Organize a Family Photo Archive: 5 TB in 20 Years

How do you organize a family photo archive you have not had time for in years? My wife and I have one: five terabytes over twenty years. I made Spohad partly for it, so that it could be sorted not at a computer but in bed, one frame at a time.

Where does a 5 TB photo dump come from?

At first it was shots from a simple point-and-shoot and old button phones. Then came the iPhone, and with it a new tradition: once a year my wife’s phone fills up and she asks me to move everything to the drive. Getting stuff from an iPhone to a computer is extremely awkward. But in the end I do it. That is how five terabytes piled up over twenty years of our life.

Only it is not a digital photo album. It is a drawer where everything was tipped in at random. Vacations and birthdays are in there. But next to them are thousands of random screenshots, “just in case” shots, documents, junk and duplicates.

Why nobody gets around to the family archive

Because sorting it is work with no visible end. Sit down at the computer in the evening, open the folder “2014,” see four thousand files with names like IMG_8812, and close it again. That is not relaxing.

And I am sure it is the same for millions of people. Somewhere there is a drive with years of life on it, and nobody knows what is on it anymore.

What did I want?

One thing. For my wife to be able to put this archive in order lying in bed. Not at a computer, not on weekends, not “when there’s time.” But the way you scroll a feed before sleep.

How do you sort an archive on an external drive or NAS from an iPhone?

First, the drive has to be visible in the Files app on your iPhone. A USB drive or external drive connects by cable, and a home network storage (NAS) connects over the network, through Files itself. For details on the network drive, see How to connect a NAS to your iPhone.

Next, in Spohad you add that folder as a source, and the archive turns into a feed: one frame on the full screen, the next one coming from below. Nothing is copied to the phone in bulk; files load as you scroll.

And all that is left is deciding:

• a vacation by the sea: swipe to Memories;
• a screenshot nobody needs anymore: to the Trash;
• a photo of a document: to Recall, it might come in handy;
• not sure: keep scrolling. The frame will come back next time.

Nothing moves right away. Decisions pile up, and you can review and undo them. Files are moved only when you press Save.

Don’t try to do it all at once

Five terabytes are not sorted in an evening. And they don’t have to be. Spohad does not ask you to finish. Twenty minutes today, ten tomorrow. The feed picks frames anew each time, from different years and different folders, so it does not feel like “continue where you left off.” It feels like social media: you never know what comes next.

And little by little the dump grows into an album. Here is a folder “Sea, 2015,” and only good shots in it. Here is “Wedding.” Here is “Birthday.” If the archive holds many nearly identical shots, they are easier to sort together: Spohad finds duplicates in the sorted folders and shows them side by side.

Captions stay with the files

Whatever she captions will not get lost inside the app. The name becomes the real file name, so instead of IMG_8812 you get “Sea, first day.” The description, tags and value go into a small file next to the photo, in an open format that other photo programs understand too. The photo itself does not change by a single byte. You can caption by voice with the keyboard microphone; how that helps you find things later is in How to find a photo on your iPhone fast.

For a twenty-year archive this is the main thing. Even if the drive is one day opened on another computer, ten years from now, without Spohad, the names and captions will be right there next to the photos.

Quick guide: how to organize a family photo archive

1. Connect the drive to your iPhone so it shows up in the Files app.
2. In Spohad, add the archive folder as a source.
3. Scroll the feed and sort with swipes: Memories, Recall, Trash.
4. Caption what matters: name, description, tags, by voice if you like.
5. Press Save when you are done: files move into folders right on the drive.
6. Repeat for 10 to 20 minutes whenever you feel like it. You don’t have to finish in one go.

If the archive is not on a drive but on the phone itself, and the phone is already full, start with How to free up space on your iPhone.

A second chance

I don’t know what my wife will find in those terabytes. Maybe something she lost long ago. Maybe an old photo taken on a point-and-shoot long before the first smartphone. Maybe she will just feel nostalgic for half an hour and fall asleep smiling.

I made Spohad to give archives like this a second chance. So that years of life stop being “a drive we never get around to” and become again what they always were: memories. Try the feed on the home page. This is what a first evening with an archive looks like.