Alright, so I’ve been meaning to get a solid backup routine going for my iPhone, and since I already have a Synology NAS at home, I figured I’d try to make them work together. It wasn’t as straightforward as I initially thought, but I finally got it figured out, so I’m gonna walk you through what I did.
Finding the Right App
First off, I learned that there’s no single, perfect “Synology iPhone backup” app. It’s more like a combo of apps and settings. Synology has a bunch of different apps, and it wasn’t immediately clear which one was best for this. I started poking around and realized I needed to use the Synology Drive app.
Setting up Synology Drive
I already had Synology Drive Server installed on my NAS ’cause I use it for other stuff, but if you don’t, you gotta install that first. It’s pretty easy, just go to the Package Center in your Synology’s admin panel and get it set up.
Then, I installed the Synology Drive Client app on my iPhone. Once installed, you must use the Quickconnect ID, username, and password, making sure that you can successfully connect to the Synology NAS.
Configuring the Backup
The process took me approximately 10 minutes and went smoothly.
Here are the steps:
- Open the app on your iPhone.
- On the main screen, tap on “Backup Task”.
- You need to set a destination folder on your NAS. I made a new folder called “iPhone Backups” just to keep things organized.
- The app asks what you wanna back up – photos, videos, contacts, calendars…the whole shebang. I just selected everything.
- The app will upload the files to NAS, with a progress bar at the bottom.
- Once completed, check the files on NAS. I see all the backed up files such as photos and videos, etc.
After setting that all up, I hit “Start Backup,” and it began chugging away. It took a while the first time since I had a ton of photos and videos, but subsequent backups are much faster because it only backs up what’s changed.
Automatic Backups & Testing
Now, the cool part is that you can set it to automatically back up whenever you’re on your home Wi-Fi. I set mine to do that, so I don’t even have to think about it. It just happens in the background.
To make sure it was actually working, I purposely deleted a photo from my phone (after the backup finished, of course). Then I went into the Synology Drive app on my phone, found the backed-up photo, and restored it. Worked like a charm! So now I feel a lot better knowing that even if something happens to my phone, my stuff is safe on my NAS.
It’s not a perfect, super-polished solution, but it gets the job done, and it’s all within my own network, which feels more secure than relying on some random cloud service. If you have a Synology NAS and an iPhone, I’d definitely recommend giving this a try!