NAS box with cloudlike backup from phones?

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Apr 5, 2016
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Hi all! My wife recently put her iPhone through the wash and discovered only after the fact that her iCloud storage has filled up months prior. We lost lots of photos of our kiddos.

We decided to look into a home NAS box, so we don't have to rely on Apple or Google for this sort of thing.

I'm currently looking at a Western Digital My Home Duo, as it checks both my boxes - RAID array, and automatic backup from phones of both genders. However, reviews indicate that the apps to do the automatic backups suck turds.

Are there any other home NAS boxes out there that will let you set up automatic, "cloud-like" backups from iPhone and Android photos?
 
For iPhone you won't be able to do it directly, you'll have to setup syncing to a computer with the NAS as backup location and enable the wifi syncing in iTunes.
They have iCloud for a reason and don't allow direct mobile backups because they want you to use that.

If you only care about pictures you could use dropbox, amazon prime photos or the like to backup photos/videos (at a monthly cost).
You would need to run the app every now and then so it auto initiates a sync.
 
For iPhone you won't be able to do it directly, you'll have to setup syncing to a computer with the NAS as backup location and enable the wifi syncing in iTunes.
They have iCloud for a reason and don't allow direct mobile backups because they want you to use that.

If you only care about pictures you could use dropbox, amazon prime photos or the like to backup photos/videos (at a monthly cost).
You would need to run the app every now and then so it auto initiates a sync.
If workarounds are required, I can live with that. I just need a way for it to do it's thing without my wife having to remember to do it. WD advertises that kind of iPhone functionality in their app, but again, reviews indicate that I'd best steer clear of that.

I don't want to spend a monthly subscription for capacity in the cloud. I'll use it if it's free, but if I have to pay for storage in any way, I want complete physical control over it.
 
I don't want to spend a monthly subscription for capacity in the cloud. I'll use it if it's free, but if I have to pay for storage in any way, I want complete physical control over it.

Yeahhh..... thats not the way apple works :p the free part or the physical control part.
 
Yeahhh..... thats not the way apple works :p the free part or the physical control part.
Maybe next time my wife does a phone-murder I'll get her an Android phone to replace it.

With the solution you listed though, pretty much any NAS box should work, right? She'd just need to get in the habit of backing her phone up to get computer.
 
DS Photo from Synology has a GeoFence option to backup all your photos just when you are at home (or any set location) or there are more powerful apps like Photosync which manage complete backups from phone and even some DSLR’s
 
If you want to build a NAS and go that route, I totally get it, I just want to mention that Google's "Photos" app has unlimited storage for videos(1080p) and pictures(16mp)
It's Google, so the privacy issues are there, but it works really well and I've seen some articles on the compression and it's virtually nonexistent.
 
If you want to build a NAS and go that route, I totally get it, I just want to mention that Google's "Photos" app has unlimited storage for videos(1080p) and pictures(16mp)
It's Google, so the privacy issues are there, but it works really well and I've seen some articles on the compression and it's virtually nonexistent.
I use Google and don't mind it. My wife, however, uses Apple and takes 40 shots every time she wants to photograph something and then never deletes the ones are doesn't want and fills her iCloud and on occasion puts her phone through the washing machine.

I don't really want to build another computer for NAS purposes - I have too many computers already. A little drive box that I can plug into my router will be sufficient, and I doubt I could build one to match the functionality of a dedicated box for a comparable price point.
 
DS Photo from Synology has a GeoFence option to backup all your photos just when you are at home (or any set location) or there are more powerful apps like Photosync which manage complete backups from phone and even some DSLR’s
Synology seems to be near the top of most review lists. I'll look into those more closely.
 
Thanks for the feedback. Decided to go with a Synology DS216se and an IronWolf 4TB to start, will add in another 4TB for mirrored RAID in the near future.

Synology's suite of apps and add-ins were the clincher for me. =)
 
Mine will arrive Thursday. I don't predict any troubles configuring my own backups, but I'm gonna be a fish out of water when it comes to my wife. Her phone, unfortunately, is not the only Apple product she uses... XD
 
Mine will arrive Thursday. I don't predict any troubles configuring my own backups, but I'm gonna be a fish out of water when it comes to my wife. Her phone, unfortunately, is not the only Apple product she uses... XD
That is fine. The Synology boxes can also be setup as Time Machine hosts if you have any Macs. Software config is really easy and fairly intuitive.
 
