What do you use for photo/video backups? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago by Fritee@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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I am currently thinking about my own setup for photo and video backup, and was curious what other people are using as their own backup systems.

Do you use online photo hosting like Google photos? Do you use self hosted backup system / network accessed storage? How many backups do you have in total? Do you split by medium and location?

Apologies if there is such a question on lemmy already.

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[-] franzbroetchen@feddit.org 2 points 3 days ago

I use a self-written tool to extract my images and videos from Apple Photos and back them up incrementally as files and directories using Borg Backup.

Using this approach I retain full ownership over my data without having to look for alternatives to Apple Photos, which I really enjoy using.

As a result, I have a "live" copy on my iPhone/Mac/iCloud, a backup on my NAS and a remote Borg Backup repository in a data center.

[-] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago

As a fellow Apple photos user, why do you enjoy using Apple photos, and can you describe any organizational customizations you have made?

[-] franzbroetchen@feddit.org 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Sure! There're actually a couple of things I like:

It's actually one of the few apps that still work like a traditional photo management app: It works on the base of a file-based library that has synchronization added on top. This enables me to freely move my library around, easily create backups of it or even reverse-engineer it. I'm aware there are brilliant foss apps like DigiKam (KDE/Linux) but they lack other aspects like synchronization and are not as tightly integrated.
I'm still able to be somewhat independent on Apple: Since the library is file-based and I can extract my images using either my own tool or one of the tools available on GitHub, I can easily migrate away from apple should they start doing fishy things.
Privacy-wise Apple seems to be one of the better options: Metadata like face recognition are computed locally on-device. I know there are more privacy oriented options like Ente, but their feature-set is not quite as mature as I need it.
I just really like the apps: They're well-integrated, easy to use and I like the editing capabilities. I also like the way they handle edited photos etc.

Organization-wise there's nothing special. The only thing I do is to organize my images into albums.

To sum it up: It's highly subjective but for my workflow it's a good mix of autonomy and still good user experience.

this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025

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