[carthick1000]

Me and my wife among us use the following:
Devices:

- iPhone 1x
- Android phone 2x
- Linux laptop 2x
- Windows laptop 1x
- Mirrorless cameras 2x

In total about 8 devices and working on different Operating systems. I have tried various options from home server, NAS (Network attached Storage) on Nextcloud and different cloud storage providers like Dropbox, Google and PCloud (This has their servers in Switzerland and governed by EU General Data Protection Regulation). But eventually ended up with the following:

A 2TB Google one subscription
- Both our phones (iOS and Android) have google photos app which synchronises to a common google account
- Any pictures taken in our cameras end up in our laptops which we upload to the same google one account

Hardware storage
- Photos from my wife's work camera have 2 additional copies apart from google one. One in her windows laptop and another in a portable SSD hard drive

Prints
- Every year, me and my wife will sit together and curate an album from that year's photos and print them out. 3 copies. 1 for us here in NL, 1 for my family and 1 for my wife's family living in India
- Additionally we will curate an album with our daughter's pictures alone, around the time of her birthday and the same 3 copy story.


Reasons:

- Google one has the best search with a very good multi device synchronisation
- Physical photos are so special that no advanced technology can come near it (atleast in our case)


Cheers,
Karthik

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by anand.shankar

Slightly off-topic, do we have any good De-Dupe s/w

I use this free software: dupeGuru. Available for Linux, Mac and Windows.

[kozhissery]

Subscriptions
1. OneDrive
2. iCloud
3. iDrive

Personal Folders in laptop and desktop backed-up instantly
Personal Phone to iCloud instantly
All photos (sorted/cleaned) and personal files (apart from OneDrive) in Desktop and Laptop to iDrive once a day (Scheduled to run once a day).

Apart from this all Photos (DSLR+GoPro+Phone after sorting) are copied to 3 external drives occasionally (at least once in 3 months or after some vacation/celebration etc)

[arjungod]

Originally Posted by carthick1000

In total about 8 devices and working on different Operating systems. I have tried various options from home server, NAS (Network attached Storage) on Nextcloud and different cloud storage providers like Dropbox, Google and PCloud (This has their servers in Switzerland and governed by EU General Data Protection Regulation). But eventually ended up with the following:

I have seen that Pcloud has lifetime plan for 500GB for 200 USD.
How was your experience in general with Pcloud?
How is the speed while using it from India?

[carthick1000]

Originally Posted by arjungod

How was your experience in general with Pcloud?
How is the speed while using it from India?

Pcloud works more like Dropbox than Google. They have good synchronisation with multiple devices, but their web user interface and search functions are not as good as Google. This was 1~1.5years ago and I am not sure if they have better interface+search now-a-days.

I do have a Dropbox account for all my Documents/administraton related things (non-photos/videos) and hence stopped using pCloud. I have not used it extensively from outside EU and cannot comment on the speeds back home. But it should work just as good, depending on internet speeds.

[Thad E Ginathom]

I use pCloud. I was sold by the for-life model, despite warning myself that if this company ceases to attract new customers it will die.

I don't know why, but I even impulse-bought additional storage!

I regularly upload batches of 50-100 1920*1080 pics, maybe 50Mb, and that usually goes very well and easily. Sometimes the interface is slow; very occasionally it is barely responsive.

I tried the virtual-drive (I forget what they call it) service and found it hopeless (on Linux). It needs a local buffer, which takes up disk space, and it is a pain to see what has actually been flushed upstream to pCloud and what has not.

Recently they have introduced "backup." I have 2.5TB space there, and have so far only used 27GB. But this is not enough for full-system backup.

I might try it, with a selected limited-size file system and see how it goes, speed-wise. I have to check out the how-to stuff and see how adaptable it is.

pClouds prices seem to be going up --- but there is almost always an offer. Currently, of course, it is Black Friday offer.

Really, I'd love to use one of the services based on rsync-type technology, but have seen a couple of offerings that I cannot afford. The technology means that only changes are uploaded, and this does not just mean whole-file changes. This means that incremental backup is relatively small, and that is what one pays for. But of course, the initial backup is large. It is also not for novices, as it takes involved and informed configuration. I could cope with that... but it does add to the getting-around-to-it status!

[arjungod]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

I use pCloud. I was sold by the for-life model, despite warning myself that if this company ceases to attract new customers it will die.

I also got interested after seeing the for life model (which a very few others are offering) and the Black friday deal of 500GB for 140USD looks good.Additionally saw some good reviews for Icedrive which also offers a for life model with a better User interface.

