Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


Shells Virtual Desktop
BMail.ag - Secure Email Service
Server.net
CPLicense.net
VPS Server
Buy VPN
Vultr
VMs for AI
HostDare
ReliableSite White-Label Dedicated Hosting for Resellers
InterServer VPS
BMail.ag - Secure Email Service
Best VPN
High-Performance Bare Metal Server Solutions
Karvl.com
Server Mania Cloud Hosting
DataWagon Hosting
AlphaVPS Hosting
Evoxt.com
Clouvider
VPS Hosting with NVMe
Residential IPs in the US & 4G Mobile Proxies in EU & US with Unlimited Bandwidth
ReliableSite White-Label Dedicated Hosting for Resellers
Rabisu - Hosting Solutions
Shells Virtual Desktop
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

Where do you backup photos/videos?

I do have photos of my family, which is around 360gb and still growing.

What do you guys think of reliable, secure, and the cheapest ways to backup your media for a lifetime?

Can I trust an external HDD/SSD for a lifetime?

«1

Comments

  • cookie_stampcookie_stamp Member
    edited June 2025

    Just deploy Nextcloud.

    • Stable
    • Easy to Deploy by Snap,docker,yunohost,cosmos cloud,manually.

    Of course you can’t trust any drive for a lifetime.

    Ask your provider if it has automatic backups.

    And get a portable ssd drive or something,

    to keep a copy of that media offline.

    Thanked by 3itzgeo NJa64F NaXal
  • yoursunnyyoursunny Member, IPv6 Advocate

    @cookie_stamp said:
    Of course you can’t trust any drive for a lifetime.

    We periodically scan our drives for errors.
    Currently,

    • 64MB thumb drive (from 2001) has zero errors
    • 2GB thumb drive (from 2015) has 32MB real capacity
    • 20GB IDE drive (from 2005) has no errors but makes noise at night
    • 80GB IDE drive (from 2006) has electrical fault
    • 256GB thumb drive (from 2022) has 204 bad sectors
    • 512GB USB HDD (from 2018) has 27 missing inodes

    Which one shall we be most concerned about?

  • cookie_stampcookie_stamp Member
    edited June 2025

    @yoursunny said:

    @cookie_stamp said:
    Of course you can’t trust any drive for a lifetime.

    We periodically scan our drives for errors.
    Currently,

    • 64MB thumb drive (from 2001) has zero errors
    • 2GB thumb drive (from 2015) has 32MB real capacity
    • 20GB IDE drive (from 2005) has no errors but makes noise at night
    • 80GB IDE drive (from 2006) has electrical fault
    • 256GB thumb drive (from 2022) has 204 bad sectors
    • 512GB USB HDD (from 2018) has 27 missing inodes

    Which one shall we be most concerned about?

    Sir please don’t troll my Cheesecake.

    And get yourself NVMe drive at least.

    Thanked by 2xemaps itzgeo
  • zedzed Member

    @yoursunny said: 20GB IDE drive (from 2005) has no errors but makes noise at night

    Only at night?

  • just turn any unused pc (preferably a power efficient laptop) into a nas

    no need to use it as an actual nas, just slap syncthing on it

    then backup your family library (on your new nas) to any cloud using rclone
    or if you own a server somewhere or if you like using object storage, using restic instead of rclone for advanced backups

    simple and fool proof, i could teach my grandma in 5 min how to configure syncthing and where to she should look for the files if something would go wrong

    with solutions like nextcloud it's always a mess when something suddenly breaks since they introduce major changes to their code way too frequently
    also no hassle with reverse proxies or vpns

    Thanked by 1idroid007
  • I'm currently using Google Photos

  • Tho, i might setup immich on a vps + backups to HostBrr (hourly sync with rclone)

  • DediRockDediRock Member, Patron Provider

    google

    Thanked by 1idroid007
  • ZappieZappie Member, Patron Provider, LIR

    A very happy of a self hosted Immich (https://immich.app/) instance. I found this (for photos) far superior than nextcloud and actually really usable on the fly for browsing and finding old photos

  • As my house took a lightning strike years ago, and I lost over 25k photos and such, because of that I now have the following.

