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About this tool
Check whether your family photo archive really exists in two independent places, and score it against the 3-2-1-1-0 backup rule.
The Family Photo Archive Redundancy Checker tests whether a photo or video collection genuinely exists in two independent places — copies that cannot be destroyed by the same fire, the same accidental delete or the same locked-out account. It scores your setup against the 3-2-1 backup rule (3 copies, 2 media types, 1 off site) and its 3-2-1-1-0 extension (1 offline or write-once copy, 0 unverified restores), and counts copies that share a failure domain only once. Built for families who assume the phone plus its own cloud sync is a backup, when structurally it is a single copy.
Open Family Photo Archive Redundancy Checker on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Add your input to the workspace.
Adjust the options until the result looks right.
Copy or download the output and put it to work.
Two copies in the same house or under the same sign-in are scored as one, which is how they behave in a real disaster.
Mirrored folders propagate deletions, so the checker tracks how many copies an accidental delete or ransomware run could not reach.
The score only credits copies you have actually opened and read back in the last twelve months — the 0-errors half of 3-2-1-1-0.
No — it is a sync. Deleting a photo on your phone deletes it from the synced library too, usually with only a 30 to 60 day trash window before it is gone permanently. It protects you against a lost or broken phone, not against a mistaken delete, a bad import or an account lockout, so it should be counted as part of the same copy as the device it mirrors.
Keep 3 copies of the data, on 2 different types of storage, with at least 1 copy off site. It was popularised by photographer Peter Krogh and is echoed in US-CERT and CISA data-backup guidance. The newer 3-2-1-1-0 version adds 1 copy that is offline, air-gapped or immutable, and 0 errors — meaning you have verified a restore rather than assumed one.
Once a year is a reasonable minimum for a family archive, and after any change of computer, drive or cloud provider. Open real files from the backup copy and confirm they display; an unreadable drive that has sat in a drawer for five years is common, and you only discover it at the moment you need it.
They count as a partial copy in a completely separate failure domain, which is unusually valuable — prints survive every digital failure at once, including account closures and file-format obsolescence. They will not preserve full resolution, metadata or video, so treat a photo book as insurance against total loss rather than as one of your three digital copies.