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Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

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Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#291

Post by ericcholis »

getoffmyyawn wrote: post #281

I used to seriously stress out worrying about the huge amount of family photos I have saved in cloud storage and what it would mean to lose them. I've got a local backup as well of course. Even that has to be upgraded every so often to make sure the hardware will continue to run reliably. A few years ago my (very non-technical) mother asked me to make and send her a photo album of recent pictures. My wife and I had s…

I have PhotoSync (https://www.photosync-app.com/home.html) set up to automatically send all my iCloud photos to my home NAS which automatically backs up to Backblaze. I can also specify other destinations for PhotoSync and the NAS backup.

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#292

Post by akho »

lostlogin wrote: post #256
akho wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a Synology NAS, and now believe that it would have been easier to just set up a computer for the tasks I use it for. There are just too many cases where the solution is to use a container (and the clumsy web interfaces for reverse proxying &c), and if I end up SSHing into it too much, I prefer to have a more controllable environment. It does fit some workflows very well though, you just have to assess if your n…

You may be able to run a VM on your Synology via their app. I run a Mac VM on mine but via iscsi as the actual VM host hasn’t enough storage to hold my library.

Yes. Containers are also fine. Synology’s added value disappears if that’s your primary mode of usage.

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#293

Post by yaseer »

AdamN wrote: post #283
getoffmyyawn wrote: post #281

I used to seriously stress out worrying about the huge amount of family photos I have saved in cloud storage and what it would mean to lose them. I've got a local backup as well of course. Even that has to be upgraded every so often to make sure the hardware will continue to run reliably. A few years ago my (very non-technical) mother asked me to make and send her a photo album of recent pictures. My wife and I had s…

+100. The best and really only useful copy of your digital photo library is a curated set of prints, ideally as part of a book or a calendar.

+101.

My wife and I now have an annual tradition of making physical albums of memories from the past year.

Making the album in January is not just fun - it makes you mindful of fond memories at a time when you're likely to think "Geez, another year has passed so quickly".

My only regret is realising I should have started the habit much earlier.

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#294

Post by asdff »

johnnyballgame wrote: post #144
josefresco wrote: post #79

Anyone have a good iCloud backup option? I finally "gave in" and stopped manually pulling photos off my iOS devices and subscribed to iCloud. However I'm worried I'll get screwed or mistakenly delete something.

Install iCloud app locally and sync them. Then backup your local folder to another device or cloud. Backblaze B2 is a great cloud option for raw storage.

Does icloud drive contain the photos? My issue with icloud was that as far as I was aware, I could only sync photos via the Photos mac app, or web page downloading a zip archive a few gb at a time. Both options ended up failing for me unfortunately. The Photos app would quit instantly when I set it to sync the library because I guess it was too large perhaps. The web page downloads would time out a few hundred mb in. I tried using third party command line tools for icloud downloads, and they too would time out.

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#295

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

sirius87 wrote: post #187

Stuff like this terrifies me. I'm personally reaching a point where I'm considering investing in an offline NAS with a RAID array and replacing disks every few years to be safe (or based on SMART tests). Imagine uploading all your photos to a cloud provider, then having 5% of your files disappear. How would you even know your photos are missing if its a small %? At least when your local filesystem is corrupted, you k…

> How would you even know your photos are missing

What if you never found out in your lifetime?

(seriously, I have dire doubts about the usefulness of our hoards ...)

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#296

Post by philsnow »

briffle wrote: post #241
exitb wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fellow small ARM machine owner, what's your strategy for getting the photos from iCloud? Is there a tool one shouldn't feel weird to give their iCloud credentials to?

I pull mine from Google Photos, with a docker image running a tool: https://github.com/gilesknap/gphotos-sync Its not perfect, but as a backup, it works well.

That looks pretty good, thanks for linking to it.

It doesn’t talk about not being able to access person tags. Not being able to programmatically access the data about who google thinks is in each of my photos has been an annoying pain point for me for years. Last I checked, the data is also not included in Google Takeout dumps.

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#297

Post by rchaud »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #66
thrdbndndn wrote: post #46

It literally only has been 1 hour since OP posted that thread. I agree with all the points about having backups and/or using better service/self host etc., but IMO it's too early to conclude anything about this incident.

I'd be freaking the fuck out too, tbh. These days you tend to get better support from the megacorps if you tweet or post on HN, it can bypass the obligatory outsourced support layer.

Maybe, but somehow I don't see them rushing in to spare the blushes of the Amazon Photos product team. Now if this were an S3 cloud bucket.....

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#298

Post by asdff »

josefresco wrote: post #79

Anyone have a good iCloud backup option? I finally "gave in" and stopped manually pulling photos off my iOS devices and subscribed to iCloud. However I'm worried I'll get screwed or mistakenly delete something.

Currently searching but don't get in this boat with me. I'm dealing with a library of 50k+ photos I can't get off icloud currently. All options on the table have failed after multiple attempts (Photos app sync, web page download, third party command line downloaders).

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#299

Post by ghaff »

AdamN wrote: post #283
getoffmyyawn wrote: post #281

I used to seriously stress out worrying about the huge amount of family photos I have saved in cloud storage and what it would mean to lose them. I've got a local backup as well of course. Even that has to be upgraded every so often to make sure the hardware will continue to run reliably. A few years ago my (very non-technical) mother asked me to make and send her a photo album of recent pictures. My wife and I had s…

+100. The best and really only useful copy of your digital photo library is a curated set of prints, ideally as part of a book or a calendar.

I've made photo books but I really try to decrease the flow of paper and other physical things into my house. I'm behind at the moment but I heavily curate/edit and upload to Flickr which also lets me access photos when I'm not at home.

Re: Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

#300

Post by TrueGeek »

duffyjp wrote: post #202
tokamak-teapot wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old cheap Mac Mini with USB drive attached. Put Photos library on it. Set it to keep all photos locally. Back up that drive elsewhere.

I was doing just this for a while but stopped because my Mac Mini was too old for the last few OS releases. I then switched to using the Windows iCloud client but a bug from ~2 years ago that consumes tremendous CPU cycles made that less than ideal. (The best you can do is lock it to a single thread, which will then use 100% 24/7) Now I just don't backup my iCloud, though I do remove everything older than one year ev…

I've been using Windows iCloud client to backup to a VPS. It works okay for files, but for photos it pegged disk usage even when there weren't any new photos to download and my VPS provider wasn't happy. So far my solution is Windows iCloud client for files, and then OneDrive on my iPhone for photo backup, with OneDrive again on the VPS.

I like how the backup is outside my house, but I'm about to add Yubikey to my iCloud account and I'm not sure the Windows iCloud client is going to like that.

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