When I started my digital library back in 2001 I actually named each picture with what was there, toyed around with Picasa but realized that the only primary clustering that was scalable was the grouping of photos around time/event. Shortly I expect to look into the Synology Moments app to see if I can have access to the same goodies that Google Photos offers (automatic photo categorization. That logical structure has evolved across a number of years and approaches (CDs, DVDs, External Disks, rsync, Syncthing + Backblaze and now Synology+Backblaze). Current I follow /TIMELINE/YEAR/FamilyMember/Month/Day - Event with family photos landing in /TIMELINE/YEAR/Photos/Month/Day - Event. When it comes to logically organizing data my key insight is that you have to organize stuff in folders named after the dates. Synology Drive in our laptops syncing to and from the NASĭS File and DS Photo in Android devices for ongoing backups My setup has evolved over the years as my budget to tackle the challenge also grew (note: I use this approach not only for photos but for all my families files).Ĭentralized storage in a Synology NAS (backing up files to Backblaze B2) Very easy to set up btw!Īpple Photos is backed up to iCloud, but if I do use any of my ios devices for serious photography, I make sure to add them to my Lightroom system as well. Hyper Backup work a lot like Apple's Time Machine, so if I accidentally delete some photos I can always get them back from Hyper Backup.

The Synology NAS then does a daily online backup of all my photos (and the Samsung mirror image) to an Amazon S3 bucket using Synology's Hyper Backup. I then use CCC (Carbon copy cloner) to do a mirror image of my Samsung Evo to the Synology NAS as well.

When I've completed most of the post-processing on my latest photos I move them from the Samsung Evo to the Synology NAS from within Lightroom (so everything is included in the same catalog). I keep my Lightroom catalog on a 1TB Samsung Evo 860 along with my latest photos, but my photo archive (200,000+ photos that spans 2 decades) are stored on a 24TB Synology NAS (DS918+) that I connect to my laptop with AFP. I use Adobe Lightroom Classic for serious photography and Apple Photos for casual point and shoot.

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