How do I pick a simple local photo backup tool with scheduling?

[Jeffrey83]

I've been trying to find a good, simple tool to back up my photos from my phone and laptop to a local drive, not just the cloud. Everything I try either feels overly complicated for my needs or is missing a clear scheduling option. I'm just looking for a reliable set-and-forget solution for local backups.

[Robert51]

Time Machine to an external drive on my Mac, and File History on Windows to the same disk. It was surprisingly set-and-forget after I labeled the drive and kept it plugged in. The hiccup is if I unplug the drive and forget to reconnect, it doesn’t run.

[Emily.S]

I tried Duplicacy and a few others and it felt heavier than I wanted. I ended up with a Raspberry Pi + rsync setup that runs nightly via cron and quietly copies new files to the USB drive. It’s not flashy, but it’s reliable when the Pi stays powered and the drive is mounted.

[KevinG]

Is the real issue that you want to back up from a phone too? I thought about mounting the phone as a storage on the desktop and letting a small script sweep new photos, but Android and iPhone behave differently and it gets messy fast.

[Michael42]

I’m not sure I’m solving it, but I keep thinking there should be a tiny app that just does local copies on a schedule and hides in the system tray. The moment I expect more, I run into quirks and the idea slips away.