Adding my 2 cents on how I approach storing important family photos:
1. Minimize footprint. Keep only the photos that matter; this usually ends up being the ones with you or a loved one in the picture. I spent a weekend consolidating and reduced all my photos for the last 20 years down to 15GB.
2. Use 1 consumer-grade service like Google Photos for easy day-to-day access and sharing; just makes life easier for you and your loved ones to access memories on-demand. This can be substituted with any privacy-friendly alternative or young service like Stingle.
3. Use 1 business-grade storage solution for an off-site backup. Business-grade is critical b/c it enhances the relationship and SLA the provider gives you. I use AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive; it's free to upload, cheap to store ($0.00099/GB/month), and a bit pricey to retrieve ($0.09/GB for egress). This is my last-resort/lifeline if everything else goes wrong and I need to get my data again. To save on per-file upload fees, I zip up pictures by album or year and use 7Zip or Keka to encrypt the zip with a password using AES-256 for added privacy. Also remember, AWS is creating at least 3 copies of your data across 3 AZs in one region!
4. Keep a copy of the pictures at home on an NAS, hard drive, or better yet your computer if you have the space. I already use Time Machine to auto backup my entire Mac on an external drive so this gives me in total 2 copies of my pictures (one on laptop and one on time machine backup).
In total this gives me 6 total copies of my pictures:
- 1x Off-site Google Photos
- 3x Off-site AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive
- 1x On-site Laptop
- 1x On-site Laptop's Time Machine Backup
I'm not too concerned if one service provider loses my pics or revokes my access; plenty more copies!
Please remember this only works if you religiously follow step 1. This will be an expensive and almost impractical setup if you enjoy holding onto 5TB+ worth of photos.
Okay but how does this relate to the topic? Could you swap this product for the one you currently use for the second point, is that what you're saying? You seem to be advertising for a Google alternative in a thread about encrypted open source photo storage? I'm confused.
1. Minimize footprint. Keep only the photos that matter; this usually ends up being the ones with you or a loved one in the picture. I spent a weekend consolidating and reduced all my photos for the last 20 years down to 15GB.
2. Use 1 consumer-grade service like Google Photos for easy day-to-day access and sharing; just makes life easier for you and your loved ones to access memories on-demand. This can be substituted with any privacy-friendly alternative or young service like Stingle.
3. Use 1 business-grade storage solution for an off-site backup. Business-grade is critical b/c it enhances the relationship and SLA the provider gives you. I use AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive; it's free to upload, cheap to store ($0.00099/GB/month), and a bit pricey to retrieve ($0.09/GB for egress). This is my last-resort/lifeline if everything else goes wrong and I need to get my data again. To save on per-file upload fees, I zip up pictures by album or year and use 7Zip or Keka to encrypt the zip with a password using AES-256 for added privacy. Also remember, AWS is creating at least 3 copies of your data across 3 AZs in one region!
4. Keep a copy of the pictures at home on an NAS, hard drive, or better yet your computer if you have the space. I already use Time Machine to auto backup my entire Mac on an external drive so this gives me in total 2 copies of my pictures (one on laptop and one on time machine backup).
In total this gives me 6 total copies of my pictures:
- 1x Off-site Google Photos
- 3x Off-site AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive
- 1x On-site Laptop
- 1x On-site Laptop's Time Machine Backup
I'm not too concerned if one service provider loses my pics or revokes my access; plenty more copies!
Please remember this only works if you religiously follow step 1. This will be an expensive and almost impractical setup if you enjoy holding onto 5TB+ worth of photos.