Keeping kDrive Tidy Despite iOS

One of the many iOS flaws is that if you download photos and videos it defaults to throwing them into your photo album, whether they're yours, and that's why it's good to tidy up. For the tidying up effort today I used ffprobe, find and the kDrive desktop drive, as well as terminal and a secure shell.

The premise is that as you're living your life, activity friends, family and apps like TikTok all post files, that you might or might not download intentionally. I'd recommend downloading them intentionally. We'll cover this shortly.

RSYNC

Due to having at least two phones over the years I had two folders with photos that needed to be consolidated. I used rsync to consolidate both folders and then deleted the 8plus folder that no longer had a reason to be.

FFProbe

I started the day with the premise that apple Photos took .mov videos and apps like Whatsapp, Signal and TikTok used mp4 files. I used find to clear up the mess of MP4 files, and got them sorted chronologically. I was pleasantly surprised to see that whatsapp and other files were sorted into their own folders.

It's with disappointment that I noticed that TikTok saves part of the messy files as .mov files. If I used exiftool then I could setup a filter "if video files do not mention iphone, add them to sorted, and leave the others as they are". The issue is that exiftool is slow.

I asked Euria for help and it suggested FFProbe so I experimented with it. I told it, find all non 1920,1080 videos and move them to sorted, so it wrote a shell script to do that. It worked well enough but I still double checked what it had moved. Eventually, when I got to videos that I shot in 4K I asked it to widen what it kept, so it re-wrote the shell script.

For once I sorted each year, one at a time, from 2023-2026. It was fast, and effective. In some cases I rescued files from the sorted folder that I wanted to keep.

My rational behind creating a "sorted" folder, per month, was so that I could then get a script to move the "sorted" video files chronologically into the "chaff" folder that I setup this morning.

If I had done this with exiftool or manually it would have taken ages. By getting a simple tool to do this task it took seconds per year.

Much Tidier

The photos backup folder that syncs from my phone to kDrive, and from kDrive to my desktop started the day without about 400gb of files. After some quick tidying this morning, thanks to shell scripts and the command line I got it down to 90GB.

The next step is to reconcile those 90GB of photos with the main photo library I have. Once the two are merged my kDrive phone photos backup folder could be nearly empty.

And Finally

One of the key advantages of using kDrive, rather than Google Photos, Apple Photos, Flickr and other cloud solutions is that you can tidy directly from the command line with a few practical prompts. Doing the same in a web browser takes hours. I know because I tried.

Having a local copy of what's in the cloud allows you to clean up within minutes, for free. No need for expensive apps. You're in full control. Once you're done it propagates back to the server.

TLDR

I mention kDrive but Google Drive, iCloud, One Drive and most other solutions offer the same flexibility. If you store photos within folders and files, rather than photos app, data migration is simplified.

@jotten @diekenbrock

Ich teste gerade noch #kdrive #ksuite von infomaniak. Fußt wohl auch auf nextcloud, Recht günstig, Schweiz, aber leider die Fotoverwaltung/Synchronisation macht mir zu schaffen, wenn ich was Google vergleichbares suche...das Löschen müsste manuell erfolgen. Sonst ne feine Sache

@AlienJay @pallenberg
Hast du dir mal #kSuite #kDrive von infomaniak angeschaut? Ich bin auch noch am Abwägen und unschlüssig...

Migrating to kDrive from Flickr, Apple and Google Photo Clouds

As I write this my consolidated photo album is being uploaded to kDrive, to serve as an offsite backup but the journey to this point took about two weeks, due in part to experimentation and learning to use various tools.

Tools I used

• rsync
• Google Takeout
• Flickr Export
• jdupe
• Gemini
• Euria
• Le Chat, by Mistral

Work Flow

The first step is to request your data from Google Photos via the Google Takeout Tool, the Flickr Export tool for flickr, and to download all your photos locally from Apple Photos before disconnecting the local library from iCloud. Disconnecting Photos from iCloud gives you 30 days to realise you made a terrible mistake and fix it.

Export and organise

The next step is to unzip the Google Taekout files in one place, and the flickr export in another place. You want to keep the tree structure created by the zips for the next part.

