For years now (as an iOS and Mac user) I've used Image Capture to download and free up my photos from my phone and backing them up on a RAID harddrive.... I'm probably not the norm here... So what do people do to keep media, free up space and make it easy (thinking of the older generation)... ideally without paying for the privilege?
That said, I do have some minor worries about something going wrong down the line. I’ve been thinking I should export everything and back it up to my NAS, and keep up on that going forward. But that keeps becoming a “tomorrow” task. There is probably a way to automate this with no cost, but I haven’t been bothered to try and look into it.
Storage management and backups are hard for the average user. It’s the #1 issue I deal with for both my mom and sister. It requires regular action on their part to get things off the phone, if they don’t want to pay, and backups also require a regular action of plugging in an external drive (because they keep unplugging it and don’t want to pay for cloud backup). I have considered paying the $2.99 for them, just so I don’t have to get the call of them crying because they think they lost all their pictures. The last time I got one of those calls it just started with my sister crying for a full minute, I was bracing to hear that one of my parents just died, and it was a picture backup issue, because her phone wouldn’t charge anymore and she thought she was going to lose all her kids baby pictures. I don’t know how it isn’t worth $2.99 to not have that feeling, if someone is unwilling or unable to do the regular maintenance to keep things backed up and storage free.
On top of that, I use Syncthing to keep photos synchronised across multiple devices that I fully own. I don't want to lose all of my photos because Google gets more evil or indifferent than it already is. It's already really hard to download all your photos.
It works really well, but it's a bit of a hassle to set up.
At the center of my set up is a Synology NAS (2x 8TB RAID 1). I use it as a personal "google drive" via the Synology Drive app.
The Synology Drive app is installed on my phone (as well as on my wife's) and is automagically and continuously backing up all of our photos and videos to the NAS.
I use Office 365 for email. The NAS is backing up everything from O365 nightly.
We have all of our important docs scanned and stored in the NAS. All my self-hosted apps (Gitea, Bitwarden, Jenkins, etc) are backing up nightly to the NAS.
All data from the NAS is then backed up to three locations:
1. Wasabi (S3-like storage) 2. Hetzner Storage Box (via rsync) 3. Once a year back up to an external HDD
The data is client-side encrypted before it leaves the NAS to any of the backup targets.
The NAS acts as a DHCP and DNS server at home, which is not related to backups, but still super cool to have everything in one box.
NAS (Synology DS723+) - £450 1x 8TB Iron Wolf - £161 (£322 for RAID 1)
Wasabi Sys charges me $6.99 per TB (I pay around $8 for my critical data only) Hetzner Storage Box is ~£11 per 5 TB (I backup my critical + non critical data here)
So after the initial cost of the NAS and the drives, I spend £18 a month for backup storage.
I am not including the electricity cost because the NAS is pretty efficient. (21 watts during data access)
Digital photos have an incredible opportunity to attach context to memories — not just time and place, but feelings and emotions. But, so far, this has been severely lacking. Imagine parents or grandparents being able to attach stories about a childhood event, or to annotate a travel journal. If such things are possible today, what are the chances they will be available and discoverable in twenty or fifty years?
Not many people consider the discoverability that a book of old photo prints offers over a digital library. To have a universal and timeless reach, there needs to be more openness and interoperability.
The cost of just paying iCloud or Gdrive is so minimal (like $3-$10/mo?) that it's well worth it for regular users just for the peace of mind. Nothing you come up with at home will be anywhere as easy to use, or as reliable over the years, or work so seamlessly across all their devices, or make simple edits possible and sharing with their friends easy.
Every few years, I get really paranoid about losing photos and videos, so I download the tool du jour to mass download my entire library onto a spare hard drive.
I download things from the phone to my PC periodically, so I don't have to worry about those photos either.
I've got multiple copies, including a lot of things on old DVD-Rs.
