You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Short story - daughter off to uni, I dont want to pay Apple for more iCloud storage and I'm a bit bored and I need a NAS anyway - is there a decent way/app to get the two iPhones in our house/uni (and ideally my Android too but not too bothered about that) to synch/backup photos to a NAS?
I've not got the NAS yet so I'm flexible on getting a Synology or QNAP etc.
And no Mac to do this on, its windows laptops for setup.
yup - photos mobile (free synology app) on synology nas for all the family here - auto backs-up when you open it - works well - free tier icloud for basic settings/migration
Welcome to the world of home servers... Many of us in the hobby start wanting cheap network attached storage and end up with servers running a bunch of services for friends and family. Photo backup, media servers, home automation, security cameras- it's all possible from the same box. It's a decent hobby if you like tinkering!
Here's a list of options for your NAS, starting with the most plug and play solutions that cost the most and are the least capable in terms of other services.
- Paying for cloud storage from big tech.
- Synology/Qnap
- Unraid <---this is where I am
- Truenas
- Proxmox
If you want relatively low hassle, Synology does make alot of sense, but you pay over the odds for the hardware that they give you. I like unraid because you can install it on an old office PC, add drives as and when you want them and it has a good implementation of docker for other services. But more tech savvy people would say it's less secure than it could be.
I made a start years ago with a qnap nas with an idea to store photos from Lightroom on it and store all my MP3 files. I never persevered so it now sits behind the telly in the living room, Spotify handles my music, I have 3 hard drives backed up every other month.
I really should try again
Yes, i use a couple of ASUS NAS boxes, and one of the cheap Amazon ones (terramaster iirc).
The bigger ASUS box has a sufficiently powerful processor to run several simultaneous video streams, so I run Plex on that, the terramaster is used for all the backups of the backups and the smaller ASUS I stream music from.
I also have my phone/laptop/desktop and both my kids phones running back ups to the big ASUS in parallel to having "important" documents backed up on Google drive.
Theres about 12GB of data being handled on the three boxes.
And I have a desktop that runs some stuff in parallel on a couple of VMs, plus experimenting with home assistant now...
The downside of Synology boxes is that some of the newer ones have 'problems' with third party HDD and force the installation of the Synology brand ones. Choose carefully if you go with them.
QNAP boxes have problems with security, keeping up with the software updates is essential to avoid losing all the data. Scheduled checks for updates and notifications to your email are very necessary.
Theres about 12GB of data being handled on the three boxes.12 TB not GB. FFS.
How do you guys with having an offsite backup? My assumption is that by the time you’ve paid for that you might as well go for iCloud backup in the first place, or am I missing something?Forgot to mention, i have a partition on a mates NAS in Oslo that serves as offsite for stuff that can't easily be replaced. He has the same on one of mine.
I had various forms of local server storage years ago but I can’t see why most people would bother now, especially for your use case of a couple of iPhone backups. I used to run an audio streaming server and file share storage but it was always a faff. Spotify does audio now (phone has all mp3s that aren’t on Spotify and can stream from desktop Mac anyway). I’ve never found a need for local streaming video
The synology NAS Amazon shows me for home use is £300. Plus maybe £100 for 2 drives (with a life expectancy of 3-5 years). And it will cost about £30 a year in electricity (15watt 24/7). 5 year cost £563.
200gb shared is only £36 a year from Apple which would surely be enough for a couple of phones. 2Tb is £108 a year (5 year £540)
it doesn’t make financial sense, it doesn’t give you offsite backup, there’s time to set up and maintain and it’s less convenient.
yus. Ive gotn entry level Qnap drive and its fine. https://www.qnap.com/en-uk/product/ts-230
i say fine, cause i dont really use it, it just gets ignored.
