There is some manual work needed (not a lot) to make sure all are in sync. But boy I wish there was a fully automated way to do this that allowed sharing, lots of backups (even offline tape), and ability to collect and view videos and photos on all devices.
I’d love to hear how others are managing the long-term storage of photos and videos.
Lesson 1: "RAID isn't a backup." If all you do is copy your files to a NAS, they aren't safe. If you're NAS is taking snapshots onto a different physical spindle, that's good, but it's better to have your NAS backed up to a physically separate device, in case of cryptolocker attacks or hardware failures.
Lesson 2: if it's not automatic, it won't get done. Set up Resilio Sync or SyncThing or your NAS-specific backup software on your phone to pull photos and videos off and back then up automatically. Set up a cron job on your NAS to backup.
Lesson 3: consider an off-site backup. Backblaze has a great service, and so do other cloud services.
Lesson 4: don't use a digital asset manager that requires proprietary hardware or messes with your original files. Google photos, for example, is free, but garbles much of the metadata tags in your files, and downsamples your videos into a blurry mess (even if you use original quality). Failed photo startups are astoundingly prevalent. Use something that's been designed to continue even if the company doesn't.
Amusingly enough, I'm working on a photo startup (spoiler: it satisfies what I wanted from lesson 4!). It's currently in closed beta, if you're interested in trying it out and sharing feedback: https://blog.photostructure.com/introducing-photostructure/
I use iCloud photos by default, then open google photos app on my phone every once in awhile to have a duplicate cloud sync ($2mo). Then when I remember every month or so I open photos on my Mac and copy everything over to my synology nas which houses a master iPhoto library that is hundreds of GBs at this point. Using iPhoto is probably a mistake here since it’s fairly terrible, but not sure how else to reasonably manage all my photos. I’ve tried Picasa but came back.
I’ve been burned by apps like everpix cloud storage that suddenly shut down and gave me only a few days to download nearly a terabyte of now unsorted photos. Similar thing with Sony cloudstation. I wouldn’t trust any single cloud storage provider from screwing you at some point.
I subscribe to iCloud. Also all photos from phone are synced to Google Photos in HQ format (free unlimited).
I use Dropbox to sync photos from phone to MBP.
Then I use Lightroom to move photos from Dropbox folder to my external SSD and free up space on Dropbox.
Also I use Lightroom 6 to import photos from DSLR and keep them on external SSD.
Then I open Apple Photos and import photos from SSD into Apple Photos. Since I have a small SSD in MBP, Apple Photos uses "Optimize Storage" setting. I can access these photos on iPad. I prefer iPad for photo and video editing.
Finally, I copy all content from my SSD to NAS backup.
It is a bit clunky. It would be really great if Apple Photos let you make backup on your local HD/NAS.
S P A C E maybe the solution you're looking for to store all your photos and videos.
- End-to-End Encrypted - your private key stays on your device(s) so only you can read your files.
- Blockchain-Backed - your files are immutable and indelible.
- Open Sourced - all source code is available from Github under Apache 2.0.
- Decentralized - you choose which providers store your files, and can setup your own computers as providers.
- Shareable - you can share a file with any other S P A C E user.
- Currently in Open Beta with an Android app and command line clients for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Your private key can be shared with your other devices so you can access your files from any of your (supported) devices.
There is still some manual work as you need to add the files to S P A C E, but I will look into supporting automatically adding files.
Aletheia Ware currently has two providers, one in San Francisco and the other in New York, but unfortunately neither offer offline tape backups. However, if someone else wants to setup this type of provider I would be happy to help.
The other comments had an interesting point;
- mceachen "Use something that's been designed to continue even if the company doesn't."
- devm0de "I wouldn’t trust any single cloud storage provider from screwing you at some point."
I designed S P A C E to continue even if my company, Aletheia Ware LLC, doesn't by open sourcing all the code, and enabling anyone to be their own providers. By having multiple parties able to provide these services independently you avoid the risk of having all your eggs in one basket - just like you shouldn't store all your data on one harddrive, you shouldn't store all your data with one cloud storage provider.
I would greatly appreciate any feedback you, or other HNers, have.
Main goals:
- Tags like "2019", "3 weeks", "first step" etc
- I also take 3-4 pictures right one after another and would like to keep the best and delete the others
- Best of pictures.. choose a couple of pictures to summarize an event/vacations
I looked at different software but didn't find anything satisfying my needs. Maybe adding the tags in the metadata would be the best options so they are not software dependent?
Level 1 protection: Offline (only on when adding/updating) harddrive. USB Hard disk (non ssd) for example will do.
Level 2 protection: Always on Synology NAS at home with Raid 1 between 2 drives
Level 3 protection: Google Drive plan with 100Tb.
You work only in the level 2, always available in you network
You can automate between Level 1 and 2 if you connect the external hd to the nas and click the button to sync the photos.
You can automate between level 2 and 3 with synology software alone (in the package manager)
I hope this simplifies your life.
The cards get copied to disks as I shoot of course. At the deep storage layer, same strategy. Write once and archive the media when it's full. That's where finished images go.
Write once is simpler. Not reformatting eliminates accidental reformats. It eliminates the decision of which images/videos to save (and which to delete). Unsalvageable images can become salvageable as my skill and knowledge improve. Too much work becomes a few clicks.
Caveat: I don't shoot much video. If I did, it would be more expensive. But not terribly so. And the price of physical storage media will keep going down.
Caveat {kinda, sorta}: There's incentive to continue to use relatively lower resolution cameras to produce smaller files to save storage space.
Caveat: I can't view all the original images on all devices. For me, that's not a big deal. The best once go on social media and/or get printed.
It's all automatic because if backups aren't automatic there is a lot of risk.