Syncing Photos from Android Phone to NAS

My wife’s Moto X keeps failing to function because there is no free memory.  This is because it is so full of photos.  I have tried to show her how to back up her photos so she can safely delete them from her phone, but inevitably she forgets, the photos don’t get backed up, and she’s afraid if she deletes anything it’ll be gone forever.

Today I FINALLY had time to automate the process so she doesn’t have to remember anything and it will just happen automagically.

This process involves her Moto X, a Thecus N5550 NAS (network attached storage), and the free app FolderSync Lite. The lite version of FolderSync allows only two accounts and has no sync filters or Tasker support.  None of that is really an issue for what we’re doing here (simply backing up a single folder over WiFi via FTP).

I actually can’t believe how easy this was.  On the NAS I enabled FTP (from the NAS user interface).  Then I installed FreeSync Lite on her phone from the Google Play store.  FreeSync Lite was incredibly easy to set up, and offers some really great options for syncing.

1. In FolderSync Lite got to “Accounts.”
2. Select “add account” and then scroll down to select “FTP.”
3. Add a name for the account, and then enter your NAS’s FTP information.
4. Go back to the main menu and select “Folderpairs.”
5. Create a name for the folder pair (I used “photo back up”).
6. Select the account (choose the NAS FTP account you created in step 1).
7. Set “remote folder” by browsing to the folder on the NAS you want to use.
8. Set “local folder” as your phone’s camera storage (DCIM/Camera in my case).
9. Choose your “sync type” (I chose “to remote folder” so the process is ONLY backing up from the phone to the NAS).
10. Choose your other options from the menu (I like the “copy file names to time stamped folder” option to keep track of when things were backed up –there are also some other really nice options in this list including “use MD5 checksums”; kudos FolderSync).
11. Now just push the “sync” button from the “Folderpairs” list in FolderSync and your phone is syncing!  You can set up automatic times for the sync to happen.

Now I can set up our back up software to automate backing up these photos (further archiving) and she doesn’t have to mess with anything at all.

It works so well, I’m going to set my phone up the same way (but to sync to it’s own folder on the NAS).

I am actually so impressed with this app and all the available features, I plan on doing an in-depth review of FolderSync soon.

Fantastic.

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