The Ultimate Solution for Backing Up Photos to NAS

Why store on NAS?

I have always been reluctant to use some cloud photo albums or network disk services to back up and save my photos. There are two main reasons:

1. I don't want my privacy to be watched by these service providers. The photos and videos you upload will definitely be scanned by these service providers. Even if there are no private photos, I can't accept my privacy being violated like this.
2. I don’t want my data to be hijacked. After all, the data is in someone else’s hands. If someone wants to run away or raise the price one day, you have no way to stop them.

Too much of a try

Synology moments

At first, I installed Synology on my NAS, so I used Synology's own moments to synchronize photos. After using it for a while, some problems occurred:

1. moments app Almost no updates, the experience is not bad, but definitely not good, my wife always complains ios This doesn't work, that doesn't work
2. It is tied to Synology, because it must be used with the moments server, so you don't have any other choice, which makes me feel passive

It seems that Synology has phased out moments and released a new Synology photos. I haven't tried it because Synology hardware is still too expensive. I have switched to Unraid.

PhotoPrism - Super easy to use

Have to say PhotoPrism It is really easy to use. What I like most about it is its strong compatibility. You only need to give it a directory and it will process all the photos in it and search in various dimensions. It is really useful for a large number of photos.

But the problem is that PhotoPrism only has a server, and I have to figure out how to sync photos to NAS.

PhotoSync - Not worth the price

The function of this app is OK, but its UI and interaction are a bit old-fashioned. I need to use a special app to synchronize the data. The most important thing is that I have to pay to use it. I don't think it's worth it, so I give up.

Nextcloud - Mobile app is terrible

Nextcloud As a network disk, it is very useful. I tried to use the mobile version of Nextcloud to synchronize my photo albums. But after I installed the Android app, it crashed when I connected to the reversed https URL. It was completely unusable. I gave up.

Alist + Pho + Rclone + PhotoPrism - The Ultimate Solution

What I like most about this solution is that the various links are not coupled. Removing any one link will not affect the other links. Everyone can completely replace a part of it according to their own preferences.

Alist

Official Website: https://alist.nn.ci/zh/
Responsible for mapping various available storagewebdav, supports various cloud disks, network disks and local storage 

Pho

Official Website: https://pho.tools/
Responsible forwebdavUpload photos toAlistThe good thing about the mapped storage is that it supports uploading after encryption, so that a secondary backup can be made on the network disk, providing an extra layer of data insurance while avoiding privacy leaks.
And I can use this app directly on my phone to browse my local and uploaded photos. The UI and interaction of this app are very good. I can use it directly instead of the system's own album. 

Rclone

Official Website: https://rclone.org/
Responsible forAlistofwebdavMap to the NAS file system to feed photos to PhotoPrism

PhotoPrism

Official Website: https://www.photoprism.app/
The ultimate "masterpiece", all the photos backed up by all the devices in the family are finally fed here, even if there are massive photos, you can quickly index the photos you want to find based on it 

Final result

Usually browse and upload on mobile phone

usePhoBrowse local and recently uploaded photos

Find and browse photos from the past

According to the informationPhotoPrismJust search

Alist + rclone + pho + photoprism This is just the solution I chose. In fact, this solution is very compatible. Almost any of them can be removed or replaced and still work perfectly. You can simplify the solution without any of the functions.
I chose this solution to take into account my other needs, such as playing movies on the network disk with plex, backing up to the network disk with secondary encryption, etc.

The photo backup solution is too complicated. My Android phone photo album backup is syncting + PhotoPrism (display). TureNAS nfs shares a folder to store photos, and the NAS is responsible for the backup.
If you have a public IP or FRP at home, you can synchronize remotely. If not, you can also synchronize via WIFI LAN when you get home.