Exiftool

Exiftools is a command line tool. Google Takeout and Flickr Export may detach metadata from your photos and add them to json files. Exiftools writes the exif data back into your photo files. If you ask Gemini or other AI solution for help it will provide you with the command you need to use. Request a dry run, and get the dry run to write to a text file to double check that it does what you expect.

Keep the zip files as they are. If you make a mistake it's good to have them on hand. Downloading 50 GB files from Google Takeout takes time.

With Flickr it's even more critical because Flickr generates 2gb files. I created a script to automatically download my 168 files.

Once you are happy that exiftool is behaving as expected you can run the command for real. Both of these steps take time so let them run in the background.

Google Takeout

Google takeout generates albums in three key ways, by individual names if you used face recognition, event name if you created an album, and by year, automatically. You will have two to three copies of some photos. In some directories you will only find json files.

When exiftool has run you can backup or delete the json files. If you have the zip files, then you're safe.

Flickr

When I expanded the Flickr zips it created a monoolithic directory with all the photos. I ran exiftools to marry json data with the photos.

Apple Photos

If you want to extract photos from Apple Photos quickly the quickest solution is to right click, show package contents, navigate to originals, and copy photos to another directory. You will need to use exiftool to create a directory where they are sorted by year, month day, and then you can run jdupe and add them to your main library.

Looking for Duplicates and Creating Chronological Libraries

With the data added by Exiftool we can now organise the photos chronologically. The issue is that we have event photos in albums, and the same event photos in the year folder. That's where jdupe comes in. It allows us to automatically compare photos within a directory before removing the duplicate copies.

Once this is done we can organise all the photos chronologically. This makes comparing photos much easier. It also adds a human accessible way of organising photos by year, month and day.

We repeat this step for Google Takeout and Flickr so that we end up with two clean chronological libraries.

The next step is to run jdupe again. This time we're comparing Flickr to Google Photos. The reason for this is that in an ideal world we have a perfect mirror, with both libraries being complete. In reality we might have interrupted payment to flickr, or Google photos so we have gaps. That's why we look for duplicates, before merging unique photos into our main photo library.

Tools such as rsync will help you merge the two libraries into the main library, as well as backup the clean library to a second hard drive on an external hard drive or on another device.

The kDrive migration

If you have not already done so, install the kDrive app and log in. Open the app and navigate to your library's folder and tell kdrive to sync the folder. It will then start copying the data to your cloud. Now you wait for it to be done.

Cleanup and Looking Forward

Once the main library is synced to kDrive I can delete two photos folders from kDrive and my local machine. I can tell kDrive on my phone to sync to the new library folder on kDrive.

That Synching Feeling

For now:

• Photosync adds photos to photoprism
• immich app adds photos to Immich
• kDrive app uploads to kDrive storage

Photoprism and Immich Watching

Both Photoprism and Immich allow you to watch an import folder(photoprism) or external library (immich). If you set the main library as a watch folder then new photos uploaded to kdrive will be added to the main library, and photoprism and Immich will add them to their own libraries. Unselect the "move" option to keep the chronological library intact.

And Finally

With jdupe, exiftool and rsync you can go from having three photo libraries wittled down to just one. You can then tell kdrive desktop to watch and sync that folder. You can use rsync to mirror the library to two or three other drives and filesystems. I have APFS, APFS (case sensitive) and ext4. I also have an offsite backup via kDrive.

🌪️ I used my trial kDrive (https://www.infomaniak.com/en/ksuite/kdrive) to send the video files yesterday. Blazing fast.

1TB will set me back €19/year. Seems incredibly fair. Can’t figure out why some people pay almost that, a month, to use something like WeTransfer.

You can always use the free SwissTransfer (https://www.swisstransfer.com/en-us), by the same crew, but you don’t end up with one backup by default. With kDrive, your files are saved until you delete them. No expiration date.

I’ve used my Koofr account in the past, with success, but uploading speed is not brilliant. I won’t stop using it for long term storage, but these euros are SO worth it, for time saved (less headaches) alone. Perfect for day to day stuff.

I might have, finally, found a way to use one of their services. Paid for a year.

