So I’m looking to disconnect myself from Google and their tracking (as much as possible) and I was thinking about installing GrapheneOS on my Pixel phone. I mostly use my phone for Lemmy, Signal, NewPipe and taking photos. The last one is my biggest bother at the moment. The Google Photos environment is so convenient - I take a photo, it uploads it to my Google Photos collection, and after a while, it deletes it from my phone to clear space, keeping only the cloud backup. Is there a functionality like this disconnected from Google that I would be able to implement on my GrapheneOS phone? I’m looking to invest in the Proton environment (mainly Mail and Drive) so I could use that for storage. Cheers
Nextcloud, as mentioned, is a great option but does require a bit of work, albeit not much. I would recommend a Synology server. They’re fantastically simple and this was my approach after trying Nextcloud. I did this to divorce myself from Google. Synology has many mirrored services
But it’s a more costly option correct? Because rather than using an old machine, I would have to purchase a $500+ machine from them.
It is expensive but trust me Synology DSM is awesome and beatiful and it works really well.
second/third this. synology nas’s are great! I’ve been running one for almost a decade now. They run a good line between being very powerful and very user friendly so you don’t have to be super technical to get them working. To a large extent, they can almost be completely plug and play, depending on what you’re looking for.
A single bay “J” model should be around $200 including a 4tb drive. You can achieve a lot with that, especially if your focus is automated photo backup
Do you keep an offline backup of your Synology NAS drive? In case it’s disk craps out.
I’ve been using Immich. Very useful and easy for non techies to use. I know it says beta software, and it is; but it is more reliable than Lemmy…
VM on a Proxmox host, running Rocky Linux. 4G Ram, 2CPU, sshfs to NAS for picture storage.
Sshfs to Nas? Does that mean you have a persistent ssh session open from your host and are using it as a file system to a self hosted Nas at your home? Or did I misunderstand that?
it deletes it from my phone to clear space, keeping only the cloud backup
One copy of of anything isn’t a backup, it’s a move. Yes, in this case, Google is doing its own backups but you’re giving them all the trust and control.
Immich! I’ve been using it for a while and it’s amazing
I replaced Google Photos with a Synology NAS + Synology Moments (app). It handles the backup from my phone, organizes the images, has facial recognition, object recognition, etc. Object recognition was REMOVED from the newer Photos app, but Synology is apparently bringing that feature back this year.
You can clear up backed up photos from your phone through the Moments app (not sure about the other Photo apps from Synology), but you’ll still want to have an actual backup solution for what’s on your NAS.
How much did you pay for your Synology setup? What is it? Do you have an offline backup?
I’ve got the DS920+, and don’t recall how much I paid for it as it was a few years ago. I’ve since upgraded the HDDs as my needs grow, and it’s as easy as either adding a new one to an empty bay.
I have several forms of backups, including a daily HDD connected to the NAS via USB, a monthly off site backup that’s kept outside of my home, and cloud backups.
Cheers for that. I’ve cut the cord from Google Photos without a solid replacement and it’s been… pretty miserable tbh.
I’ll look into setting up a Synology NAS, as it seems to be a relatively inexpensive solution moving forward (Proton is nowhere near what I’m looking for feature-wise and other self-hosted foss solutions aren’t really there yet afaict).
Do you have an easy access to your Synology Moments library from outside of your home network?
If you’re paranoid about hackers like I am, you can set up a cert based VPN, lock down all ports, and use the VPN client to access your NAS from anywhere.
Bonus if you have fiber, as upload to internet from home is as fast as download. That means fast download from your NAS.