[sachind]

I use a local NAS (DS918+ from Synology) as I want to keep my photos private. The NAS has apps for iOS and Android which not only backup the local photos but support viewing photos from the NAS with Google like features such as face recognition, location grouping etc. I do a daily backup to local disks and a monthly backup offsite to the AWS glacier service which costs around 2$ per month...

[saket77]

Question to Google Drive users- How to download multiple pictures from G Drive to iPhone. I see the options- 'Send a copy' and 'Open in' when selecting a single picture file (through which you can save a file), but no such options when selecting multiple files.

[carthick1000]

Originally Posted by saket77

Question to Google Drive users- How to download multiple pictures from G Drive to iPhone. I see the options- 'Send a copy' and 'Open in' when selecting a single picture file (through which you can save a file), but no such options when selecting multiple files.

From the Google drive app itself, I don't think it is possible to select and download to device directly.

You have to do it from the iOS files app. If you don't see google drive in your files app, you have to click on the three dots on right top > Edit and then enable Google drive.

Bug: If you have privacy screen enabled (Face ID) for google drive, then iOS files app cannot access the drive app contents. So this needs to be disabled.

Related links:
https://techwiser.com/save-multiple-...-drive-iphone/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251758217

[saket77]

Originally Posted by carthick1000

From the Google drive app itself, I don't think it is possible to select and download to device directly.

You have to do it from the iOS files app. If you don't see google drive in your files app, you have to click on the three dots on right top > Edit and then enable Google drive.

Wow! Thanks for the post. And nice integration of G Drive with 'Files' app.

[RunGaDa]

I use the good old way of using two external hard disk drives. In one it’s catergorized by place, in the second one, by date / month-year.
And I use an index with three lettered prefixes for each picture. For example my Hyderabad pictures will have prefix HYD-5773.
I always preset this in my DSLR every time I start fresh shoots.
This helps with multiple ways to quickly look for a picture, keeps pictures of a category together.
Hope this helps.
And always keep second backup at a different place.
See, old IT habits die hard.

[amit1agrawal]

I am lazy at organizing my photos & have them spread across external drives. I am not a fan of storing the photos on Cloud drives; the regular monthly/yearly subscription fees are high IMO, especially for Indians.
I brought two rugged SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD with up to 2 Meter Drop Protection with IP55 Water/dust Resistance; one 500GB & other 1TB. I also have two external HDDs both 500 GB capacity. I keep my important photos backed in 1 external HDD & one in a Rugged external SSD. This way if one backup fails (Chances with external HDD are high) the other one is preserved.
I do not take my external drives outside. They are safely placed in my cupboard. I take them in about once every 6 months to check their working condition.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Organisation of photos

I use a simple system: time, date, event/subject.

Directories by year, YYYY, contain directories by month, YYYY-MM. These sometimes contain subdirectories for a trip, more often, I keep the names that come off the camera which include the date.

So my current month, a quiet one with few concerts, looks like this:

15021105-B-Ananthakrishnan
15121107-Garden
15221108-Brindha
15221109-01-Vedavalli-Birthday-phone-shots
15221109-01-Vedavalli-Birthday-Whatsapp
15321112-Sumithra
15521117-Aditiya-Madhavan

The initial characters are meaningless to me, but will change out of order if I format the camera card. I just edit the directory name. I try to do reformat only at new month. I don't delete from the camera until I need that space so that's sort-of another backup!

Next month will be busy with multiple concerts per day.

I don't allow spaces or odd characters in file or directory names. I want to be able to use any command without that giving me problems.

New Thing

Digikam. I will keep the same directory structure, but it throws in facial recognition. Trouble is, it looks like a very big task to get my collection up to date on that.

[Ashtoncastelino]

Just thought It's better to share than never. I had Pre-ordered Nothing Phone 1 and have been using it since July 2022. Me having the itch to unleash the full potential of the device , rooted it even though it was under warranty. Installed Magisk and sideloaded modules that make Google play services think my Phone is Google Pixel 6 Pro. Few Google Pixel devices have unlimited photo storage at original quality and fortunately Pixel 6 Pro is one of them.
This is how I got unlimited Google Photo Storage for free.

For the people who do not want to root their main device like me, Having a secondary android device and rooting it helps. You can use apps like Resilio Sync or SyncThing to sync the photos from your main phone to the secondary phone via Local Area Network. Once the secondary phone gets the photos from your main phone, it will then upload to google photos unlimited since it's detected as a Pixel 6 Pro. I've uploaded more than 200GB ever since this hack and never been more happier. I also make it a point to delete the backed up photos from both the devices by just using the "Free up space" option in google photos. It's so seamless to find/share/send photos in Google Photos.

Regards
Ashton Castelino