Apple uses a mix of Google Cloud and AWS, as well as their own data centers. As for Google and AWS, they are using multi geographic redundancy, and I can only assume they do that for their own data centers as well. The data in the 3rd party data centers is encrypted.

That means, at least for Google and AWS, that your data is being stored with redundancy not only in a single data center, but in multiple data centers, so that if one data center completely vanishes, your data will still be available.

That being said, it's always good to make a local backup. I use a tool called Parachute Backup (https://parachuteapps.com) on my Mac to automatically export photos from Apple Photos to my NAS. It also works on "iCloud optimized storage", so it won't just backup size optimized photos.

I've tested it against Photosync (https://www.photosync-app.com/home) as well as a manual export of unmodified originals, and in a library consisting of 180k photos and videos, I had 300 compare errors, most of which were Live Photos, that are not exported identically.

Both Parachute and Photosync offers the ability to export unmodified originals along with AAE files, so that if you need to rebuild your Apple Photos library, everything including undo history is preserved (AAE files contains edits).

Tools like Synology Photos and Immich (and more) only exports the "latest" version, whatever that may be, meaning if you have edited the photo on your phone, that edited version is exported, and if you later restore from your NAS backup, there is no undo history. In other words, they apply the edits in a destructive way.

For backing up from the NAS to another location I use Arq Backup (https://www.arqbackup.com), which also supports backing up iCloud Drive files that are cloud only.

Parachute Backup looks very promising, thanks. I’ll have to spend a little more time later checking it out and seeing if that’s the direction I’ll go.

I do have my NAS backed up to Synology’s cloud backup service. I don’t love it, and it seems expensive, but it was easy to setup at the time and gave me some peace of mind for that data. The big issue I see is that I feel like I’d be stuck buying another Synology to restore of my current one fails.

I just backup the entire photo library with kopia. Is that as good as what you do?

It depends.

Do you use iCloud optimized storage, or do you download originals to your machine ? Kopia only backs up what it can see, and in case of iCloud optimized storage, it only backs up size optimized miniatures and not the original files.

Second, I haven’t researched this, but iPhoto used resource forks and extended attributes quite extensively for its library, and if the same is true for Apple Photos, Kopia will not pick up those, but Arq will. That was the very feature that caused me to purchase Arq all those years ago.

Interesting. I don’t optimise the storage so that’s not a huge concern but the extended attributes possibly is. Does Arq support s3 apis?

yes, but before you "panic", look into if it's really a problem. Kopia is a fine tool, and while it's a bit lacking in native integration, it works well, and for some things even better than Arq.

Arq wins on system integration. It supports waking the machine from sleep at backup time, keeping it awake while backing up, materializing cloud only files, and many other "nice to have" things.

Kopia however wins on efficency and speed. The same ~3TB backup (incremental) done with Kopia and Arq here finishes in 3-5 minutes with Kopia, and 45 minutes with Arq, and Kopia supports deduplication across multiple clients, meaning if you backup your family photo library from multiple locations, Kopia will only store it once.

In any case, even Apple doesn't recommend backing up Apple Photos libraries, and instead recommend exporting the photos, which is what i do with Parachute.

https://www.arqbackup.com/documentation/arq7/English.lproj/s...

Yep. I setup Parachute this morning and now backup that export using a script. Pretty easy.

The nightmare scenario is that Apple locks you out of your Apple ID for some reason.

Luckily, Apple also provides a pretty easy backup path that lets you have a local copy, if you have a Mac and a NAS:

- setup your Mac’s photos app and iCloud to download everything locally

- setup Time Machine backups from your Mac to a NAS

That’s it. You get 3-2-1 (your Mac, iCloud, and your NAS) and can get a copy of your data even if your Apple ID gets locked out.

Standard disclaimer, only the Time Machine copy is a true backup (ex if you delete a file by mistake, only Time Machine can help you restore it; iCloud is a sync, not a backup). That said, for me personally, this scheme (local copy + cloud copy + NAS backup via Time Machine) takes basically 0 work to maintain once setup and gives me peace of mind.

I thought about going this route, but I have 73GB of photos currently, which will only continue to grow over time.

While not the biggest library, it’s approaching the point where I’d need to start buying upgraded storage on any new Mac I buy, or use external storage for my Photos library. One of the things I like about iCloud Photos is my computer doesn’t need much local storage, Photos will manage it, downloading full res images on demand and purging them as needed.

I’d want a backup solution that is optimized for this, to allow for backups of the originals, without having to have them all downloaded all the time.

Makes sense. Unfortunately closest thing I’ve seen is https://github.com/boredazfcuk/docker-icloudpd but that requires turning off Advanced Data Protection which is a nonstarter for me

A large library becomes hard to manage.

The family one is somewhere around 759gb. Having this stored locally fills a decent size drive so it needs to be on network storage. Macs don’t love doing this, and somehow it’s difficult to keep a file share mounted 100% of the time on macOS (though it’s 100% reliable on an Ubuntu vm hosted on that same mac).

I concocted a vile script to download iCloud Photos and then save them to a Synology.

I’m looking hard at UGreen or Ubiquiti do my next NAS. The Synology thing where you can put same or larger drives in the array is probably the only bit I’d miss at this point.

Can’t say anything about UGREEN, but UNAS with Unifi identity endpoint is magic on a Mac. You install it, sign in with your UI credentials, and it automatically mounts all shares you have access to whenever you’re on a network where the NAS is reachable.

It works on my LAN, but also over my site to site VPN from my summerhouse, as well as my road warrior wireguard VPN.

This works as long as you have enough storage locally. Our photo library is ~3TB split over 2 users, and while you could theoretically use an external SSD for storage, that kinda cuts down on mobility. You could leave the drive attached and drag it around, or detach it and lose access to your photos on the go.

For a long time, I had a Mac mini running 24/7, where each user was logged in (via Remote Desktop), and that would synchronize photos to an external drive, and the Mac would then make backups (via Arq) to my NAS as well as a remote location.

I don’t count the Mac copy in my 3-2-1 as it is basically sync (each side, iCloud and Mac, are sync), and without versioning, ie APFS snapshots, if one side goes bad, so does the other.

I’ve since switched to using Parachute for day to day backups, and every ~6 months I make a manual full export of the photo library in case Parachute missed something.

They did have a bug that corrupted images on import I think? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45274277

So maybe don't fully trust it.

You’re talking about completely different aspects of the product though?

The second top level comment also suggests that this the cameras manual suggests the camera itself might be corrupting things.

Sure, it's a different part of the product, but still worrying that it may have happened at all.

Looking at it further though, you're right, this probably wasn't apple's fault.

Immich isn't completely terrible for "backups". It takes forever to upload everything though, as it has to download every photo from iCloud and then upload it to Immich on your NAS.