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?
I just use Google Photos.
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.
Look into getting a USB-C flash drive and transfer the photos to that. You can find a 128gb drive for $15.
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/
Google 1. I should really do a manual back up as well but I get lazy.
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.
immich is really promising. Works well for the basic stuff (and quickly adding features) but it’s still early days.
Syncthing-fork /sdcard so I don’t need to worry about losing my phone. Saved me when my nexus 5x suddenly boot looped
Why the forked one and not the main branch?
You can keep using google photos as your cloud backup. Locally with a cable, I use a 1 tb external hard drive for all my backup needs (photos,videos and other files) and then I have a copy of that same drive’s contents on a different 1tb hard drive as a sort of backup backup drive all encrypted via veracrypt. I just remember to copy over my original photos every week or so. It should be noted that I’m not taking hundreds of photos a day though. Storage is pretty cheap nowadays if you opt for spinning mechanical hard drives and pair them with a case and its a pretty good, local backup method imo.
I have a two-pronged approach. I use Google photos as is with their normal compression for searchability and casual browsing of photos, but I also have Nextcloud running on my own server where my photos are all backed up in full quality. Both uploads happen automatically so I don’t have to think about it
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.