#kDrive #apps #cloud
☁️ https://maique.eu/posts/2026-02-06-i-used-my

@MarcVolquardsen @matteagle Kurzes Feedbak: Habe das jetzt so abonniert und eingerichtet. Dropbox-Transfer von knapp 300 GB dauerte ein Weilchen, hat aber reibungs- und wohl auch verlustfrei geklappt. Nochmal Danke! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Aber: Jetzt ein Problemchen: die kDrive App scheint nicht unter Linux Mint, nur Ubuntu oder Gnome, zu laufen.
Gibt's da vl. nen Trick?
#kDrive #Linux

Migrating Photos to Photoprism Via Rsync

I downloaded my photographs from Google Photos via Google Takeout before using Exiftool to repopulate the exif metadata. Once this was done, I had to move the files from the mac to the Raspberry Pi running photoprism. For this I used rsync because it can run in the background as you sleep.

The Rsync command

The command is rsync -avzP /source/ user@remote_host:/destination/

-a is for the archive mode

• v is verbose. It tells you what it's doing
  -z compresses data to save a little on bandwidth
  -P gives you a progress report in the form n/total number of files.

The Process

With Photoprism I moved the files from the takeout folder, in full, to the import folder in Photoprism. As there were a lot of files I let it run overnight.

This morning I opened Photoprism in the browser and chose to import the folder, making sure to have "move" selected. With "move" selected files that are finished with are deleted from the import folder to keep things tidy.

Resume

The advantage of using rsync is that if either machine crashes, or if the transfer is interrupted you can resume from where the issue occurred. I had to resume once during a previous transfer.

Remember, don't ask Photoprism to import the directory until all the photos have been ingested, because if you do it might transfer the same files over and over.

Integration with Kdrive Photo Backup

I automatically backup the photos from my phone to kdrive, and from kdrive I back them up to a local hard drive. With Rsync I can transfer the files from the local backup to photoprism to ensure that I have a complete backup.

The Photosync app for Android and iOS works well, but it can take hours, if not days to back up photos especially if the originals are stored in iCloud and they need to be downloaded back to the phone before being uploaded to Photoprism, and Immich.

By using Kdrive to backup all photos locally and using rsync to transfer them to the Photoprism import folder you're saving time, especially given that iOS devices have storage limitations.

The other advantage is that it doesn't alter exif information. The files are only moved from one device to another, not altered.

And Finally

Whilst transferring files with Rsync takes hours, and importing those files into Photoprism also takes hours, all of the work is done without the need for human intervention.

@thom nebst dem eigenen #kDrive bietet #Infomaniak auch das Hosting von #NextCloud an: https://www.infomaniak.com/de/support/faq/2162/owncloud-oder-nextcloud-schnell-installieren. Die Installation funktioniert rasch und zuverlässig. Ich selbst nutze KDrive intensiv, es funktioniert einwandfrei.

@thomschm @Boerps ich habe es jetzt auf #kDrive von #infomaniak aus der Schweiz gezogen. Sie bieten sogar einen Dropbox Import an.
Mich hat überzeugt, dass sie Clients für alle Plattformen haben.

https://www.infomaniak.com/de/ksuite/kdrive

How I Switched from iCloud Photos to Ksuite+ and Immich

Yesterday I turned off iCloud Photo synching, and then I wiped my photos from iCloud Photos but before that I took several precautions.

Triple Backup to Apple Devices with Enough Storage

The first precaution I took was to ensure that the Photos app on a mac was downloading all the original photos locally. While this task was taking place I also got an iPhone 8+ and an older iPad to backup my photos locally to their hard drives.

Backup to Immich and Kdrive

Months ago I synced all of the photos on my phone to Immich. I also got Kdrive to sync my library. In both of these cases I had to keep the apps on a special screen that ensures that backup is not interrupted. After doing this overnight, one app at a time, I had another backup.

Backup from Kdrive to a Local Hard Drive

I setup Kdrive to backup my files from the cloud to a local hard drive. There are two reasons for this.

The first reason is that for me, a cloud solution must make it as easy to get data out of the cloud, as in to it. iCloud and Google Photos do not. I will elaborate on this soon.

The second reason is that with kDrive photos are backed up with their exif data and filenames intact. This means that you're transferring the files as is, rather than digested like both iCloud Photos and Google Photos do.

