5 ms·

Not that it helps you now, but i also keep all our family photos in the cloud (iCloud in my case), but at the same time i have a small ARM machine at home that

Not that it helps you now, but i also keep all our family photos in the cloud (iCloud in my case), but at the same time i have a small ARM machine at home that keeps a mirror of the iCloud data. That ARM machine also has the responsibility of making backups, local to a USB drive, as well as to another cloud. Not mirrors, but proper versioned backups (as in Restic, Borg, Arq, Duplicacy, Kopia, etc). I also maintain a couple of USB drives with yearly updated mirrors of the entire photo library. The drives are stored at geographically different locations, and surface scanned, updated and rotated yearly. And finally, as a "last ditch recovery", i maintain an archive of M-disc Blu-Ray discs that contain a complete copy of our family photo library. Every year i make an identical set of discs containing the past years photos, and these sets are stored alongside the USB drives. I don't bother archiving documents as everything that is important is stored on government servers anyway, or exists in hardcopy. Also, if every step in my normal 3-2-1 backup scheme has failed and i need to recover from the archive, i probably have bigger issues than retrieving my budget for this years finances.

password4321 4y ago
> I don't bother archiving documents Isn't that 2 or 3 orders of magnitude less space though? I do understand where you're coming from for sure.
- Arch-TK 4y ago
  You have to fuck around with the storage format because by default scanning sofware, even when scanning documents, will basically just take poorly compressed high resolution images. Maybe there's some service which sorts that out for you but so far I have a little webapp which stores an index of paper copies. Once I figure out how to automate scanning, compressing and OCRing documents then I think it will be worth storing digital copies. But for now it works.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    And don't forget adding metadata. I do scan some paper but there's increasingly less of it and I'm likely to need future access to so little of it that it's mostly not worth the trouble.
  - phaer 4y ago
    https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/ https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/ might be of interest here
- ghaff 4y ago
  I do occasionally want to retrieve older documents. As you say, they're smaller and the effort to put individual docs into a "I might want this someday" folder seems more trouble than it's worth. Of course, having a vast sea of basically write-only docs does make finding things harder especially as I don't put as much effort into organizing things any longer.
- 8fingerlouie 4y ago
  I still do a 3-2-1 backup of documents with 2 versioned backups, one at home and one in another cloud provider, just like with photos. The archive however is the recovery if I’m not able to retrieve my normal cloud copy (hacked, ransomware, loss of credentials, etc), I cannot access my local mirror copy (ransomware, dead disk, etc), I cannot access my local backup (dead disk, separate from the mirror disk), and I cannot access my cloud backup either. For all of those things to go wrong a the same time, something major has to happen. Besides, where I live, most required documents (drivers license, passport, birth certificate, tax records, etc) exists in government databases, so all I have at home will be various documents that maybe have sentimental value, but not exactly needed. Furthermore, documents change “frequently” where photos tend to be somewhat more static, so I can archive photos, and maybe get <10% “duplicates” due to later edits, archiving documents will pretty much be a lot of duplicates each year. That being said, I think we have like 1GB documents in total, so it would be easy to fit in the archive.
exitb 4y ago
As a fellow small ARM machine owner, what's your strategy for getting the photos from iCloud? Is there a tool one shouldn't feel weird to give their iCloud credentials to?
- theNJR 4y ago
  I’d like to hear this too
- gwkoehler 4y ago
  i have been using icloudpd for years. there is a docker image that makes it simple to install on my synology. because of 2fa, i have to re-authenticate it from the terminal every couple of months, but that takes one minute. https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_downloader https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...
  - asdff 4y ago
    I tried this but I think my issue is the library is too large. It can pull a few dozen or a hundred or so photos just fine, but then it will time out but not quit out, so I have to babysit the process. Maybe there's a flag I missed in the documentation to retry downloads, but it basically was a nonstarter to me in the state it was in. I think its apples fault though; I can't get a big zip file of icloud data to succesfully download with their website either, it will also time out. Likewise when I try and update the bootcamp drivers on my intel bootcamp machine, I will get 30% of the way there and then it times out. I'd blame my home connection, but from cursory glances at various forums this is apparently a widespread issue with these sort of downloads form Apple.
  - memoryoak 4y ago
    [flagged]
- tokamak-teapot 4y ago
  Old cheap Mac Mini with USB drive attached. Put Photos library on it. Set it to keep all photos locally. Back up that drive elsewhere.

password4321 4y ago

> I don't bother archiving documents Isn't that 2 or 3 orders of magnitude less space though? I do understand where you're coming from for sure.

Arch-TK 4y ago
You have to fuck around with the storage format because by default scanning sofware, even when scanning documents, will basically just take poorly compressed high resolution images. Maybe there's some service which sorts that out for you but so far I have a little webapp which stores an index of paper copies. Once I figure out how to automate scanning, compressing and OCRing documents then I think it will be worth storing digital copies. But for now it works.
- ghaff 4y ago
  And don't forget adding metadata. I do scan some paper but there's increasingly less of it and I'm likely to need future access to so little of it that it's mostly not worth the trouble.
- phaer 4y ago
  https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/ https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/ might be of interest here
ghaff 4y ago
I do occasionally want to retrieve older documents. As you say, they're smaller and the effort to put individual docs into a "I might want this someday" folder seems more trouble than it's worth. Of course, having a vast sea of basically write-only docs does make finding things harder especially as I don't put as much effort into organizing things any longer.
8fingerlouie 4y ago
I still do a 3-2-1 backup of documents with 2 versioned backups, one at home and one in another cloud provider, just like with photos. The archive however is the recovery if I’m not able to retrieve my normal cloud copy (hacked, ransomware, loss of credentials, etc), I cannot access my local mirror copy (ransomware, dead disk, etc), I cannot access my local backup (dead disk, separate from the mirror disk), and I cannot access my cloud backup either. For all of those things to go wrong a the same time, something major has to happen. Besides, where I live, most required documents (drivers license, passport, birth certificate, tax records, etc) exists in government databases, so all I have at home will be various documents that maybe have sentimental value, but not exactly needed. Furthermore, documents change “frequently” where photos tend to be somewhat more static, so I can archive photos, and maybe get <10% “duplicates” due to later edits, archiving documents will pretty much be a lot of duplicates each year. That being said, I think we have like 1GB documents in total, so it would be easy to fit in the archive.

exitb 4y ago

As a fellow small ARM machine owner, what's your strategy for getting the photos from iCloud? Is there a tool one shouldn't feel weird to give their iCloud credentials to?

theNJR 4y ago
I’d like to hear this too
gwkoehler 4y ago
i have been using icloudpd for years. there is a docker image that makes it simple to install on my synology. because of 2fa, i have to re-authenticate it from the terminal every couple of months, but that takes one minute. https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_downloader https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...
- asdff 4y ago
  I tried this but I think my issue is the library is too large. It can pull a few dozen or a hundred or so photos just fine, but then it will time out but not quit out, so I have to babysit the process. Maybe there's a flag I missed in the documentation to retry downloads, but it basically was a nonstarter to me in the state it was in. I think its apples fault though; I can't get a big zip file of icloud data to succesfully download with their website either, it will also time out. Likewise when I try and update the bootcamp drivers on my intel bootcamp machine, I will get 30% of the way there and then it times out. I'd blame my home connection, but from cursory glances at various forums this is apparently a widespread issue with these sort of downloads form Apple.
- memoryoak 4y ago
  [flagged]
tokamak-teapot 4y ago
Old cheap Mac Mini with USB drive attached. Put Photos library on it. Set it to keep all photos locally. Back up that drive elsewhere.