The QNAP one has a functionality where it can do automatic sorting of photos, it does facial recognition, and automatically adds tags based on what i thinks it can see, as well as being able to view by location (on a map) and obviously. It works well, and ive been able to track down specific photos i of people and places pretty much instantly, the handful of times ive used it.
https://www.qnap.com/en-uk/solution/qumagie-home
having said that, the drive never sleeps with that functionality turned on. Its always chattering away to itself, (pressumably as hundreds of little chinese children manually review my photo back catalogue), and as such i have it set so that it comes online on a friday night, and shuts down in the wee small hours of monday morning. Enough time for all our phones to go through one charge cycle, and backup overnight (you can set it to backup at any time or even constantly, but ive got mine to setup while phones are plugged in and on wifi), and for it to run some updates. I dont really want it talking to itself all week when i access it once in a blue moon.
It does have Wake on LAN too, so if i want to get at the photos in the week, i just have to give it 20 minutes to boot up.
Mines got two drives on board, mounted in RAID1 (i think), which is basically the drives are mirrors of each other. If one drive starts to breakd down or drop data, it will rebuild it off the other drive, and it will also (in theorey) warn me before it becomes a serious problem. I should then be able to pull the dying drive and replace it with a new one and it will just carry on. Ive use NAS specific drives so am not expecting this to happen in the near future.
I do also periodically back the whole thing up to its predecessor, a simple USB desktop hard drive, which plugs in to the back of the NAS. its effectively a second backup.
Obviously its got all my "stuff" on it, but the music rarely gets used as we use spotify these days (it does have a perfectly servicable music player that can stream off your drive, or create local versions for off line use. similarly for video etc.
you can have it appear on your machine as "just another drive" easily enough too.
If you want to avoid getting tied to apple or google storage then a NAS is the next best option, just bear in mind that google/apple backup your backups so you are as near as youre ever going to get to "never ever ever" going to lose that data.
A NAS can still break and its all on you. If your house burns down, etc, youre still scuppered.
Having had a single drive Iomega break down on my before, i wouldnt even entertain a single drive device i dont think.
I've got a QNAP NAS.
I'm not a technophobe, but neither am I particularly IT literate.
The main reason I got it was for photo/document storage so I could get it off my laptop & hopefully easily share folders of family pics with my family.
In truth, I find it a massive pain in the ass.
It runs very slowly over our network and I don't really understand why - so looking at a folder of pics takes ages as they don't load very quickly.
Every time I log-in to it to check it's all OK, it requires a firmware update which also requires a complete re-boot prior to the update. This always seems to takes a large chunk of an evening. It runs OK without this, but I feel I should be doing the firmware updates when I see they are available.
I never got the photo folder sharing to work & gave up on it, as I constantly see security issues highlighted as soon as you make your NAS open to the outside world. So it's pretty locked down - well, think it is.
I keep debating trying a Synology one, in case that is just a bit easier to manage & get my head around. But the cost to swap is pretty high if I find I am no better off.
I have tried to learn about using the NAS online, but information can be hard to come by or you end up in super-geek forums where you are shunned unless you have a masters in network management or something.
But, it has so far been reliable & it automatically back-ups the photos from my mobile so I don't have to worry about losing them.
1 on premise backup doesn't cover it
you need backups in 2 locations..
i personally am happy to use cloud backups only, i would never ever have a backup only on my own property
Running your own self-hosted storage as opposed to paying (a relative pittance) for iCloud storage is a complete non-starter, cost wise! Doubly so if you actually wanted it to be as robust as backup solution - you would need at least 2 NAS units in 2 different locations.
A single NAS drive can't really be considered a "backup", especially a hobbyist Synology or QNAP one filled with cheap drives - it's not unheard of for the 2nd drive to fail whilst you're trying to rebuild from it! But still better than nothing, I guess.
Over the last year I've transitioned away from Backblaze (cloud-based) as my main work backup solution as I've got a couple of the new-ish Unifi UNAS Pro units - 1 at work, 1 at home. The work one backs up to the home one (as well as to Google Drive online) and the home one also works as storage for my Home Assistant server, Plex server etc as well as local Time Machine backups. It all works really well and they are very easy to setup/admin/use and have had zero problems so far but it was about £2k investment for the units and drives (with a relatively basic amount of storage & redundancy). The Unifi units are actually very keenly priced versus pro units from Synology/QNAP though.