Photoprism, iCloud Photos, Google Photos and Flickr

Both iCloud Photos and Google Photos strip data from the photos and create a chaotic system of files that you need specialist tools to repair. Photoprism has a tool for Google Photos to resolve the issue created by Google Photos. It has another for Apple Photos and Flickr.

KDrive and Immich

In an ideal world you take photos, and they sync to Immich without issues, via the iPhone or Android app. One day you upgrade the docker container and the app breaks, and you need to reimport thousands of photos once again. That's where the local Kdrive photo backup comes in.

Kdrive Phone Photo Backups

When you backup your photos with the Kdrive app you backup to a folder, and this folder has your photos organised by day or month, depending on how granular you choose for the folder struture to be. You can then import your photos from your local machine to your immich instance with all of the exif info intact. This includes, date, time, location and much more.

And Finally

For 67 CHF per year I have access to Ksuite+ and 6TB of storage. With iCloud it would cost 30 CHF per month or 360 CHF per year. Kdrive meets requirements that iCloud photos does not. It allows me to backup photos to my computer with ease, and it offers me plenty of headroom.

I never had a desire to spend 10 CHF per year. I was happy with Google One and their 2TB plan until I found Infomaniak and their 6TB plan for 67 CHF or so.

And Finally, I regularly see ads encouraging people to just delete their photos, and only keep a few. As a media asset manager/archivist I believe that people should keep and cherish their photos. iCloud Photos doesn't meet my requirements, which is why I slid to open source solutions.

The Mature Phone Photo Backup Landscape

Many years ago, if I took photos with a nokia phone I had to sync them via a memory card. With the arrival of the Android Nexus on and the Apple iPhone our digital photography habits changed. With time we would leave our cameras at home, and carry our mobile phones, and photograph paries and hikes with these.

In the process we had two apps to backup. Google Photos and iPhoto. Both of these were optimal for whether we were on iOS or Android. For a while this was fine because they automatically backed up to our computers. With time though, the backup was more and more cloud centric, to the point where our photos were now either on iCloud or Google Photos.

iCloud and Google One

People like me, of course, had a backup in iCloud and Google Photos. For a considerable amount of time Google Photos had a counter that increased every day so storage felt unlimited, until they decided to charge for storage. By then emmigrating from their cloud solutions was complicated by the time it would take to download the data, but also because with Google Takeout the photo data was separated from the photo files. Migrating would now be a hassle but that is a topic for another post.

Telecom Operators

Today we have a multitude of photo backup solutions. Some are provided by our telecom operator. MyCloud is provided by Swisscom for example. Infomaniak has both the kDrive app, if you want to backup with their own tool, or you can setup a Nextcloud instance that you host via their 'self-hosting' offerings.

Self-Hosting

NextCloud can also be self-hosted on a Pi, personal laptop or other but in my experience it can be fragile.

Immich and Photoprism are two interesting alternatives. Immich feels a lot like Google Photos and Photoprism is similar. Photoprism is developed in the EU.

There are other options but I mention two of the key players.

Flickr

If we think laterally then Flickr is another option. For around 8 CHF per month you can backup an unlimited amount of photos, and you can then choose to make some of them public and share them to groups.

Since this is a community of photographers, rather than influencers quality is higher, and the focus is on landscapes, urban views, people and more. This is an expensive option that fills a niche that other apps do not fill.

Google Photos and Photos

The key difference between Google Photos, Photos, on MacOS and iOS and third party options such as Kdrive, immich and others is that they usually do not run in the background automatically. with Google Photos and Photos as soon as you take a photo it is backed up. With almost every other app you need to open the app, and keep it open until uploading ends.

With Immich and Photoprism I kept the apps open, on a specific screen to backup years of photos. This could take the entire night. That's why iCloud is a good parachute, until you've backed up to third party solutions.

The Temporarily Free Trap

iCloud, Google Photos and MyCloud were all free for long enough for us to store photos with them, and when they became paying we had to choose between abandoning photos or paying for their service. That's why Immich and Kdrive are interesting options. Immich is local, and kDrive can be backed up locally with ease.

