely love it. https://immich.app/
Plug in to lappy, run shell script that crawls DCIM for dngs, jpgs, mp4s etc and sticks em in folders named by date
Personally, I prefer using a cable to transfer photos and videos from my device to my PC. Once they are on my computer, I make sure to back them up onto external hard drives.
Look into getting a USB-C flash drive and transfer the photos to that. You can find a 128gb drive for $15.
I have two backups systems. One uses rclone the other is a python script using ADB.
You mean manually moving it using a file explorer on my phone right? I mean that’s my plan B but I’m hoping for some app that could help me sync or do delta updates in a more simplified way
USB flash drives are not reliable for long-term storage. Please make sure you have another backup if you keep your photos on one.
I run a nextcloud instance and sync everything using the mobile app. Works very well.
Additionally, “memories” for nextcloud gives a Google Photos-like experience in the browser. The only thing I am missing is a proper mobile app.
I selfhost a Nextcloud server at home, and use its “auto upload” functionality to automatically upload my photos and videos as I take them.
I have that server automatically backed up (in encrypted format) nightly to an Amazon S3 bucket and then to an external hard drive once a month.
That’s pretty interesting. I’ve thought of setting up a Nextcloud but it didn’t ocurr to me it could help out with this.
About your S3 backup strategy, I have a couple of questions, if you don’t mind:
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Do you essentially just make an encrypted .zip or .tgz of your whole NC instance and upload it straight? Or do you have some kind of delta updating
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What S3 tier do you use? Intelligent-Tiering or something else?
I actually have the files stored in a pool on a TrueNAS machine, which handles the backup process for me in an automated fashion. I have it set to do ZFS snapshots and ship those.
I used IA tiered storage for a long time; Though I actually moved to Wasabi recently, as it’s cheaper. It’s just easier to say S3 because people recognize it lol.
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I export them to an external. Once I move them I delete my Google photos. Rinse and repeat. I’ve considered paying for expanded cloud storage so I don’t have to dig for a picture or video from months/years ago, but that’s another project for another day.
I use https://nextcloud.com/ - it’s a bit like DropBox in that it copies data to a cloud server and also to computers directly under my control.