My family relies heavily on Google One to sync our Google Photos. We have 4 iOS and 5 Android devices. Originally the iOS folks would pay and sync through iCloud. But to simplify the billing process and easy sharing, we switched all to Google Photos. Lets just say there is almost 2TB of photos/videos.
We want to move away from this to a more controlled (self host) and non Google solution. We looked at Proton, their emails and vpns are great. However we dont want to move to a different cloud for photos and videos.
We are not very tech savy to set things up. Can we just buy a big hard drive and somehow hook it to our wifi? This is consider self hosted right? Does that mean medias will only get synced when we are within the house’s wifi?
Appreciate any inputs


Find somebody near you who is. A family member who cannot ghost you would be best.
I migrated my Photos to a more expensive service called Ente. It’s been a mixed bag for me. The backup function works well but both their desktop and mobile apps are causing me trouble. Ask me about the details if you care, I won’t bore you with that chat. But in me this has brought me to plan a switch to something self-hosted when my plan expires. I still have lots of time but I’m definitely bookmarking your post.