Can I backup Photos to Backblaze?

If you use iCloud Photos you can recover your photos from iCloud, if your device is lost or stolen. But it is not an archival backup, but a syncing service. The Photos Libraries on all your devices will always be in sync and kept identical with the version of your library in iCloud.

Some say a cloud service can not effectively backup a Photos Library because of formats (OSX Extended ?

It is not only the file system format that will cause problems, but also the syncing with the cloud storage. apple's own iCloud Photos understands the structure of a Photos Library, but other cloud services may break the internal inks in the library when syncing it. You cannot use a drive that is shared on a network: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

To prevent data loss, Apple doesn't recommend storing photo libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives that are shared on a network.

And Apple advises against any cloud storage (but its own): Updating from iPhoto to Photos for macOS - Apple Support

If you store your Photos library in a location that's part of a cloud service (for example, Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive), your library might be damaged by the syncing process. As a result, you could lose photos.

To see your photos on all your devices, you can use iCloud Photo Library. To back up your library, you can use Time Machine.

To backup my original files I am using the "Imports" view in Photos. I select all photos in Imports at once, that have been imported after I made the last backup and use "File > Export > Export unmodified Originals" with these presets:

The subfolder format "Moment Name" will save the exported photos to folders named like the moments by date and location, and the "Expport IPTC" will write sidecar files with the metadata (titles, keywords, descriptions", so the metadata can be restored, whe we reimport the photos.

You can backup photos on any cloud service - as long as you backup single files and not a Photos Library. To make a backup of the photos export all photos from the Photos Library to a folder on an external drive, or wherever you are having enough storage. Then upload this folder to your cloud backup.

Backup the library to a portable external HD and keep it in your car, office or other off site location. Update it once a month with a backup app that does incremental backups like ChronoSync, SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. It, along with Chronosync Agent, can be configured to begin incremental backup whenever the external HD is connected to you Mac.

An excellent source of portable, external HDs is Macsales.com (OWC).

ElGuadPaso102018 wrote:

It's looking like there is no real seamless way to backup Photos. But, there are different multiple step processes that can be used.

There is with Time Machine or ChronoSync. With CS one can set it to incrementally backup the library (or libraries) any time a change is made or at some predetermined time interval. It's all automatic as long as the destination drive is connected.