Would it be reasonable to expect a Raspberry Pi 4 to run Nextcloud and manage a photo backup of +100 Gb?
The Raspberry Pi is from 2020, running Raspbian, and it was used as an intervalometer with the help of gphoto2 (meaning no great efforts were demanded from it).
The pictures are on two external hard drives
*1Tb WesternDigital SATA (bought second hand, but “like new” according to the sales guy.
*320Gb WesternDigital SATA (inherited from an AcerOne laptop once I realized it could not even handle lubuntu)
My very limited knowledge on the subject tells me I need to:
*Get rid of Raspbian and install Raspberry Pi OS
*Install Nextcloud (and upgrade an existing account)
*Upload +100 Gb
Would the aforementioned steps allow me to access the files on Fedora/Kubuntu (two separate hard drives on a desktop) and openSUSUE (on a laptop)?
I’m also testing a filen.io account and a sync.com account. All three services (NextCloud, Filen, and Sync) work as I expect on an Ipad.
Filen and Nextcloud have Linux applications, and both have been working without problems on test backups of 100 pictures.
Sync is CANADIAN but not Linux friendly (I tried Wine, didn’t work, gave up)… I’m accessing a free account via Firefox only, so I’m not counting on them for this journey.
So, long story short, I want to back up my files (mostly pictures/scans and some pfd documents) on someone else’s computer and locally.
Now the question. Can anyone recommend a guide to achieve what I want?
I’m a cook by trade without any technical (software/hardware) training who has been using Linux (openSUSE, Ubuntu, Arch, Mint) since 2012. Please forgive any mistakes on terminology.
I included a picture of my intervalo-Frankenstein-meter from 2020.
Thank You.
Hey quite a few questions which would each require a detailed answer, I will just try to share my thoughts and experience…
First of all, raspberry pi: Which Model exactly? 3B+? 4? How much RAM? In my experience, self hosting on a raspberry pi for a small number of users (1-3) works for most applications. Make sure to use a good power supply and regularly backup your MicroSD card and it will run for years without any problems. You might need to use a USB Hub with external Power supply if the HDD uses to much power for the pi USB ports. Also enable spin down while idle. Research a little about disk format, for Linux ext4 is a good start, but formatting a disk generally deletes all files and you must consider if the file system needs to be compatible with other then Linux like windows or Mac…
Regards the choice of software for photo backup:
In my experience nextcloud is good for file syncing, but not that good at browsing large photo collections. Also the mobile apps are not that nice to use, but that’s my opinion.
I would recommend to take a look at Immich which runs also very well on a raspberry pi, has great performance ux ui and mobile clients.
Regards Operating system: Yes, a clean fresh install with newest raspbian (=raspberry pi os) is recommended. You should enable ssh for remote management so you don’t need a monitor and keyboard connected to the pi.
I would also recommend using Docker and Docker-compose to install nextcloud and or Immich, its easy to maintain, update, migrate and restore.
Also you should get another HDD for backups, data corruption, bit rot and human errors are happening so you should backup manually every few weeks.
These are just some thoughts and by far not complete or the only ways but it may help you start. Also watch some videos or follow tutorials to get familiar.
Kind regards and have a good journey into the self hosting hobby, its great, you won’t regret it as long as you are willing to learn new things.
Thank you for your reply.
Which Model exactly? 3B+? 4?
The one I have is an RPi4
How much RAM?
It is the 1Gb model. It was purchased at the beginning of the pandemic (April 2020) and all I needed from the RPi4 was to be able to run gphoto2.
a small number of users (1-3) works for most applications.
I would be the only user, on a desktop, a laptop and an iphone.
You might need to use a USB Hub with external Power supply if the HDD uses to much power for the pi USB ports.
This might be the downside of the project. An array of cables connecting the RPi to the external drive, the powerbank and the display plus the USB dongle for the mouse/keyboard seem too much. The intervalometer had that same problem.
I would recommend to take a look at Immich
The Requirements page asks for a minimum of 4GB, while recommending 6GB. There might be a problem there :(
It looks like the alternative is a Canadian storage provider, using NextCloud on the desktop under Fedora. All this because Proton does not have a Linux app.