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Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

#241

Post by rglullis »

paulcole wrote: post #228
rglullis wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual object is less important than the exercise and the discussion. Substitute "photo albums" for "medical records", "civil certificates", "passwords + 2FA codes for all DeFi wallets" if you want.

The things you list need to be available for (at the longest) a month or two following my untimely demise. The OP is talking about generational foolproof storage for photos which is both totally different and a slightly more convenient version of saddling your heirs with a closet full of photo albums and slide carousels.

As someone who was in Brazil and had to dig into records from my Portuguese great-grandparents when I was collecting documents to claim my citizenship, I assure your documents need to be available for a lot longer than you expect.

Re: Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

#242

Post by mike31fr »

I store them on my NAS, and my NAS has a synchronisation with Amazon Glacier which is a very cheap storage service that is designed for cold backups, meaning if you want to request a backup it can take 24 hours for Amazon to provide it, unlike Amazon S3 where you can access the files instantly but is 10 times more expensive. But you should only need to request a backup if your house and your NAS get robbed which hopefully happens very occasionally in your lifetime.

Re: Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

#243

Post by fireflymetavrse »

NateEag wrote: post #67

I burn 25 GB M-DISCs every few months. If I were being properly rigorous I'd be burning three copies and putting two of them in different physical places. Printing out the occasional photo book of our favorites is also a part of the strategy - if our grandkids want to see photos of our lives after we're dead, they won't need to worry about lapsed hosting bills or ancient storage technology. They can just look at the…

I find 100 GB mdiscs somewhat cheaper per GB than the 25 ones.

Re: Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

#244

Post by jmfldn »

Photos sync automatically from camera to Dropbox Camera Uploads folder. I move them every now and then into a Dropbox/Photos folder (not syncd to local machine as it's too big) after organising them into month folders. These same organised folders are copied onto an external drive from local Dropbox Camera Uploads folder. This external drive is then Rsync'd to a backup drive that I keep in a safe.

I still have Dropbox as a backup this way so it's a cloud backup of sorts.

Not foolproof but it's super simple and good enough for me.

Re: Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

#246

Post by rexreed »

cedricd wrote: post #121

I'm surprised how technical and homegrown all these solutions are (well, it's an HN crowd so maybe I shouldn't be). I'm a techy too and pretty into photography, but I've gone the other way. I store all my photos on a desktop computer and use BackBlaze to automatically keep everything backed up. It violates the 3-2-1 rule but in the 10ish years I've been using this approach I've had tons of harddrive failures, had to…

I use Backblaze as well but I'm disappointed the company doesn't support backing up Application folders or system folders. They also stopped supporting Mac OS X older than 10.13.

Re: Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

#247

Post by javajosh »

WalterBright wrote: post #235

1. copy to hard disk 2. buy a new drive every year and copy it forward 3. store a copy with relatives Note that a cloud provider: 1. can shut off your access at any time, by accident or on purpose, and you have no recourse 2. will sell your data to anyone at any time 3. will give it to any government for the asking 4. will leak it to any hacker 5. will allow employees of said cloud provider to browse your data 6. wil…

Do you actually do this? Or is it theory?

Re: Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

#248

Post by na85 »

WalterBright wrote: post #235

1. copy to hard disk 2. buy a new drive every year and copy it forward 3. store a copy with relatives Note that a cloud provider: 1. can shut off your access at any time, by accident or on purpose, and you have no recourse 2. will sell your data to anyone at any time 3. will give it to any government for the asking 4. will leak it to any hacker 5. will allow employees of said cloud provider to browse your data 6. wil…

I do something similar.

Recent photos live on grandma-/normie-friendly services like Google Photos, and once every year or so I download everything and store it on platter drives locally with par2 archives to guard against bit rot.

Re: Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

#249

Post by brandonio21 »

CommanderData wrote: post #87

Spent roughly 1k on a nas system at home which gives me 6tb of redundant storage. It's raid 0 (2x6tb) with 2 separate backups done nightly/weekly, one in the house and one done in the garage. The speed of access is unmatched to any cloud system, in the long run it'll be cheaper than online (assuming £10 per month for 6tb of storage). I made the plunge after trying a few cheaper options plus cloud. I'm happy with the…

I have a similar setup (also Synology), but only backup to Backblaze nightly. What's housing your garage backup? Another NAS or something else? If it's another synology, did you get the same model as your primary or something less powerful?

Re: Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

#250

Post by jdgiese »

WalterBright wrote: post #235

1. copy to hard disk 2. buy a new drive every year and copy it forward 3. store a copy with relatives Note that a cloud provider: 1. can shut off your access at any time, by accident or on purpose, and you have no recourse 2. will sell your data to anyone at any time 3. will give it to any government for the asking 4. will leak it to any hacker 5. will allow employees of said cloud provider to browse your data 6. wil…

How long have you been following this procedure?
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