Photo Backup & Archive

Photographers have a specific backup problem: terabytes of irreplaceable raws plus a .lrcat / .xmp catalog whose loss erases years of culling and edits. The discipline is the boring 3-2-1 rule — three copies, two media, one off-site — adapted to raws + sidecars + catalogs. For general production-DB backup see Backup & Disaster Recovery; for sync between devices see File Uploads.

The 3-2-1 rule for photographers

• 3 copies — working drive + local backup drive + cloud / off-site.
• 2 media — typically internal SSD + external HDD; cloud counts as a third media too.
• 1 off-site — cloud backup, friend's house drive, or a safety-deposit-box drive.

A modern variation: 3-2-1-1-0 — add an immutable / offline copy, and zero errors on verified restore. Worth knowing for archive-grade work.

Local backup tools (free / OSS)

• ★ restic — BSD, Go. Encrypted, deduplicated, supports R2 / B2 / S3 / SFTP / local. The default for "back up my photo drive to cloud + verify." Cross-platform. Pairs naturally with a nightly cron job.
• ★ Borg — BSDish, Python; encrypted, deduplicated; older sibling of restic, slightly less cloud-friendly but very battle-tested.
• Kopia — Apache 2.0, Go; restic competitor with a GUI; nice for non-CLI photographers.
• rsync — GPL; mirror, not a real backup (no versioning) but useful for external-drive copies.
• rclone — MIT; sync any cloud to any cloud; great for moving an archive between providers.

Local backup tools (paid)

• Carbon Copy Cloner — paid macOS; bootable clones + scheduled backups; the Mac classic.
• SuperDuper! — paid macOS; same idea, cleaner UI.
• ChronoSync — paid macOS; powerful sync engine.
• Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office — paid Win/Mac; full-disk imaging + cloud.
• GoodSync — paid Win/Mac/Linux.

Cloud backup providers (paid)

• ★ Backblaze B2 — cheap S3-compatible object storage (~$6/TB/mo at writing); generous free tier (10 GB). Pairs with restic / rclone. Most popular photographer cloud.
• ★ Cloudflare R2 — S3-compatible, no egress fees; comparable price; default for new projects. See File Uploads.
• Backblaze Personal — paid flat-rate ($99/yr unlimited per machine); different product from B2; "set and forget" client. Caveats: deletes after 1 year if not online.
• AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive — extremely cheap (~$1/TB/mo) for write-once archives; restore is slow (hours) and expensive (egress fees).
• iDrive — paid; multi-machine; photographer-friendly pricing.
• Wasabi — S3-compatible; competitive with B2.

Cloud sync (different from backup)

• Syncthing — MPL; OSS peer-to-peer file sync; great for cross-device libraries. Not a backup; a sync.
• Resilio Sync — paid (free tier for personal); same shape, BitTorrent-based.
• Dropbox / iCloud / Google Drive / OneDrive — sync products, not archive backup. Useful for in-progress work; never for cold archive (deletions propagate).
• PhotoSync (Touchbyte) — paid; iOS / Android camera-roll sync to NAS / cloud.

Phone backup (specifically)

• ★ Immich auto-upload — see Self-Hosted Photos & Media. The default OSS path for phone-camera-roll → home server.
• PhotoPrism, Nextcloud Photos — alternatives.
• Apple iCloud Photos — works; lock-in is real.
• Google Photos — paid storage tiers; lock-in is real.
• Amazon Photos — free unlimited photos for Prime members (still in 2026); good as a third copy.

Catalog / sidecar discipline

• ★ Always Save Metadata to File (XMP sidecar) — Lightroom Catalog Settings, darktable, RawTherapee. If your catalog dies, you can rebuild from raws + XMPs.
• ★ Back up the catalog — .lrcat, digiKam SQLite (digikam4.db), Capture One sessions / catalogs are irreplaceable. Back up every night with the photos.
• Don't separate raws from sidecars — keep them in the same folder; back them up as one unit.
• Catalog on fast local SSD, library on bulk HDD — common pro layout; backup script copies both.

Archive media

• Spinning HDDs — cheap per TB; rotate every 5 years; check SMART quarterly.
• NAS (Synology / QNAP / TrueNAS) — RAID is uptime, not backup; still need off-site.
• LTO tape — paid; LTO-9 holds 18 TB raw, $80–120/cartridge. Slow to write, very cheap per TB long-term, very durable. Niche.
• M-Disc DVD / BD — claimed 100-year shelf life; capacity small. Niche, occasionally useful.
• SSDs as cold storage — controversial; bit rot when unpowered for years. HDDs preferred for cold.

Verification (the part most people skip)

• ★ Restic / Borg / Kopia all support check / verify — run monthly. A backup you've never restored is a hope, not a backup.
• ★ Restore drill once a quarter — actually restore last week's backup to a scratch drive; open a few files; check sidecars match.
• par2 / parchive — for cold-archive integrity; generates parity files alongside data.
• rclone check --download — verify cloud copies hash-match local.

Patterns to know

• Card → working drive → local backup → cloud, in that order, before formatting cards — never wipe the card until it's in two non-card places.
• Two cards in-camera with backup write — most pro bodies; immediate redundancy. Hardware insurance.
• Catalog backup nightly, raw backup weekly, cloud sync continuous — a sane cadence.
• Encrypt cloud backups — restic / rclone-crypt do this transparently.
• Test the restore, not the backup — running backups feels productive; restoring is the only real test.

What's changing in 2024–2026

• R2's no-egress pricing is shifting photographers off B2 for active archives — pair-friendly with restic.
• JPEG-XL lossless re-encode — emerging; can shrink legacy JPEGs by 20%, raw archives by less. Tooling early; see Photo File Formats.
• NAS scrubbing automation — TrueNAS / Synology have made monthly bit-rot scrubs default.
• Cloudflare R2 lifecycle — set a Glacier-style cold-tier policy on old folders.

Pick this if…

• Default OSS backup tool: restic.
• Default cheap cloud target: Backblaze B2 or Cloudflare R2.
• Default macOS bootable clone: Carbon Copy Cloner.
• Phone camera-roll → home: Immich.
• Cross-device library sync (not backup): Syncthing.
• Cold archive, decade-plus: spinning HDDs in a fireproof + off-site rotation, or LTO tape if budget allows.
• Belt-and-suspenders: restic to R2 and a periodic encrypted external HDD off-site at a friend's.