For backing up I have a cron job that use rsync to transfer files to a cloud storage location on rsync.net. It’s not the cheapest around but it has been 100% reliable. Since I am also handling backups for my family’s data, I depend heavily on it.

I am a hobbyist photographer. My files come off the SD card from the camera to a external SSD that I use with Lightroom. That drive and the Lightroom Catalog backups get synced to a local NAS that I’m running at home. The NAS gets regularly backed up to a drive that goes to another location. I have two drives for off-site backup so there is never a time when there isn’t one off-site. I’d like to replace the off-site drive with cloud of some type. I was previously bandwidth limited but now that I’m not I need to do it.

I feel like I haven’t figured out a good sharing solution yet. I usually just use Google Photos to create and album and share that with people. I used to use OwnCloud but I’ve moved away from that.

As OP, I should probably answer, too.

Normal workflow is:

1. Raw images import from SD card to network drive (physically on spinning hard drives in a NAS in my home).
2. Lightroom catalog is on my laptop, where I actually do all processing and editing, using a network connection with the raw files stored on the NAS.
3. Exports go to local folder on the laptop, to be shared however I share.

Travel/offline workflow is:

1. Raw images import from SD card to external SSD.
2. Lightroom catalog is on my laptop, and I can do all editing there as part of the same catalog even when I don’t have access to my NAS (or when my connection is slow).
3. When I get home, I manually copy the files from the hard drive to the network drive, and then update the library file location in Lightroom to point to the new location.

My raw backup solution:

1. Cron job backs up raw files daily to an external drive hooked up to my old always-on Mac Mini.
2. Mac Mini syncs with a cloud backup service that charges per machine rather than per terabyte, so I can take advantage of the pricing that works out to be $8/month for about 8TB of data.

My post-processed backup solution:

1. All exported, post-processed pictures get copied to Google Photos, for all the functionality of cloud syncing/sharing, face recognition, etc.
2. All photos taken directly on my cell phone are also automatically synced to Google Photos.

Things I’m generally considering:

• I’m always on the lookout for de-googling
• I’m also all for making the workflow simpler/easier/more reliable between my files stored locally on the laptop, on the external SSD, and the main NAS storage drives.
• I might switch the NAS storage to SSDs instead of hard drives, but that’s lots of money just for a little bit of extra speed.
• I might want to switch my cloud backup to live cloud features instead of a cold backup, but I like the pricing I have with cold storage.
• I’m wondering whether it’s possible to have an automated solution that always keeps the most recent 50GB of raws on my local laptop, maybe 500GB of raws on a networked SSD, and the rest of my files on networked hard drives, while seamlessly updating the older files to the slower locations. I’ll have to think on this some more.