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I built an app to backup Live Photos from iPhone to external hard drives

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by xmasterdev4 days ago |
40 comments
upvoteby gerdemb2 days ago|
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Where is the link? How can iPhone backup directly to an external hard drive?
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upvoteby criddell1 days ago|
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Plug it in to the USB port on the phone. iPhone Pro can transfer at up to 20 Gbps but the non-pro models are much slower.

The iPhone camera can also shoot directly to an attached SSD.

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upvoteby discostrings1 days ago|
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> iPhone Pro can transfer at up to 20 Gbps

Citation/proof strongly needed on 20 Gbps

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upvoteby criddell1 days ago|
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Right you are. I was going off my (bad) memory. It’s a 10 Gbps port.
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upvoteby supportengineer1 days ago|
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I have bad news for you, that's not a real iPhone
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upvoteby enzanki_ars1 days ago|
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This is a real feature of iPhones since the iPhone 15 Pro model. https://support.apple.com/en-in/109041
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upvoteby gaudat1 days ago|
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>home NAS setups aren't realistic for most users

Citation needed. Get a Synology NAS and use their Photos app which backups Live photos on both iDevices and Androids. Buy it for life.

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upvoteby thenaturalist1 days ago|
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Let's be real, that's already far less approachable to 90% of consumers I know.

The simples hurdle just being knowledge.

The existence of NAS is probably an unknown unkown to a large part of the population.

Compare that to "there's an app for that" & plug USB.

Drastically simpler.

No skin in the game either way, but I can very much understand OPs reasoning and would reach the same conclusion.

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upvoteby pdxandi1 days ago|
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I've been doing this for many years and am pretty happy with it. I can sync from my Android and my wife's iPhone. The Photos app is nice and smooth. Backups happen automatically in the background. It can even de-dupe and clean up old photos that have been backed up. All in all, quite pleased with it.
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upvoteby HuwFulcher1 days ago|
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You’re looking at £300ish for an entry level Synology and the storage. That isn’t a realistic expense for many users.
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upvoteby Jnr19 hours ago|
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Over time it saves money. I got a home server and a tiny remote backup server 8 years ago and it runs quite a few services saving me hundreds each month and costing in electricity and hardware (over time) about 15EUR/mo. The longer it runs, the cheaper it is. Most of the updates are automatic so no babysitting required.
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upvoteby MehdiHK18 hours ago|
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Synology is still my go to with the model I already purchased. But I'm not sure I'll be buying them again after this:

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/nas/synology-requ...

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upvoteby michaelraiwet1 days ago|
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A Synology NAS doesn’t last for life.
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upvoteby uuddlrlrbaba22 hours ago|
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And isn't protection against fire, flood, theft or other disasters.
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upvoteby jlarocco1 days ago|
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I wouldn't use it personally, but I could see it being useful for my parents or family.

ifuse and rsync works fine for me.

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upvoteby SwamyM1 days ago|
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I would love this if it allowed me to backup all photos taken with the iPhone to an external drive. Currently, Apple dumps all pictures (from the Camera, from iMessage, WhatsApp, etc.) into folder makes it difficult to backup just my pictures.
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upvoteby atmosx1 days ago|
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I am using PhotoSync to backup photos from iPhone to a self-hosted Photoprism via WebDAV (accessible from everywhere via tailscale).
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upvoteby polymatter1 days ago|
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Thank you for including a non subscription “lifetime” payment option.
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upvoteby 1 days ago|
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upvoteby scriu5 hours ago|
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Can you add a feature to upload to a ftp server?
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upvoteby 1970-01-011 days ago|
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How is this different from iMazing?

https://imazing.com/backup-iphone-ipad#:~:text=Choose%20iPho...

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upvoteby msh1 days ago|
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It’s more like PhotoSync as it only does photos
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upvoteby tempodox1 days ago|
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I loved the idea until I saw that it's only available as a subscription.
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upvoteby 1 days ago|
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upvoteby mindwork1 days ago|
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Would immich work for this? You can run it locally in docker container
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upvoteby mfa19991 days ago|
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Will it work with large (huge) photos libraries? Eg. 150k photos/videos - most of them in iCloud. Does it preserve album/folder structure?
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upvoteby mattfrommars20 hours ago|
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Btw, there is also LocalSend. Pretty nifty app
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upvoteby coldtrait6 hours ago|
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Isn't that to transfer wirelessly to devices?
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upvoteby mattfrommars20 hours ago|
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Is this a native IOS app?
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upvoteby keroro1 days ago|
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How much does it cost?
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upvoteby recury1 days ago|
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In-App Purchases

BackiGo Pro Yearly (1 Year) $6.99

BackiGo Pro Monthly (1 Month) $0.99

BackiGo Pro Lifetime $14.99

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upvoteby alain341 days ago|
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[dead]
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upvoteby er0k1 days ago|
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I just use rsync, works great
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upvoteby rsync1 days ago|
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Would you explain how you are using rsync to backup photos on an iPhone ?

I'm not aware of an iOS app named "rsync" and ... presumably you don't have a shell ... ?

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upvoteby sandreas1 days ago|
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Don't know if still works, but this is how I did it back in the days I had an iPhone:

https://pilabor.com/blog/2022/01/access-and-recover-files-fr...

Nowadays I'd use immich or ente.io, which has and e2e encryption cloud as well as self-hosted setup

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upvoteby slicktux1 days ago|
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You can load the IPhone’s pictures on Linux using the folders namespace and then rsync from the loaded namespace to /local…
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upvoteby trinix9121 days ago|
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But does it work for Live Photos which is the main premise of this app?
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upvoteby wood_spirit1 days ago|
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I use a usb cable and a Linux laptop to copy to a couple of external hard drives (which I store separately). It’s all manual but not too orrenous although i ought backup more often. The biggest hassle is accessing the new heic format on pretty much everything.

Could it all be made into a sd card image for a pi zero perhaps? Even with a web ui accessible over Wi-Fi? A basic cheap sync-cable-appliance that non-techies can easily use?

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upvoteby rsync1 days ago|
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I think I heard that the latest 'rclone' now, finally, support iCloud ... but I think there is an issue there because you can't sync full quality / RAW photos to icloud, can you ?
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upvoteby RockRobotRock1 days ago|
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rclone has support for iCloud Drive, but it sounds like you are talking about iCloud Photos, which is a different service.

This project lets you download from the latter: https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

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