Best practices backing up photos, live photos and videos from iphones to a hard drive

Lounge
,
1

Hello,
I am wondering how those of you shooting on iphones backup the images to your PC or NAS.
I am not having any luck doing it over USB (iTunes crashes as soon as I connect the phone; if I do that using Windows built-in interface the transfer interrupts in few minutes; Linux/digiKam can’t even connect to the phone)
I have used Syncthing and OneDrive on Android but while the first one isn’t available for iOS the second one does not backup live photos (they are basically a pair of name.HEIC and name.MOV, onedrive loses the MOV one)
iCloud is very slow and I am not sure if it remembers which ones I have already synced in case I keep the original on the phone still).
I don’t have a Mac.

Any ideas would be helpful.

2

Set up a NextCloud instance, either locally or on the internet. The app can automatically upload all the photos to it’s storage, then you can use whatever tooling (rsync, WebDAV, etc) to pull them onto your computer or NAS.

1 Like
3

Will it work on an iphone though?

4

On my gf’s iPhone 8, it offers to upload them.

5

Is that the one?

I guess I will have to build back end for it which I am okay with. I don’t need an internet access, if it works on home network it will be just fine

6

That is the one, yes!

7

Thank you, Mica. I will start digging towards setting up a NextCloud instance at home. The Apple and Microsoft sh…t gives me anxiety. Sorry for my French.

8

All my Iphones, Ipad photos and videos (taken or received) are backed up on Icloud. So no need for another backup.

If I want to download photos or videos on my windows PC to make family or travel photobook or diaporama, I use the Windows Icloud app. I select the photos or videos regarding the project in the project directory, merge with photos and videos from my cameras on the basis of date taken, cull , organise, generate book or diaporama, backup the project as a whole.
Simple
I don’t perceive the need for other backup, sync and so on. But perhaps I am wrong.

9

Some don’t use iCloud and don’t want to use it.

10

iCloud is okay until it gets hacked or Apple breaks it, both of which happened before.

1 Like
11

I don’t mind! I neither have artistic or compromising photos that could be robbed. Neither sensitive data

I don’t mind either! All my valuable family or travel
photos are copied to my PC.

Naturally, if I was an organisation willing share sensitive data between collaborators, or if I was paranoid, or if I was a geek, I would install nextcloud.
Until it gets hacked despite safety allegation by devs.

12

Thank you for the idea. I have considered it. I already have more than a terabyte of images and the collection keeps growing though. Signing up for iCloud seems like a money pit to me. Especially considering that I only need a seamless way to transfer files to my hard drive. I also don’t want to be married with Apple. I do enjoy their products but what if I want to enjoy somebody else’s in future?

13

Its like for Digital asset management, difficult to divorce yes.
You can be married to Nextcloud if you prefer or other. it’s a question of feeling.
Make the best choice for you :grinning:

14

I just noticed that neither iCloud nor Dropbox transfer live photos properly. They seem to save HEIC/JPEG only while the MOV part gets lost. If it is a limitation of their API Nextcloud probably won’t work either. I might have to figure out why transfer over USB get interrupted.

15

I am looking at this option now.

Looks like it works over ssh.

1 Like
16

I was going to recommend syncthing that has solved all my problems of back-up from my phone but… yes, I have an android (google pixel 3a) and I didn’t know that syncthing is not available on iphones… that’s a shame because for me it has become a perfect and painless solution.