I haven't bothered using it to replace iCloud backups though! (There are a few apps you can use to backup your iCloud Photo Library to a NAS though and I'll probably look to do that at some stage).
Every time I log-in to it to check it's all OK, it requires a firmware update which also requires a complete re-boot prior to the update.
Scheduled restart during the night , every night of the week will stop that. You can also get email/push notification of updates through the notification centre.
I've done all the sums, and the services i'd need to add and the cost of storage/access etc would have pretty much double the amount i've already spent on NAS/Drives/electricity etc. (i've only had one drive fail in 10 years).
If you're going to put a phones worth of data on a NAS, i wouldn't bother.
I'm fine with cloud these days...I have an older 20TB NAS lying around for reasons... but even that uses £60 or so electricity/yr, which pays for a decent amount of cloud storage. Newer ones are better, but never mind the investment of your time and equipment outlay, you have to keep a really close eye on the power consumption too.
iPhone and photo backups? Just pay more for iCloud. Easy. Run google photos and have a copy there as well.
For PC and Mac there’s Backblaze for backups too.
uni student? Docs will be on uni OneDrive as well as locally if the settings are right.
NASs are very handy but are not necessarily cheaper and are not easier than the services available from regular providers.
As somebody with a large NAS (Unraid, Plex server mostly) I would agree that if all you want to do is back up photos - just pay for iCloud.
There is a review of Synology's latest "beestation" server on NAScompares (YouTube channel) - and thats probably the simplest NAS deployment you can get. But still - for your use case, just use iCloud.
If what you want is a hobby - by all means get a NAS to play around with. Don't get a Synology though. Ugreen seem to get good reviews at the moment from a bang-for-buck basis.
i've only had one drive fail in 10 years).
😮 that means you’re an outlier. Check what hdd *manufacturers* say.
https://www.toshiba-storage.com/trends-technology/mttf-what-hard-drive-reliability-really-means/
My experience of consumer discs in laptops or desktops is that by the time you hit 5 years you’re definitely on borrowed time and I know a load of people who’ve lost a lot of data as a result. (And the same applies to ssd’s as well). I’ve been saved by backups a number of times and since they’ve been a combination of iCloud/dropbox/google drive it’s been effectively maintenance free - I’ve set up a new Mac and phone without using the old one a few times just to prove it all works.
I had various forms of local server storage years ago but I can’t see why most people would bother now, especially for your use case of a couple of iPhone backups. I used to run an audio streaming server and file share storage but it was always a faff. Spotify does audio now (phone has all mp3s that aren’t on Spotify and can stream from desktop Mac anyway). I’ve never found a need for local streaming video
The synology NAS Amazon shows me for home use is £300. Plus maybe £100 for 2 drives (with a life expectancy of 3-5 years). And it will cost about £30 a year in electricity (15watt 24/7). 5 year cost £563.
200gb shared is only £36 a year from Apple which would surely be enough for a couple of phones. 2Tb is £108 a year (5 year £540)
it doesn’t make financial sense, it doesn’t give you offsite backup, there’s time to set up and maintain and it’s less convenient.
Yep I used to have my own nas and just went icloud for no farf no brainier.
Theres more interesting things to waste time on nowadays 🙂
I have, i should expect them to last about 12-15 years. Based on duty cycle. (They're NAS drives as well.)that means you’re an outlier. Check what hdd *manufacturers* say.
My experience of consumer discs in laptops or desktops is that by the time you hit 5 years you’re definitely on borrowed time and I know a load of people who’ve lost a lot of data as a result.Why on earth would they lose the data, the whole point is backups... 😉
i've only had one drive fail in 10 years)
Same here. And that was a SD card 🙂
I use a NAS cos I object to paying subs for someone else to keep my files. Where does it end? Originally I just thought 'what would happen to my stuff if I stopped paying?'. Netflix, Amazon, Sky, subs to all those , but I don't lose MY music or my photos if I unsubscribe. Now I just have a NAS and that's the way I like it. I like being an outlier.
You mean idiots gonna idiot?either not making any backups at all or had more data than free iCloud and hadn’t paid for more storage.