Back up Photos App from Mac to NAS

[QuantumEraser]

Hi-

I am trying to consolidate and backup photos/videos from multiple Macs in our family, thus multiple Photos libraries, totaling around 125gB.
I want to store everything on a NAS I am using but wasn't clear about the best way to do this given my use case.

The NAS will be an archive (itself backed up) but I want to still be able to search and view the photos and ideally keep the metadata from the Photos libraries. I will be using NAS software (Immich, or something like that) to view the photos and movies when we want to and look them or use them.

My question is if I use something like Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner (software I have already) to back up the Photos libraries to the NAS, will the NAS photo software will be able to see or access individual files in the Photos Library? The Photos Library seems to be this self contained block. I say that because I can only see individual photos in the library in the finder if I use "Show Package Contents" and then there are also a bunch of other folders and files in there that I am not sure about. So I am just not sure what software I should use to move all the photos and videos from multiple libraries to the NAS including metadata (Month,Date,Year etc.) or whether I can just drag the library (or some other folder in the Photo Library Package) onto the mounted NAS drive.

Also, I'd like to move some Photos off my phone as well. But maybe that's another can of worms...

I can clarify if this isn't clear, but hopefully it's a good start.

Thank you very much in advance.

 

[mwiggles]

Photos Backup Anywhere

1-Click Photo Library Backup

photosbackup.app

 

[QuantumEraser]

Thanks. That looks good. One issue is that some of my Photos Libraries are on older versions of OSX, so this software won't work for them. But going forward, I will deinitely try this out. Hopefully others can chime in with other solutions as well.

 

[mwiggles]

Thanks. That looks good. One issue is that some of my Photos Libraries are on older versions of OSX, so this software won't work for them. But going forward, I will deinitely try this out. Hopefully others can chime in with other solutions as well.

No sure what you mean by ‘some of my Photos Libraries’. Are you saying that you have an older version of Apple Photos app running because you have Mac on older versions of MacOS? Setting aside why you don’t just update to the current OS on those Macs, are you using iCloud Photo Library across your devices? That’s your real solution. Let Apple’s sync get all your photos up to iCloud and set your iPhones to NOT download originals. Only download originals on one of your Macs with the current OS if you have the space (not required). Then use the Photos Backup Anywhere app to back them up to your NAS. Again, you aren’t required to download originals to any device as PBA will download them for you to back them up. But your comment about wanting to get photos off your phone is curious since that is exactly what iCloud Photos Library is for.

 

[QuantumEraser]

Thank you again for the follow up. To clarify, yes, I have libraries on older, outdated Macs, like pre-2012. The OS is as high as whatever those machines support, so I wasn't clear whether iCloud would work the same on those older machines and older Photo libraries.. Also, I wasn't sure PBA could download originals directly from iCloud, but that is helpful to know. So thank you for the clarity. I think your solution is the simplest once I get all those old libraries merged (and they are large- 80-100gB).