I have been using iPhoto / Photos for 15 years or so and have about 200g of photos split into 3 libraries - 1) Work, 2) Personal/family, 3) Hiking - I keep the 'work' library on my MBP and the other libraries on an external 'media' drive - it is easy to back up the libraries automatically with CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner) using a folder back up. Backup of NAS devices have been there in Backup Exec since 8.6 days. It is not supposed to be a part of HCL, as we are not discussing about hosting a backup to disk folder on this NAS box. For B2D hosting, there is a b2d test tool which can be used to analyze compatibility. How to back up Photos Library to an external hard drive. Open Finder Pictures (or wherever your images are) Select your Photos Library, the folder you want to back up, or individual files. Drag and drop the file onto your external hard drive in the left column.

This means, when you take new photos, those photos will be transferred automatically to the NAS. There is no need to copy the photos manually. Open the Synology Photos app on your phone and tap on More. Click on Photo Backup Not Enabled. Tap on Enable Photo Backup. Allow Moments app to access the storage. Click on Choose folder. In the last couple of days I was looking for a cheap and secure way to backup my entire Mac Photos library. Apple limits its iCloud storage to 5GB which obviously isn’t enough to backup your entire holiday photos that you collected over the past few years.

DIY: Backing up your photos on your NAS

Google’s cloud storage for photos, which used to be unlimited, stopped being so this month. Instead, you only get 15GB of free storage, which isn’t a lot for folks who have lots of photos and videos.

If cloud isn’t your thing any more, there is always a network attached storage (NAS) drive that you can set up at home to store your precious data on your phone and PC.

I recently powered up a Synology NAS – the DS220+ – to have my photos and videos safely backed up at home.

Here are some of the steps I took:

Using Synology Moments

The fastest way to backup your images and videos on your smartphone and the PC is to use Synology’s Moments with the NAS.

The Moments app will organise the uploaded image files into People, Subjects, Places, Tags and Videos. You can also view images from a particular phone using the Folder View.

To back up from your smartphone,

1. Log into your NAS via a Web browser.

2. Install the Moments app via Synology’s Package Center.

3. After firing up Moments, create a folder for your phone backup.

4. On your Android phone, download and install the Synology Moments app.

5. Fill up your login details in the phone app.

6. Choose how the photos are to be transferred over to the NAS. Make sure you choose the DCIM folder on your phone (usually where your camera shots are saved) to be backed up.

7. Tap on More and tap on Photo Backup to start the backup.

To back up from your PC,

1. Complete the steps as above for the Moments app on the NAS

2. Download, install and run Synology Drive Client on the PC

3. Choose Backup Task

4. Log into the NAS server on your PC

5. Select the backup source in the PC, such as your “Pictures” folder. You can choose multiple image folders to backup.

6. Point the destination of the backup to My DriveMoments and click Next

7. Select the backup mode as Scheduled backup

8. Choose the time and day to backup

9. Confirm the settings and click Done

10. Run the backup for the first time.

You will be able to see two folders, Mobile and PC, in the Moments app on the NAS in folder view.

Back up your files using the Synology Drive Server service. PHOTO: Wilson Wong

Direct backup using Synology Drive Server Service

If you want a bit more control and features, then you can do a direct file backup using Synology’s Drive Server Service.

This may be useful for avid photographers using DSLR and mirrorless cameras, who have their work saved on a PC.

The easiest way is to identify the folders and set a timed schedule to back them up to the NAS automatically. You can back up your work files too using this method.

1. Log into your NAS machine via a Web browser.

2. Create a Shared Folder named Photo Backup under Control Panel > Shared Folder. Make sure users have read/write access rights. Find an appropriate name for the folder if you wish to save both image and work files into the NAS.

3. Install Synology Drive Server on the NAS via the Package Center.

4. Under Team Folder in the left panel, highlight Photo Backup folder and “enable” it using the Enable button at the top. This will ensure the folder is visible to the client app on the PC.

5. Download and Install Synology Drive Client on the PC.

6. Log into the NAS server via the client app in step 5.

7. Select the backup sources (the photo folder in the PC such as your “Pictures” folder). You can choose multiple image folders to backup.

8. Select the backup mode as “Scheduled backup”. Choose the time and date to backup.

9. Confirm the settings and click Done.

GALLERY

There are plenty of options for storing your photos online. They come with various capacities, capabilities, and price points. But what if you want to have the power of accessing your image library anywhere, and potentially sharing it with others, without a monthly fee or needing to worry about how private a particular cloud service really is? The good news is that it is easier than ever to set up your own private cloud for photo sharing. As a bonus, you’ll have the infrastructure to get remote access to other portions of your data. We’ll show you how.

A Quality NAS is the Best Place to Start

Backup Photos Library To Nas Hard Drive

Whatever server you share from needs to be reliable and always ready. As a practical matter, NAS units are optimized for that, while consuming less power than leaving a more traditional PC server running. They also come pre-loaded with the type of software and remote access capability that makes things a lot easier. So, while you can mirror the steps we show here using an always-on PC, we’ll be using a purpose-built network server. In this case, we’re using a Synology DS-1517+ 5-bay unit (See on Amazon), that also features 10-Gigabit connectivity for high-speed access to our photo library locally. However, you can use just about any current model NAS from Synology, or from QNAP or Netgear, among others. We’ll be using Synology’s new Moments application, but Qfoto from QNAP, and ReadyCLOUD from Netgear offer similar functionality for users of those units.

