this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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I currently use Nextcloud and Immich, Nextcloud on iOS is garbage though, it can't auto upload files if they are too big, even with the application open.

Immich is great, but is under very active development, so it could break any time. I take backups of the images and store it in my array, and external HDD and Google Drive (encrypted, nothing I upload to G drive is unencrypted). Immich is stores content in a complicated directory structure that goes 3-4 folders deep, I'm hoping to find something that just uploads all my photos and videos to a single folder or two.

iCloud only gives me 5GB, and it's almost full, and I dont want to pay for G Drive and iCloud+.

Is there another solution I can use to just store photos on my server, that will auto upload from iOS without issue?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Never had any breaks with immich. Immich libary is backuped daily to external provider. Data Retention is managed by them, so I only need to run my scripts.

The libary (upload folder) is the only thing you need to backup. I don't think it is more complicated than any other folder with subfolders. You can always start from zero

I use rclone for automatic backups from my server, Immich included 🐱

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

After posting this I found that you can change the directory structure, but not too sure I want to change it now and break things. I'll set my backup to only include the library folder, I could always run a script to take all the image and video files out and throw them into a single folder for a fresh start of immich or something similar.

I use rclone as well, for uploading to G Drive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You can change the folder structure but I don't think that matters. Rclone your libary folder and that's it. If you want to save some space, exclude thumbs and encoded videos folder. You can take out videos and images if you ever need your backup.

Never had any problems 🌞

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sounds like your nextcloud instance has a low limit for the upload file size. It has to be adjusted in the php settings of your nextcloud server. I set it to 1 GB and have no problem in uploading my videos using auto upload of the nextcloud app.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I set mine to 5G I think but it seems to be a common issue with iOS from what I’ve seen on GitHub. I’ve got a 14 pro and videos are usually really large file sizes which doesn’t help.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

PhotoSync, for a buck per month or 10/year, it can auto upload and sort on a lot of backends. I just use SFTP myself, but there are GDrive, S3, WebDAV... and it auto uploads at night correctly without being open.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Best $20 I spent on the lifetime premium.

PhotoSync isnwyat my family uses. The best feature is the custom file naming scheme.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

This is the way. PhotoPrism on my server and PhotoSync (Premium because I want to keep the original image quality and automated backups) on my Apple devices (iPhones, iPads, etc). Works like a charm. First backups took a while (30k pictures and videos between two phones), around 24 hours or so but after that any new pictures or videos are automatically backed up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I tried this for a while with my 80k iCloud Photo Library and uploading photos from my iPhone to BackBlaze with this app took so incredibly long. I barely backed up anything after one week. And I have gigabit internet!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Well I see it as more of a daily thing to backup my new photos. I can imagine such amount of photos can take a long time ^^'

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Have you looked into syncthing?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use PhotoSync to sync my Apple Photos to my NAS over SMB.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

+1 for PhotoSync to NAS. Rock solid for me - the only backup solution for iPhone that actually gets the job done IMHO.

They upload via sftp and from there move into an organised and viewable photo hierarchy on a mirrored, local NAS drive via PhotoPrism (wholeheartedly recommended). An overnight backup from the NAS then moves them to a European and a US cloud storage with different providers (Backblaze B2 in the US and OVH Cloud Archive storage in Germany).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not an answer to OP; I use iCloud, but I still want my own, external backup of that and have found some good solutions.

I previously used icloudpd which I run from docker and that synced all files to a NAS from where I took backups. It works great and I highly recommended.

However, I recently turned on Advanced Data Protection on iCloud, which disables the API icloudpd relied upon, so now I’m using osxphotos instead. It works just as good.

You’ll have to turn on downloading all originals to your Mac for this to work. Personally I had to buy an external disk and move the photo library on my Mac mini server to it to have enough storage.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Commenting to follow any suggestions that pop up here. iCloud is such a mess for syncing and backing up photos and video.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Not an exact answer but I use Photosync to upload to my PC when on a shared network. It supports a number of protocols so I would see if it can connect to your server.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I use Filen. Not sure if it works with large files however. Filen is E2EE.