    • 2nd Drive in my desktop that files are rsynced over to it.
    • 3 remote backups from InterServer, Hostbrr, and Servarica that are all rsynced over to every night.

    Might be over kill but I can't get those photos and documents back, so for the $10/Month makes it so worth it to me.

  • MikeAMikeA Member, Patron Provider

    Man, I've been using Google Photos for so long since I already pay for extra storage with Google. I had free unlimited storage back in the day when they first sold the Pixel devices, but still used it after switching. Been paying $20/y for 100GB storage for Gmail + Photos for years. There's a lot of stuff that I do and would self host, but photos of my trips, friends, etc., I feel more secure keeping it on my Google Photos.

  • RubbenRubben Member
    edited June 2025

    @MikeA said:
    Man, I've been using Google Photos for so long since I already pay for extra storage with Google. I had free unlimited storage back in the day when they first sold the Pixel devices, but still used it after switching. Been paying $20/y for 100GB storage for Gmail + Photos for years. There's a lot of stuff that I do and would self host, but photos of my trips, friends, etc., I feel more secure keeping it on my Google Photos.

    Thats so crazy because the last thing I'd want is to have some large corpo access to all of my data. I'd much rather manage 3 type of backups and a complete DR plan just so that I know how and where is my personal data stored.

    Thanked by 2PineappleM bbn12
  • FlamesRunnerFlamesRunner Member
    edited June 2025

    @MikeA said:
    Man, I've been using Google Photos for so long since I already pay for extra storage with Google. I had free unlimited storage back in the day when they first sold the Pixel devices, but still used it after switching. Been paying $20/y for 100GB storage for Gmail + Photos for years. There's a lot of stuff that I do and would self host, but photos of my trips, friends, etc., I feel more secure keeping it on my Google Photos.

    Second that - used it for about 8 years now, starting from the 15GB free, then 100GB and now 200GB. Supplemented it with a Workspace account I use primarily for custom domain mail.

    I also run a NAS with daily backups to a cheap storagebox (encrypted) and to a third party cloud provider. I mention it because I take quarterly backups from Google Photos using Takeout to the NAS for risk reduction - just slightly paranoid after losing a bunch of vacation photos on some USB stick (which I did not backup :/).

  • iriskairiska Member

    Currently using ente[.]io free tier. Works great, I read paid tier is 3x replicated.

  • MikeAMikeA Member, Patron Provider

    @FlamesRunner said:
    I also run a NAS with daily backups to a cheap storagebox (encrypted) and to a third party cloud provider. I mention it because I take quarterly backups from Google Photos using Takeout to the NAS for risk reduction - just slightly paranoid after losing a bunch of vacation photos on some USB stick (which I did not backup :/).

    This is something I want to do soon. Have a small GMKtek M.2 nas device that has a N150. Perfect to run some backups and use as a small home NVMe storage server.

    Thanked by 1FlamesRunner
  • taalztaalz Member

    Just use any cloud.
    Google Photos, OneDrive, DropBox. These are the best options.
    No need to go into technical things, then maintaining the NAS and all.

    Thanked by 1ransomshell
  • LittleCreekLittleCreek Member, Patron Provider

    I take pictures. I show them to people. Then delete them. Problem solved.

  • ransomshellransomshell Member
    edited June 2025

    @taalz said:
    Just use any cloud.
    Google Photos, OneDrive, DropBox. These are the best options.
    No need to go into technical things, then maintaining the NAS and all.

    100%

    I host a lot of stuff but this is something left to others as it's not worth the headache. OneDrive here, it just works.

    Background sync to here with Synology and snapshots+replications and an encrypted rclone sync off-site. It just works.

  • Immich or Nextcloud, with backups.

  • cookie_stampcookie_stamp Member
    edited June 2025

    @iriska said:
    Currently using ente[.]io free tier. Works great, I read paid tier is 3x replicated.

    You may self host it. They provide official documentation,

    https://help.ente.io/self-hosting/

    Thanked by 1iriska
  • I'm using synology nas device. It's helpful for photos, videos and files too.

