What are you using as a Google photos alternative? Currently I’m using Nextcloud but I’m thinking of switching to a more dedicated solution.
I mainly need to upload photos from my device automatically, have an UI to see and classify them, albuns and sharing.
Been using a Synology NAS for the past year for automatic photo backups. Take a photo, it gets copied to my drive at home so long as there’s internet access available. No issues so far. Turned off my backups to Google.
What happens when your Synology fails? Do you have offsite backup to Backblaze or something similar?
I can’t speak for other users, but my Synology setup looks like this:
This is honestly a much more secure way of storing my photos than Google Photos.
This is my setup using the 3, 2, 1 rule:
3: Raid 5 setup with 2 unused drives and setup to automatically spool up and recover if one of the drives starts failing. 2: off-site at the father in laws house (using a Xpenology super tiny PC and an external drive) 1: Monthly Backblaze
While there is risk, it’s def safer if not safer than Google drive.
It’s a dual drive redundant setup. Unless something catastrophic happens, I doubt both drives will go out at the same time. I could do an offsite backup as well, but just haven’t.
The number of redundant drives actually doesn’t make much difference, but it does “help”. Instead of picturing individual drive failures, picture a house fire.
Also picture the next step after one of the drives fails – you’ll be copying all of that data off of your 1 good drive, putting a lot of stress on it. That drive is likely from the same batch, same age, etc. as the failed drive. The likelihood of your good drive failing during the recovery process is higher than one might like.
I was very satisfied with their pricing for offsite backups, and the ease of setup. Definitely worth a look.
RAID is not backup :) And yes, it happened to me for 4 drives in a 16 drive system to fail in the span of just a few days (same batch).
Not who you’re replying to but yes, Synology will let you automate backups to a cloud/service (and you definitely should!)