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?
I selfhost immich
Immich as well. Its damn good
Immich is amazing! can only recommend it
Immich - I moved from PhotoPrism some months ago, and am very happy I did.
Indeed. Immich is the way to go. While stating heavy development I find it quite stable. Did not have major issues with it. However I don’t use their interface much. I just use it as 2nd backup location to automatically upload stuff from my phone to something else than the big G.
Obviously this need some sort of server but a VPS will do.
Immich is awesome!
Yep, and the active development is really impressive. I’ve messaged on the Discord server from time to time, and the primary dev has often responded within minutes to help me deal with my query.
Immich does not take care of tags which is very bad if you already have an existing setup and tagged images for years.
Edit: newest release (4 hours) supports editing metadata. I did not yet see tags
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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.
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.
Syncthing is very useful for backing uo devices! https://syncthing.net/
Syncthing is not a backup tool. Please don’t use it for backups. the devs have addressed this so many times.
Before you lose your data, please try deleting a single file and see what happens.
There’s file versioning available. And I haven’t had any problems with backups. I have deleted my password vault on a few occasions already. And a backup has been always available in a hidden folder.
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.
- ⚠️ 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
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.
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.
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.
For anyone reading this and getting ideas… Syncthing is not a backup tool. Please don’t use it for backups. the devs have addressed this so many times.
Before you lose your data, please try deleting a single file and see what happens.
What kind of problems? I use syncthing, curious if your past issues might be my future ones.
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Is that self-hosted software?
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Does the face recognition run locally too?
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Sounds like something I need to get… Off to github I go! (I assume)
I’d recommend I’m mich instead of Photoprism, at least for this usecase. I have both running, but I use Photoprism primarily to organize and share pictures taken with my SLR, while Immich handles Automatic Backups and sorting of all the pictures I take with my phone. Additionally Immich has way better (and still offline) facial detection, it’s almost scary how good it is sometimes
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I went the lazy route and bought a ready to use (4 bay) Synology NAS. Yes it it proprietary and expensive, but the tools just work out of the box and are easy to maintain.
I still use Google photos, but only for photos and not videos. (FolderSync moves the videos out of DCIM for me.)
Resilio sync mirrors the originals to two PC’s, and I periodically move the images and videos to a separate folder as phone storage gets low.
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
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.
OneDrive sync up from my phone (since Samsung uses them as backup), which is then mirrored down to my 2-Bay Synology NAS. The entire NAS is backed up to iDrive (no it’s not Apple, believe it or not)
Why is Google problematic? I store my media locally, and back up locally, but it’s on Google Drive for offsite backup.
Lack of privacy is a huge reason. If you’re OK with Google scanning all of your photos to sell you adds and build their AI then it’s a fine option.
They definitely scan your photos, but definitely not to personalize ads.
Also, you can easily turn off ad personalization in your Google account.
As for building their AI system, this is also true but it’s opt-in. It allows your photos to be shown to people using Crowdsource to help improve Google AI.
Here’s a relevant quote from their privacy policy:
We provide personal information to our affiliates and other trusted businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures. For example, we use service providers to help operate our data centers, deliver our products and services, improve our internal business processes, and offer additional support to customers and users.
If you’re OK with Google using your personal information to sell you adds or with then selling your personal information directly, then it’s a fine option.
Again, i’s a privacy issue. Some people are OK with giving up privacy for convenience, and that’s fine.
That does not say that “personal information” refers to things you store privately on Google services. You can still turn off ad personalization anyway.
Here is a quote from Google Safety Center’s ads and data section:
We never use the content you create and store in apps like Drive, Gmail, and Photos for ads purposes.
If you trust them, which it seems like you do, to not sell your information for advertising purposes then maybe thats true.
They’re still sharing your personal information with others. Maybe you trust Google to not use the information stored in your drive for ads or to sell you shit but do you then also implicitly trust every corporation that that give that data to? To you then also trust those companies to always handle and treat your personal information with the respect it deserves for all time?
I kinda trust them, I don’t have any important files on Drive, but I have all my photos on Google Photos, which especially with these Drive files lost news, is not a good idea. I think I will transition to Immich which I already have set up, so I, and only I have control over my data, and it’s also free for 5x as more storage (because of an 1TB external hard drive)
I self host with Synology Photos, pay for extra Google Photos storage, and just today started using Proton Drive, but Proton will just be for whatever is on my phone today and moving forward. The other two have my entire library.
