Ask HN: How do you archive your personal files on the cloud

#1

Post by l1feh4ck » Sun, Dec 01, 2024, 5:28 PM UTC

How do you archive personal files? I’m considering Google Storage Archive or S3 Glacier Deep Archive.

I’m comfortable with the tech but want a solution my wife (non tech) can use independently.

I also need a cost-effective way to archive mobile photos since Google Photos feels expensive.

Any suggestions?

Re: Ask HN: How do you archive your personal files on the cloud

#2

Post by toomuchtodo » Sun, Dec 01, 2024, 5:41 PM UTC

Family Dropbox, FastMail, and Apple Photos are archived to Backblaze B2 on a schedule, running in a Docker container on a VPS.

Re: Ask HN: How do you archive your personal files on the cloud

#3

Post by l1feh4ck » Sun, Dec 01, 2024, 7:08 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Family Dropbox, FastMail, and Apple Photos are archived to Backblaze B2 on a schedule, running in a Docker container on a VPS.

How do you automate the deletion of the photos on Apple photos after archiving? I do not think apple provides an API for that. Dropbox and Google photos has API and would be possible to delete it from there after archiving.

Re: Ask HN: How do you archive your personal files on the cloud

#4

Post by solardev » Sun, Dec 01, 2024, 9:10 PM UTC

Is it really expensive...? I currently pay for the $3/mo 200 GB plan and share it with my partner. 18 years of photos takes up about 100 GB and the rest of it is shared across Drive, Gmail, device backups, etc.

It's only $10/mo for 2 TB of storage, or less if you pay annually. Sure, that's a bit more expensive than buying cheap cloud storage, but you know how much I've had to support my non-techie GF over the years? Pretty much zero. That peace of mind and "just works" is easily worth the few dollars.

Now, if you have many many terabytes of files, that's a different story... maybe put YOUR stuff in cold storage (in the cloud I mean) and just keep the shared photos and such in Photos?

Re: Ask HN: How do you archive your personal files on the cloud

#5

Post by toomuchtodo » Sun, Dec 01, 2024, 9:56 PM UTC

l1feh4ck wrote: post #3

toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Family Dropbox, FastMail, and Apple Photos are archived to Backblaze B2 on a schedule, running in a Docker container on a VPS.

How do you automate the deletion of the photos on Apple photos after archiving? I do not think apple provides an API for that. Dropbox and Google photos has API and would be possible to delete it from there after archiving.

One way archive, no automated deleting. I treat it as a WORM drive (write once, read many). Family Apple iCloud shares 2TB storage for $10/month. If we get close to the 2TB limit, I’ll refactor the pipeline.