Remote backing up of iPhoto library

[RogerS]

I've been looking at an alternative remote backup solution for our respective iPhoto libraries. We have local backups but in the event of a major total loss of the house, also back up to another hard drive remotely in the workshop. Where we're moving to, I don't (at the moment) have any 'remote' facility and so I've been looking into other possibilities. At least for the short term.

It is not possible to use any sort of cloud to backup an iPhoto library using software such as SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. Which is a real shame as both programs work very well at doing incremental backups. OK..it may take sometime to do the original backup but I'd argue that time was not of the essence in this scenario. Nor the time to restore. Generally one would be restoring and backing up to a local hard drive. We are looking at effectively Disaster Recovery of the iPhoto libraries.

So, one thought was a kludge with a car battery, solar panel for recharging, small inverter and the existing set-up (albeit using wi-fi and not Ethernet as i do now) and all stuck in a waterproof box out in the garden. Not very elegant.

A more techie solution would be to buddy up with another Mac user who has some spare space on their Mac that they could partition off to act as the remote destination volume and I could offer the same.

Or I get hold of a cheap secondhand Mac Mini, do the initial backup here and then send it off to someone who can plug it into their network. Bit tricky as if they don't have screen and keyboard then local management would be tricky.

Any thoughts ?

 

[Doug]

Aren't your photos automatically sent to the I-cloud?
I appreciate I know bugger all about computers but I pay 60p a month or so for I-cloud storage for everything I put on my phone or I-pad to be stored.
I figured it was worth it as it was so easy & I didn't have to buy another gizmo.

 

[TrimTheKing]

Would it not just be simpler to buy one of the many 'personal cloud' enabled portable HD/NAS boxes and stick it in your new workshop or outbuilding and use that? Initial backup could be done locally over ethernet for speed then WiFi enabled in remote location after that.

WD do many such devices for relative peanuts, and if you want something with a bit more resilience then Synology NAS/s with RIAD or a bigger (but proportionally more expensive) Qnap, but looking at it it seems Synology are catching them up in terms of quality and features.

Cheers
Mark

 

[RogerS]

Aren't your photos automatically sent to the I-cloud?
I appreciate I know bugger all about computers but I pay 60p a month or so for I-cloud storage for everything I put on my phone or I-pad to be stored.
I figured it was worth it as it was so easy & I didn't have to buy another gizmo.

No, only if you are running Photo ...and I gather that there are limits etc...ie not all plain-sailing.

 

[RogerS]

Would it not just be simpler to buy one of the many 'personal cloud' enabled portable HD/NAS boxes and stick it in your new workshop or outbuilding and use that? Initial backup could be done locally over ethernet for speed then WiFi enabled in remote location after that.

WD do many such devices for relative peanuts, and if you want something with a bit more resilience then Synology NAS/s with RIAD or a bigger (but proportionally more expensive) Qnap, but looking at it it seems Synology are catching them up in terms of quality and features.

Cheers
Mark

Hi Mark

The workshop aka garage is attached to the house and so doesn't have the physical separation that I would really like.

 

[TrimTheKing]

Ah okay, fairy's muff. You need a friend with a good up/down broadband speed to be able to leave it plugged into their router after initial backup. I would offer but my upload speed is pants at 1Mb.

Could you not store it in a firesafe as far from the main building as possible? Could drill a single hole for power and data cabling which should still keep it safe from fire. Otherwise just rent some online space and set up a cron job or similar to send the backup up to that.

Cheers
Mark

 

[RogerS]

Ah okay, fairy's muff. You need a friend with a good up/down broadband speed to be able to leave it plugged into their router after initial backup. I would offer but my upload speed is pants at 1Mb.

But that would only be an issue if I needed to restore, surely?

.... Otherwise just rent some online space and set up a cron job or similar to send the backup up to that.

It needs to be Mac formatted.

 

[TrimTheKing]

Yeah fair point, I think I misread and you were looking for remote storage and would be calling pics down as you looked at them. If it was purely remote storage for use in DR situation then yes shouldn't be a biggie.

Cheers
Mark

 

[Tusses]

keep a mem stick in the car ?

 

[Robert]

How much data are we talking about?

My server backup is around 3.5TB. The server has all our family videos back to the 80's all our music and every picture we have ever taken - scanned negatives and digital camera pictures.
The server also has backups for 3 PC's on it and they get backed up too in that 3.5TB.

Photos account for 1.1TB for scans and RAW images.

 

[RogerS]

How much data are we talking about?

