I set up my own Google Photos with a hard drive

As I have an Asus router with dual USB, and one of them was unusable, I decided to connect a hard drive I had at home to turn it into a sort of Google Photos locally: I can make automatic backup copies of my androids without having to worry about saving each image one by one. It’s so simple that I don’t understand why I haven’t done it until now.

I’ve been using Google Photos for years to upload all the photos and videos I take with my cell phones to the cloud. That was the principle, to have a backup copy so as not to lose the content, because I have no idea. More than once I’ve returned a phone without saving the camera roll first.. And Google Photos enters my setup ritual for every phone that enters my home: start Android, load apps, customize desktops, open Google Photos and automatically select the original copy even with mobile networks. Now I have a new step in said ritual.

A hard drive, my router’s USB stick and an Android sync app

Before writing this article, I carried out dozens of tests to see if it was not only possible (I already knew that), but also if it was worth putting everything in place to have a backup system at residence. And the truth is that I was so surprised by the result, that the system has just been repaired: I have my own photo and video backup, perfect for syncing all my Androids. Even for iPhone, I found another app that works perfectly for this task.

Let’s get to the heart of the matter: how does Google Photos mounted locally work? To do this, you need a router that has USB and can function as a NAS. In my case, I use an Asus router which has a double USB A output: one 2.0 and the other USB 3.0. I was using one of the connectors to power a thermostat, so I inserted a Sandisk 1TB hard drive onto the USB 3.0 and I configured it as a Samba server thanks to the AICloud utility integrated into the router’s own configurator.

With the server running on the router, after correctly configuring users and passwords to prevent access from the outside, I had to try Android applications until I found the one that matched what I was looking for: make an automatic backup of the photo gallery every time I connect to my WiFi network

. I tried AiCloud, the one from Asus, without success. And so on with a few until finding AutoSync: it’s wonderful when it comes to managing data shared between the phone and the different clouds. It’s also perfect for what I wanted: synchronizing information with a local server.

I installed AutoSync, found the server with the hard drive from local options, entered username and password, configured the application to download the contents of the DCIM folder every time the phone connects to my WiFi network and everything was ready. In fact, it works so well that it has remained a favorite app. I even bought the cross-server copy feature: AutoSync is wonderful.

Perfect as an autosave, not so much as a photo gallery

Camera roll backup is fixed, it works very well: now I have all my androids drop photos and videos onto the router’s hard drive as soon as you get home. Oh well, Google Photos is not your only backup, but this is the option that has me interested in the Google service: Photos are an impressive gallery of images that have already been found in a concrete form thanks to the AI ​​applied to the recognition of the picture.

With AutoSync and the hard drive, I have a basic photo gallery, not even close to what Google Photos offers in this area. But this is the price to pay: I know my photos are saved on my computer, I don’t have to worry about it and everything is done automatically. It’s okey for me.

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