Nextcloud is what you're looking for. Opensource software, similar to dropbox, and has iphone/android apps to sync directly to it. I have it setup to push all my pics/videos to the server as soon as they are taken. Works fantastic, plus has a nice web console and also desktop apps.
 
Nextcloud is what you're looking for. Opensource software, similar to dropbox, and has iphone/android apps to sync directly to it. I have it setup to push all my pics/videos to the server as soon as they are taken. Works fantastic, plus has a nice web console and also desktop apps.
Could I use it in conjunction with the Synology box?
 
Nextcloud is what you're looking for. Opensource software, similar to dropbox, and has iphone/android apps to sync directly to it. I have it setup to push all my pics/videos to the server as soon as they are taken. Works fantastic, plus has a nice web console and also desktop apps.

+1 on Nextcloud, I run it myself and it works great. Takes a while to set up, but if you know what you are doing (I got there eventually) once you have it running it gives you a lot of flexibility. The Android apps work quite well and its nice knowing that no one is peeking at your files.

I have Nextcloud running on an Ubuntu VM that maps my FreeNAS VM to the data storage, not sure you want to set up another server - are you running a Linux server somewhere? Or if you have an ESXi box you can download Nextcloud appliances to make setup even easier.
 
+1 on Nextcloud, I run it myself and it works great. Takes a while to set up, but if you know what you are doing (I got there eventually) once you have it running it gives you a lot of flexibility. The Android apps work quite well and its nice knowing that no one is peeking at your files.

I have Nextcloud running on an Ubuntu VM that maps my FreeNAS VM to the data storage, not sure you want to set up another server - are you running a Linux server somewhere? Or if you have an ESXi box you can download Nextcloud appliances to make setup even easier.

Yea I set it up on ubuntu to force myself to start picking up linux, since I've been doing IT/devops using windows for many years. I have it sitting behind my windows WAF box, MFA setup and have it storing the data on a pre-existing windows share mounted in fstab (Share is hosted on my freenas server). That way my windows boxes can access the shares directly on my network without having to open the app.
 
The Nextcloud site is so full of marketing BS that I can barely find out anything about it. Does it run on Windows? Honestly that site is so offensive that I'm tempted to ignore the product, no matter how useful it may be.
 
The Nextcloud site is so full of marketing BS that I can barely find out anything about it. Does it run on Windows? Honestly that site is so offensive that I'm tempted to ignore the product, no matter how useful it may be.

Welcome to the new world of company web sites, with lots of flashy moving bullshit. Company I work at just did a full redesign and created similar non-user friendly UI that management seems to drool over.....

Get used to it, they are all moving in that direction. Go look at any of the big tech companies sites. Any site that doesn't look like that is considered 'outdated' from a company that can't keep up with technology....



When you hit sites like that, just scroll through the marketing garbage to the bottom. They typically have all the site links statically placed there, including downloads/admin/user guides. Here's a link to the admin guide, and yes it runs on windows.
https://nextcloud.com/install/#instructions-server
 
Thanks for the advice guys. I got my phone backing up my photos with DS Cloud. I tried Nextcloud but got hung up somewhere and just tried DS Cloud rather than trying to figure it out. =P

My PCs both have the NAS drive mapped, and my wife's Mac is set up for Time Machine backups - all that's left is to get her some storage she can access from from her OS and get DS Cloud to start backing up her photos from her phone.
 
I have a WD drive (pr4100 pro model) but their mycloud app works on all their current drive.

I have the WD MyCloud app installed on my iPhone and it automatically uploads all my photos every time I connect to WiFi.

No workarounds, it just works.

I had a Synology NAS before. Synology’s nas software is great but their mobile phone apps (especially Photostation) are buggy and unreliable. The most annoying thing about the Photostation app is that they claim it will upload automatically in a similar fashion to the WD app but it would only upload whenever you open the app.

Basically the Synology has better software on the NAS and WD has better software for the devices you want backed up.
 
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