My server backup is around 3.5TB. The server has all our family videos back to the 80's all our music and every picture we have ever taken - scanned negatives and digital camera pictures.
The server also has backups for 3 PC's on it and they get backed up too in that 3.5TB.

Photos account for 1.1TB for scans and RAW images.

Only 60GB or so. But they key is 'remote'...ie not in the same building. if you have your backup and your computers in the same building then when that building catches fire ......

 

[RogerS]

keep a mem stick in the car ?

Yebbut...even if there was a big enough one, I'd still need to remember to do it every day.

 

[Robert]

keep a mem stick in the car ?

Yebbut...even if there was a big enough one, I'd still need to remember to do it every day.

How many pictures do you add in a day? Once a week swap over using 2x 128Gb sticks would do it.

128Gb USB flash drives start at around £20. You can get a reasonably fast Lexar USB3 one for £25.

 

[RogerS]

keep a mem stick in the car ?

Yebbut...even if there was a big enough one, I'd still need to remember to do it every day.

How many pictures do you add in a day? Once a week swap over using 2x 128Gb sticks would do it.

128Gb USB flash drives start at around £20. You can get a reasonably fast Lexar USB3 one for £25.

Nice idea Robert but unfortunately our Macs are USB challenged.

 

[Tusses]

and if you had total loss of your house :shock: .. how important would a couple of photos be !

if you had up to a week ago, I'd say that would be good. and if you took any you Reeeealy wanted to keep, then just back them up the same day.

or are you after a new toy ? :lol:

 

[Robert]

You get 15GB free with a free Google account..

They do compress your image files though - but also claim no loss of quality. Might be enough to fill the disaster recovery role?

 

[RogerS]

You get 15GB free with a free Google account..

They do compress your image files though - but also claim no loss of quality. Might be enough to fill the disaster recovery role?

The way that iPhoto works and is structured means that you can't easily use something like Google. It's not just the photos...that's easy..but the meta data such as title etc. That is separate to the actual jpeg. Many of the photos that my wife has taken are titled with the specific variety of peony. She would be desolate if she lost all that work because she has no easy way of recompiling it.

 

[Robert]

http://www.organizepictures.com/2016/01 ... rom-photos

any help?

Looks like a way to get photos out you can back up anywhere - with metadata.

I use Lightroom which will read all the metadata and give you options as to how you use it so I just searched for iphoto to lightroom and that was one of the results.

I know very little about Apple stuff but the 'locking in' aspect I came across trying to use an early ipad and iphone was something that put me off completely. I may be missing out on something still using PC but I don't find things I'm not permitted to do.... just other problems

 

[RogerS]

Robert, I'm really grateful to you for finding that superb site. bscene-drinkingcheers: :eusa-clap:

The article you linked to is for Photo but the principles are the same for iPhoto and, indeed, I found several links on the site specifically aimed at iPhoto. I'll check out Picasa.

The only slight niggle in moving away from iPhoto is that it is seamlessly integrated with other Apple software such as Mail and Page but that could well be a small price to pay.

 

[Tusses]

The only slight niggle in moving away from iPhoto is that it is seamlessly integrated with other Apple software such as Mail and Page but that could well be a small price to pay.

can you run them in tandem ?

 

[RogerS]

The only slight niggle in moving away from iPhoto is that it is seamlessly integrated with other Apple software such as Mail and Page but that could well be a small price to pay.

can you run them in tandem ?

You could. All the advice in the articles lined to by Robert involve exporting the photos. But it would be such a faff for all future photographs...exporting them everytime etc. Plus double the size of the storage needed since you'll be storing the photos etc twice...once in iPhoto and the other in Picasa/whatever

 

[Rod]

Interesting site Robert and if you delve around Roger there's a feature on iPhoto too.

I store my photos and videos on two external drives from my Mac as well as Photo. I have to delete stuff from Photo reasonably often as videos fill the 1Tb SSD very quickly. Never had any real problems deleting stuff though so I'm surprised by all this.
I use FCPX to create my videos. The videos have to be copied and deleted very often too.
I also store the same stuff on my PC ( and it's external drives) as I use Photoshop on that.
So in effect I have at least 2 copies of original stuff.
I produce DVDs of the videos and best photos each year which get distributed to various relatives so copies are widely spread. I've been doing this since 1973.
I also post, privately, stuff on a YouTube account which invited persons can view.
Photo stream uploads stuff all the time to various Apple devices and you can share to others.

Rod