Sorry if this has been done to death, but a quick search didn’t really help.
I’ve been using Dropbox to sync photos with my PC for around a decade now, works really well, no complaints. Only thing is, back then I recommended lots of people and so I have 20GB of storage space and don’t pay a penny. I do pay the big G, but that’s for 1TB and I use it for business (TAX deductible baby).
I’ve got a feeling as time goes forward, Dropbox will likely do something to ‘motivate’ me to pay. That’s fair enough, it’s been a rock solid system, but as I already pay the big G, I’d be a bit loathed to.
I’d use Google Photos, but that doesn’t appear to conveniently allow access to those photos from a PC anymore.
I’ve played with SyncThing and while it works well, it seems a bit sketchy as soon as I want to store photos on the memory card (I’m sure most people do, right?).
I guess I could downgrade my G account to exclude data storage and pay up for Dropbox’s smallest account (2TB).
So there we go, if you have any methods you’d care to share with me, I’d be very grateful. I’m not too fussed about privacy (generally), I have too many other things to deal with, to pile that on!
I’ve been using Syncthing to backup photos from my phone for a while now. I highly recommend Syncthing-Fork instead of using Syncthing, as it allows you to configure when it runs, like connected to AC power or a specific WiFi SSID. If you’re running Android 11, the version in the Play Store will not work correctly, something to do with the manifest file blocking access to the filesystem. That said however, Syncthing-Fork in F-Droid works perfectly.
Word or warning, if you change your phone, set-up a new share otherwise you’ll end up wiping out everything on the other devices, I found that out the hard way.
Regular client has the options you mention nowadays (afaik has had them for a very long time). There’s just problems with access to SD cards on Android 10, but that’s a Google thing and has been an issue on-and-off over the years.
Can’t speak to Android 11 until Nokia deigns to update my phone. Might need to give the fork a go if I keep having trouble syncing stuff to SD cards.
I’d recommend setting the sync up as “Send only” to avoid ever overwriting anything on your phone. Setting the “server” to “Receive only” and adding “file versioning” on top additionally guards against erroneous deletions and file corruption (broken SD cards, for example…)
If you are using Linux, you could install PrimitiveFTP on your phone (available on F-Droid) and either have it run 24/7, or just do as I do and enable it whenever you need to sync stuff. If you go the 24/7, you could make a script and run it in crontab every half a day or maybe 4 times a day and copy the files from your phone over to your PC. The script should mount the phone SD card using sshfs, rsync the files from the mounting point to your local storage, then unmount the phone when done (basically 3 lines).
If you are running Windows, there might be some powershell hacks and using Task Scheduler to do the same thing that crontab does. Whenever I have to use Windows, I use WinSCP and copy manually, but maybe PowerShell knows how to mount an SFTP location, then copy or robocopy, then unmount the phone. I can help with the bash script and maybe guide you on the Task Scheduler stuff, but the powershell script, I don’t have the patience to look for that (sorry).
Thank you Davie, really kind of you to share your SyncThing experiences. How do you feel about the update-ability of a separate version of SyncThing, are the dev’s reliable enough to keep with it?
Noted about that, thank you - I did see an option in SyncThing that allows 1 way sync, I thought that would be pretty handy.
Thanks for that, glad it’s not just me! I’ve just checked my phone and it’s on Android 10…perhaps I need to buy a better phone before trying it again…it was…cheap.
Ah, yes that’s what I was referring too, seems like a good feature that avoids ‘auto deleting’ files. Thank you
Thank you for going into detail about that, sadly I don’t use Linux. Your solution sounds great though
I do use Windows, but that sounds like a lot of fiddling…and knowing me, I’d reformat and forget how to do it.
Really appreciate your offer though @ThatGuyB , very kind If I move to Linux, I’ll look you up again!
I thought I’d throw in real quick. I know Plex has a option to do this but I believe that’s with the paid service. I know I have used “DoubleTwist” but I haven’t dove too far into the options for that program and I haven’t seen it on linux is that a requirement.
So far, so good! They’ve been pretty on top of things to keep it updated. Syncthing on Windows & Linux have the ability to self-update if you want it to. FreeBSD still requires a manual update, but even if you’re a couple versions out, it still works. The Syncthing-Fork devs also appear to be keeping up with releases too.
That’s really nice to hear, thank you. Like you say, I’ve found a number of pluggins that needed to be manual updated, for some though, I’ve found a little bit of code here and there that lets me update with relative ease, even if it is via SSH and CLI!
Thanks for that Josho. It’s so funny, I used OneDrive years ago and it mucked around, so I just ignored it forever more. As you say, it’s been around for a good while now and sounds like it’s much improved.