Decide if You Want Your Cloud Server to be your Primary Photo Library

First, you’ll want to decide if your NAS (See on Amazon) is your primary storage for images, or simply a backup copy of the images on your computer. If it will be your primary image library, then you’ll want to make its storage directly accessible from your PC. If not, then you’ll want to use a sync utility, like Synology’s own Drive or an application like Allway Sync or GoodSync to keep it updated.

Plan Out Your Access and Sharing Needs

Next you have some choices about the type of sharing you want to set up. Synology offers three different ways you can get remote access to your photos. The lowest level is simply to share them as folders of files, and use its included WebDAV server to allow you to map them as a drive from a remote computer. But that doesn’t provide any organizational or viewing extras. Photo Station, also an included package, is a robust solution to allow you not just remote access to your photos, but the ability to group them into albums, view them in a variety of ways, share them with other people or publicly, and customize how they will experience your photo gallery. Synology markets Photo Station as being suitable for professional photographers looking to highlight their creations.

Finally, there is a new option, Moments. Moments is more of a personal tool, as it is much weaker at photo sharing with others. But it not only has seamless integration with your mobile devices, but also built-in place, subject, and face-based tagging for quick organization. So if what you want is a substitute for Google Photos or iCloud for your personal photos, Moments is the way to go. If you want to put a public face on your image library, or build a system where you can share with others while also allowing them to contribute, then Photo Station is the better choice.

Setting up Synology’s Photo Station

Like most NAS Packages, Photo Station is easily installed from the Package Manager, and is just as easy to turn on. It relies on Synology’s Media Indexing Service for its organizational capabilities, but has its own permission setup. You can tell it to use the same user accounts as your NAS, or let it create Photo Station-specific users. From within Photo Station you can set up Albums, give them permissions (or share them with a password), and customize the look of your online gallery. Once you have photos in your albums, either by uploading them directly or mapping your photo folder on the NAS to a local drive on your computer and placing files there, you can view your albums by date or by geographic location. You can also tag your images with keywords, or manually tag faces.

Synology Photo Station lets you browse your Albums by Time, Place, or various layouts

One feature that is kind of cool is that Photo Station has Pixlr and Aviary built-in, so you can easily edit any image directly using either of them. Obviously that isn’t a full replacement for Lightroom, Photoshop, or your other favorite powerhouse editor, but particularly if you’re on the road it can be a quick way to make some needed changes to an image before sharing or sending it.

Photo Station provides a variety of sharing options. You can connect it to social media services and share your photos directly to them. Or, it will create a link to a folder you can send to others, either with or without password protection. If you’re sharing as part of a team, you can create user accounts for your other team members, and they can access the full power of Photo Station through their browser or through Synology’s DS Cam mobile app.

To get to Photo Station from outside your local network, you’ll need to either do some DNS magic to provide users with a persistent domain name, or you can register your NAS using Synology’s provided QuickConnect option. With QuickConnect, your NAS gets a web address that allows users to access it without needing to do port forwarding. Once you’ve set that up, Photo Station is accessible at <quickconnect address>/photo, or through the links to specific albums or images that you create for the purpose of sharing them. Since Albums can be nested, it might make the most sense to have one that is your public face (if you want one), and only share access to it and its sub-albums.

Synology Moments: A Personal Cloud

Recently, Synology has addressed a more automatic and more personal system for photo sharing, called Moments. It relies on their new Drive application (think of it as a private version of Google Drive), and allows you to not only quickly add images from your network, but can automatically back up photos you take with your mobile devices. As it adds images, it automatically tags them with place names and even by subject, using similar technology to what Adobe has added to Elements and Lightroom CC, and of course Google does for Photos.

I was pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of the subject tagging in Synology’s Moments, although it did mis-identify a stone house as a church in this case. Like Photo Station, Moments has free mobile apps in addition to its web interface. Currently, Moments is missing many of the features of Photo Station for collaboration and the management of metadata, so it may not be ideal for power users or pros looking to showcase their work, but it is a quick way to create your own private AI-powered photo cloud.

Backup Photos Library To Nas Drive

Caveats Before Setting up Your Own Photo-Sharing Cloud

Backup Photos Library To Nas File

The most obvious caution before setting up your own photo sharing system is to think about what that means for reliability. If you want your images to always be accessible, you’ll need to make sure the combination of your ISP, router, electrical power, home network, and NAS have nearly perfect uptime. In our case, for example, we employ two ISPs with a fail-over router, and battery backups on the router and NAS to help ensure accessibility. Less obvious are the bandwidth constraints. Many ISPs don’t optimize for upload speed. But it is the upload speed from your location to the internet that limits the download or browsing speed of anyone looking at your images.

Backup Photos To Nas

Also, many ISPs, like Comcast, now have data caps on residential accounts. Those caps include both upload and download, so if you have a lot of people accessing your photos, they could cause you to blow through those caps and accrue additional charges. Finally, you are giving the outside world access to your local network. Even using QuickConnect, there is potential exposure. Right now I don’t know of any specific vulnerabilities other than the simple one that hackers can try to log in by brute force trying a variety of possible QuickConnect URLs, but it is one more element you’ll need to make sure stays secure.

The good news is that it is easier than ever to set up your own private cloud for photo sharing, whether just for you or to collaborate with others or showcase your work. All without any monthly fees or the risk of hosting your photos on someone else’s computer.