And Finally

For me the ideal setup includes Immich, Kdrive and iCloud if you're on iOS. Immich is the primary photo app, used to backup and catalogue photos. Kdrive is excellent as an offsite backup, but it also has the advantage of automatically backing up to a hard drive in my home. If I see a cheaper contract I can easily slide to that one within minutes, in theory.

Finally icloud is the parachute. As soon as photos are backed up to Immich and Kdrive they can be deleted from the phone, saving space.

Mein persönlicher #DID ist heute. Ich habe einen guten Hinweis auf kDrive von infomaniak aus der Schweiz erhalten, einen Account angelegt und gleich mein #Dropbox Konto übertragen und gelöscht.
Jetzt läuft noch der Import von meinem #OneDrive Konto, über das ich gerne Fotos von Veranstaltungen geteilt hatte.
Das wird dann wohl morgen gelöscht!

Wer sich für #kDrive von infomaniak interessiert: https://www.infomaniak.com/de/ksuite/kdrive

#unplugtrump

On Self Hosting and Having Multiple Devices

I grew up in the eighties, and 90s, and so computing, open source software and the world wide web grew up with me. In that time we went from going to magazine shops to buy mags, and cd shops to buy CDs, and book shops to buy books. We also took photos on rolls of films and then took those rolls to La Combe or the Garden Centre to have the films processed, and then we put them in albums.

When we had VCRs and VHS tapes we would either record things from terrestrial TV or satellite TV to VHS. We would have shelves, and furniture to store all of this physical media.

Shifting to Digital from Physical

With time we began to have feature phones with cameras, and then digital photo cameras. We went from using VHS tapes to having digital satellite receivers paired with PVRs. We went from using physical mediums to digital mediums and with time our habits changed.

For a long time we took photos, and if we scanned them, or if we digitised video tapes, then we would have electronic versions, stored on hard drives in our homes. For years we went for walks and took pictures with digital photo cameras, and eventually mobile phones, and then we would transfer them to our computer's hard drive, before uploading them via Picasa and other sites to share on the web via Flickr and other sites.

Wired Synchronisation

When I went for scuba dives and hikes my Suunto Dive computer or Suunto GPS watch would track my activity. When I got home I would remove the watch from my wrist and I would sync that data to Sports Tracker, and eventually MovesCount, and then back to Sports Tracker, Strava, Komoot and a multitude of services.

With the Ambit 2 and the Ambit 3 we would go for a hike, and then sync the data by connecting the watch to the computer. With the Suunto Spartan Wrist HR Baro watch, and other watches our data was synced automatically from our watch to the app, and then to cloud services. We no longer charged our device after every outing.

Seamless Syncing to Cloud Services

Over the years, as mobile phones improved, and as projects like Picasa and iPhoto gained maturity so culture shifted. We shifted away from desktops with easily upgradeable storage to laptops with half a terabyte of storage. As all of our devices synched either to Google Photos, and Google Drive, or with iPhotos and iCloud, so we dropped the habit of storing things locally.

This was for two reasons. The first is that we had terabytes of data now and only half a terabyte on our laptops, and 128gb on our mobile phones. We can get iPhones with more storage but that takes you from 3 CHF per month to 10 CHF per month with iCloud for two Terabytes. With Google One it costs 100 CHF per year for the same amount of storage. With Kdrive it costs 67 CHF per year for six terabytes. With kDrive you can easily back up to the cloud, and seamlessly back up at home.

Backing up to the cloud became so simple and intuitive that a generation grew up, never thinking of hard drives and local storage, because they're cloud native.

I saw an article "I finally understand why people self-host their media" and it illustrates the paradigm shift from my childhood to today.

When I was playing with self-hosting, and learning about Photoprism, Immich and other self-hosting solutions I thought about the shift from computer applications that ran on our desktops, stored on our personal computers, towards the age of the laptop and cloud based apps.

In essence, as we moved from using our desktop when we were home, to laptops at university, and then all the time, so we dropped the desktop, and local applications.

