I’m considering setting up a NAS to backup my stuff and replace Google Photos. Currently I’m looking at Asustor AS6704T and Synology DS923+, with the former having more powerful hardware and hardware encoding, and the latter having a better first party software experience.

Some quick comparisons show me that Synology Photos is infinitely better than Asustor Photo Gallery. AI face recognition, content tagging, and reverse Geocoding are features I’ve gotten used to in Google photos, which Synology has and Asustor doesn’t.
I’m also aware of but not really familiar with other photo backup/management solutions, namely Immich, Photoprism, Piwigo, and Lychee. Immich would probably fit me the best, but Piwigo with plugins would support Photosphere photos that I occasionally take with my Pixel.

So I guess I’m asking you guys what your preferred photo backup solution is? I probably should mention that I personally take photos with a Pixel (jpg and MP4 files), but my family uses iPhones (heic and mov files). No RAW photos for now, but for those who do and would edit photos, how would you manage them?

  • Max HeadroomEnglish
    1•1 year ago

    I’ve got a Synology NAS DS416play for several years now as a trusty backup/storage. But not using their Photo Galary feature. What I like about Synology is their long term support. They still offer software updates for this rather old model.

    I’m still using Google Photos as main photo dumping ground as it has clients for iOS and macOS which automatically uploads all photos there and of course for the search and sharing feature. I’m even paying for the extra storage needed to host all the family pictures on a 2TB plan.

    My concern having only the Synology would be that in case of fire/flood/zombies I’d loose all this stuff. Sure it’s a 4 disk raid, but I’d have to make regular backups off-site. Which is pita and expensive as well. Synology does offer Backup to various cloud locations though. But overall I considered this more expensive than just paying for the Google Account.

    • CrashingMonkiesEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      I use syncthing to upload my Android phone photos to my Unraid server and then use Photoprism to manage them. I use Duplicacy to backup photos (and other data) to Backblaze. I tried Immich briefly and just preferred the setup and look/feel of Photoprism. To be fair, that was about a year and a half ago, and I know both apps have grown a lot since then.