So, the saga kicked off when Google dropped the bomb: the era of free unlimited original quality photo backups was ending post-2021. Suddenly, the haven of storing memories was under threat, with the looming prospect of paid plans once the 15GB free tier reached its limit. It seems like a no-brainer to leap to the 100GB tier. But reality hit hard. High-end mobiles and their hefty original quality photos and videos quickly devoured that 100GB limit, nudging me towards another tier upgrade. It became crystal clear - reliable storage comes with a price tag. That’s when I decided to embark on a quest to explore alternative cloud storage providers offering both reliability and affordability.
Cloud Wanderlust
I tested the waters with nearly a dozen providers - Amazon, OneDrive, Dropbox, Mega, you name it. OneDrive was a potential winner, especially since my switch from Pixel to Samsung aligned seamlessly with Samsung’s Gallery Sync to OneDrive. I took the plunge, migrating decades of memories from Google Photos to OneDrive, attempting to sync both until I settled into the new ecosystem. Spoiler alert: it didn’t go as planned.
Why? Because Google Photos isn’t just a cloud for photo backups; it’s a whole experience. From intuitive organization and album sharing to cutting-edge object detection in searches, Google Photos set a benchmark that no cloud storage could match. My stint with OneDrive turned out to be a rocky ride, and it wasn’t OneDrive’s fault—the high standards set by Google Photos made everything else seem like a mere imposter in comparison.
Stuck in a cloud storage dilemma, I hit the pause button on my quest and stuck with the good ol’ Google Photos. It felt like a temporary chill spot, a pause until Jake Wharton’s article “Removing Google as a Single Point of Failure” slapped some tech reality into me. At that point, Google was the sole guardian of my digital life’s memories, and that realization profoundly hit me.
But the whole DIY, self-hosted NAS seemed too much for my lazy self. Setup costs, server babysitting, and data redundancy worries sounded like a tech obstacle course I wasn’t ready to tackle. Fast forward a year, my Google storage was on the brink of bursting at the seams – hello, 200GB limit. The imminent jump to the 1TB tier with its wallet-gouging subscription fee finally made me rethink. Suddenly, the once-daunting setup costs of a self-hosted solution felt like spare change compared to the ongoing monthly drain. It was the moment when taking control of my data sounded way better than the convenience of subscription-based clouds.
NAS Rhapsody
Jumping to the present, my go-to for all things photos and videos is the Synology DS224+ NAS, armed with dual 4TB HDDs configured for disk mirroring. It’s not just a storage wizard; it also moonlights as my media and download server. Adding a backup layer, an external HDD in the mix stands by as the secondary backup for the original quality images in the NAS. To keep things in check, a monthly calendar reminder prompts me to do a manual backup from the NAS (I’m looking to automate this process down the road).
Google One—it’s still in my toolkit, but I’ve compressed my original quality photos to the bare minimum and trimmed down the storage to less than 30GB. This serves as my third-level backup, and I’m keeping it around for the finesse that Google Photos brings.
Now, my digital realm is on point, and the fear of losing my data is a thing of the past. Interestingly, privacy wasn’t the guiding star in these decisions. For me, the paramount goal was taking complete control of my data. I plan to dive into the nitty-gritty of why I chose Synology for my NAS and spill the details on migrating data from Google to NAS in my upcoming posts. Stay tuned for a deep dive into my data journey!