A Multi Device Life

In this day and age we might have an Apple laptop, a linux laptop and two or three phones that we have, from years of using phones until the battery begins to fail and then replacing them. This means that our decentralised media consumption habits, via phone, laptop, fitness watch and more, encourages us to shift from desktop apps to self-hosted apps on servers. Instead of having a single computer with 'huge' amounts of storage we're using phones with 128gb of storage and laptops with half a terabyte.

If you're curious about why I keep bringing up 128gb of storage, it's because this is the most affordable option for iPhones, and it can still be backed up to iCloud without investing in the 10 CHF per month plan. With a 200 or 500gb phone you would need to upgrade to a more expensive cloud solution if you don't self-host.

On Streaming Films, TV, but Not Music

Years ago I streamed music, until I realised that whereas I would spend 30-90 CHF in a year on music, at most, I spent much more on streaming services. That's why I dumped streaming services. It's cheaper to buy an "album". You also listen to the same songs, over and over again, so it makes sense to own them rather than stream them.

With film and television it is different. For 40 CHF or more you buy a film or TV series, watch it once, and then it's gathering dust, and degrading gradually over time.

I was going to expand on this topic but it's simple. Self-hosting TV series and films costs more money than it saves.

And Finally

When I was learning about Linux and self-hosting I eventually thought, "but self hosting is just running an app locally, like we used to do before. The only difference is that the app is on a server, rather than our main computer."

I believe that the shift from iPhoto and Picasa to cloud based solutions and self-hosting reflects a shift from a desktop and laptop centric use case to a more diverse one, where cloud based apps simplify our technological flow throughout the day.

Now that I use a Mac Mini certain habits might change. It's easier to keep an HD plugged permanently.

Satisfaction du soir : créer un montage WebDAV accessible par #Nginx, comme sous-domaine (avec prévision de sous-folders par utilisateur 🙂), pour pouvoir connecter #Joplin.

Et ça fonctionne sur iOS (nativement !), macOS, Linux, ...
Je vais pouvoir dégager Apple Notes 👍 La meilleure solution de prises de notes que j'aie pu trouver.

Long story short : j'aurais adoré utiliser #kDrive en #WebDAV, mais il faut un autre type d'abonnement que celui que j'ai.

Sincronitzant el #kdrive al disc extern per a fer una còpia de seguretat amb calma i que no es pergue res pel camí (perquè és lo núvol familiar), per algun motiu que desconec, ha enviat a la paperera la meitat de lo exportat, consumint els 3tb com si res. (Conste que no he descarregat, que també desconec perquè no deixa fer una còpia local si em dona la gana).

Són una merda, sí, pero en els anys que porto usant núvols, OneDrive i GoogleDrive no m'han fet això. Lo seu interés tindran.

@sonjdol @Larymir Habe seit ein paar Tagen kostenpflichtiges #Infomaniak #kDrive, das meinen OpenCamera-Ordner und Screenshots synct. Scheint bis jetzt gut zu klappen.

#Infomaniak nous explique comment installer leur client #kDrive, sans installer quoi que ce soit…

On n’est pas sorti des ronces…

https://www.infomaniak.com/fr/support/faq/617/installer-kdrive-sur-linux

#informatique #cloud #kSuite

@cryptomator Can Cryptomator be used with #Infomaniak #kDrive and #OpenXchange #OXDrive ?

#mastohelp #infomaniak #kdrive #bug_win11
Bonjour
Pour ma boîte, nous avons pris Infomaniak Kdrive en remplacement d'une solution US.
Depuis le passage à Win11, nous ne parvenons plus à utiliser le "Lite Sync" (choisir ce qu'on garde en local ou dans le cloud pour ménager le disque dur local).
Infomaniak nous ballade depuis qq 10 jours et manifestement n'a pas de solution.
Certains parmi vous aurait-il solutionné le problème ? C'est sérieusement pénalisant au quotidien...
Bonne journée

Cerchi un cloud sicuro e compatibile con Linux, Windows e macOS? kDrive di Infomaniak è la risposta. Scopri i trucchi per l’installazione Linux e come funziona su tutti i principali sistemi. Leggi la guida completa! #linux #kdrive #infomaniak #privacy #cloud #windows #macos #opensource
https://incastro.altervista.org/kdrive-infomaniak-come-funziona-installazione-linux-compatibilita-e-altro/