Currently my private photo collection contains 30000 files (JPGs + partly also RAW files). This corresponds to a data volume of over 70 GB. This data is stored on my hard disk. Reason enough for a good backup strategy!

For a long time I was looking for an acceptable backup solution on the net. In the beginning, I was more skeptical about cloud-based backup services than I am now. But let’s better start at the beginning. I love photos and since the beginning of the digital photography era I have taken tons of photos. Whether or not they are all necessary is another matter. In any case, I am very interested in preserving these photos for decades.

The “from time to time” backup on external hard disks


What I have been doing for many years is backing up photos and other data to external hard drives. I use a 3.5 inch unit from my favorite manufacturer, Western Digital (WD). The “My Book” hard drive has its own power connector, can be connected via USB, FireWire, and eSATA, and usually sits on the bookshelf. Every now and then (unfortunately too rarely) I make a complete backup of the entire data. I rename the old backups and then move all data to the hard disk again. If this was successful, the old backups are removed. A full backup, which at least provides some security.

Personal Cloud with automatic sync (SyncToy from Microsoft)


At some point I realized that this was not enough for me. I wanted to be able to access my data from anywhere and not have to worry about backups. Three years ago, I bought a network hard drive from Western Digital. The “My Book live” has been sitting behind my sofa ever since and spoils me with great network services. The NAS is visible in the network as a drive and also has a DLNA service thanks to Twonky, which makes it possible to access media files via AV receiver, TV, etc..

But now I have the problem that I have to move the data somehow from my local hard drive to the NAS or to the “Personal Cloud”. On a Mac this can probably be done quite easily with Time Machine – on Windows systems the solution is called “SyncToy”. The free tool from 2009 was developed by Microsoft and is surprisingly not that well known.

The functional principle of SyncToc is “Folder Pair”-based. You can create different folder pairs. For example, I have folder pairs for photos, phone and music. The procedure here is like this:

Left Folder:
The folder to be backed up is selected on the hard drive (e.g. /Photos).
Right Folder:
The destination folder on the NAS or external hard drive is selected (e.g. /Backups/Photos)
SyncToy Action:
Here you can select whether the data should be synchronized (i.e. in both directions), whether it should only be copied / deleted / renamed from left to right (echo) or whether it should only be copied and renamed from left to right (no deletion, mode: Contribute)
Sync Options:
Certain file types can be included or excluded. For my music collection it looks like this: .mp3;.wma;.wav;.mp2;.aac;.m4a;.ogg;.m3u
After that, “Run” can be used to perform the sync and the tool will match both directories according to the selected options. Very casual and confident!

Another nice touch is that the hard drive data can be accessed at any time via smartphone app (My Cloud). Unfortunately, since I do not have the latest My Book live generation, the photo preview function does not work correctly. This would be possible with the “WD Photos” app, but only for photos that are in the public folder. A stupid limitation, which unfortunately clouds the otherwise great impression a bit.

Flickr as a backup tool for your own photo collection?


The answer to the question of whether Flickr alone offers enough security for the photo collection is unfortunately no. Nevertheless, it offers an optional further protection option, albeit unfortunately somewhat limited.

In this case, limited means that Flickr does have a nice tool for backing up photos, flickruploadr. However, the tool works according to the “one-way” principle. New photos in previously defined folders on the local hard drive are automatically uploaded to Flickr. Changes to the local photos (image edits, meta tags, deletions) are not matched once the photos have been transferred to Flickr. Thus, Flickr is quite nice to be able to access one’s own photos from anywhere, but due to the possibly no longer current photo inventory, it is ruled out as the sole backup tool.

Thanks to the high-speed Internet connection from Unitymedia, uploading via flickruplo is very easy.

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