  • @MikeA said:

    @FlamesRunner said:
    I also run a NAS with daily backups to a cheap storagebox (encrypted) and to a third party cloud provider. I mention it because I take quarterly backups from Google Photos using Takeout to the NAS for risk reduction - just slightly paranoid after losing a bunch of vacation photos on some USB stick (which I did not backup :/).

    This is something I want to do soon. Have a small GMKtek M.2 nas device that has a N150. Perfect to run some backups and use as a small home NVMe storage server.

    I've been looking at those N100-based 4 NVMe solutions, always keep telling myself the bandwidth limitation isn't worth it. I figure the main benefit though is that these systems sip power (by extension, less heat) comparatively, especially since I'm using a desktop CPU part, so I'm certain they'll be much nicer to have around with the summer heat coming in.

    Is it the G9? Looked very appealing but didn't love that it came with soldered RAM.

  • bustersgbustersg Member
    edited June 2025

    Look into 321 backup strategy. I learnt it the hard way. 2 raid1 disk corrupted same time in nas n spent about $1k to recover from both disks though vendor asked me choose 1 or 2 disks to work on.

    Now i use 321 backup. Daily backup in nas via raid1. Then weekly synology hyperbackup to idrive object storage. All photos n non critical files raid1 but custom select impt directory like family photo to remote storage.

    The raid1 disk i also use 2 different medium, 1 black 7200rpm hdd n 1 ssd so they wear off at different times.

  • Onedrive 1 TB free if you use 365.

  • MikeAMikeA Member, Patron Provider

    @FlamesRunner said:

    @MikeA said:

    @FlamesRunner said:
    I also run a NAS with daily backups to a cheap storagebox (encrypted) and to a third party cloud provider. I mention it because I take quarterly backups from Google Photos using Takeout to the NAS for risk reduction - just slightly paranoid after losing a bunch of vacation photos on some USB stick (which I did not backup :/).

    This is something I want to do soon. Have a small GMKtek M.2 nas device that has a N150. Perfect to run some backups and use as a small home NVMe storage server.

    I've been looking at those N100-based 4 NVMe solutions, always keep telling myself the bandwidth limitation isn't worth it. I figure the main benefit though is that these systems sip power (by extension, less heat) comparatively, especially since I'm using a desktop CPU part, so I'm certain they'll be much nicer to have around with the summer heat coming in.

    Is it the G9? Looked very appealing but didn't love that it came with soldered RAM.

    I have a G9 and some other model. I got the G9 originally to quickly test NVMe drives really, but ended up not using it for that. The PCIe limits weren't really a concern for me, I just want something with flash storage, not really worried about using full speed.

  • bbn12bbn12 Member

    in my opinion it's insane to keep un-encrypted photos/videos on any third party service..... (and ONLY you should own encryption key, not "managed" by some large marksist company).

  • Still using my Google Pixel 1 for unlimited google photos - every few months I copy a new batch of photos to it for upload

    Worth buying one on eBay - it’s unlikely to ever go away. They advertised it as lifetime unlimited with no caveats

  • mrTommrTom Member

    i wanted to fully control my backup and tried self hosted nextcloud + app on the phone. it was completely unreliable, again and again i found out that it stopped syncing weeks ago due to some error like an unknown certificate etc etc. then sometimes it re-synced everything without reason...

    after spending many hours i gave up and switched to my koofr LTD + app. no more full control, but also no more issues.

  • Try to abuse google drive. Or hire an Indian to do it for you. As you said you have 360gb files to store so you need to make 24 google accounts Then setup rclone to manage all of them from your computer or telegram.

  • @mrTom said:
    i wanted to fully control my backup and tried self hosted nextcloud + app on the phone. it was completely unreliable, again and again i found out that it stopped syncing weeks ago due to some error like an unknown certificate etc etc. then sometimes it re-synced everything without reason...

    after spending many hours i gave up and switched to my koofr LTD + app. no more full control, but also no more issues.

    If you want self hosted and you already tried next cloud and you're not satisfied then try "file browser"

Sign In or Register to comment.