Yours. Private. Permanent.
Still renting
your own memories?
How many years, decades, generations will you keep paying?
cloudHWS makes a personal cloud in your home — a private photo library for the whole family that you access from an app on your phone, like any legacy cloud backup app. Your memories live on a drive you own.
Built for
If any of this sounds like you.
The subscription tax
Paying iCloud or Google every month to hold your photos for you?
cloudHWS is a one-time purchase. Buy once, keep your photos forever — no growing monthly bill, no provider lock-in, no quiet policy changes affecting what you can do with your own pictures.
The cable ritual
Still plugging your phone into a laptop every few weeks to back up photos?
cloudHWS syncs over your home WiFi the moment you open the app. No cables, no laptop, no calendar reminders — a few seconds in the app at home and new photos are saved.
Risking it all
Not backing up at all, because subscriptions feel like rent and cables feel like a chore?
cloudHWS removes both objections — no monthly bill, no cables. Open the app while on home WiFi and new photos sync in seconds. Almost no ongoing effort, no recurring cost.
Your phone
away from home
Relay
routes,
can't read
Your Pi
at home
Encrypted in the relay. Your photos live only on your own devices.
Anywhere access
Home is where it lives. Not where it's stuck.
When you're away from home WiFi, the cloudHWS app reaches your Pi through an encrypted relay we run. The connection is encrypted as it passes through — and your photos and library live only on your own device. We never store them on our servers.
Need to back up while you're away? Turn on remote backup in the app — same encrypted relay, on only when you flip it on.
A relay in the path that forwards your connection — your photos stay on your own hardware, never on our servers.
How it works
Set it up once. Then it just runs.
Install on a device at home.
Set up your Raspberry Pi (parts list below) and run the cloudHWS installer. The server is up and running in minutes.
Works on Pi 4, Pi 5, or any 64-bit Linux.
cloudHWS server
Pair your phone.
The cloudHWS app finds your home server on WiFi automatically. Scan a code. You're in.
No accounts to create. No cloud sign-up.
Forget about it.
Open the cloudHWS app when you're home and new photos sync — Live Photos, originals, location, the works. After that, the whole library is one tap away from any phone.
Sync resumes the next time you open the app on home WiFi.
What you need
A Pi and two drives. That's enough.
One drive holds your photos. The other backs them up. Anything that runs 64-bit Linux works. Below is our ideal setup — pick the exact parts, or swap any of them for what you already own.
Base variant
≈ $190 totalThis setup keeps only one copy of your photos. If the SSD fails, your library is gone. Fine for trying it out — not what we'd run for irreplaceable memories.
The brain
Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB)
Runs the cloudHWS server. 8GB is the sweet spot for photo processing.
Feeds the Pi
Official 27W USB-C Power Supply
Pi 5 is picky about power. Use the official PSU or you'll chase ghost bugs forever.
Boots the OS
microSD card (32GB, A2)
Holds Raspberry Pi OS and the cloudHWS code. Photos go on the SSD.
Where your photos live
Samsung T7 SSD (1TB)
Fast, reliable USB 3.2. 1TB stores ~200,000 photos at iPhone quality.
Make it the ideal setup
+$80 → ≈ $270Add a second drive. cloudHWS rsyncs to it weekly so a single drive failure doesn't take your photos with it. This is what we actually recommend.
Weekly backup drive
WD Elements 2TB External HDD
Cheap, reliable second drive. cloudHWS rsyncs to it weekly so you survive an SSD failure.
Connects SSD to Pi
USB 3.0 cable (USB-A to USB-C)
Most SSDs ship with a short cable — a longer one makes cable-routing easier.
For rock-solid backups
Ethernet cable (Cat 6, 6ft)
Optional but recommended. Wired network never drops in the middle of a video upload.
Alternative storage path
save ≈ $15Swap the Samsung T7 for a bare Samsung 870 EVO plus a SATA-to-USB adapter. Slightly more setup, longer warranty, better thermals for 24/7 duty. Pick one or the other — not both.
Replaces the T7
Samsung 870 EVO SSD (1TB)
Same Samsung NAND and controller class as the T7. 5-year warranty instead of 3. Bare drive runs cooler and has a published 600 TBW endurance spec. Needs a SATA-to-USB adapter (below) to connect to the Pi.
Connects the 870 EVO
SATA-to-USB 3.0 adapter cable
Required if you picked the 870 EVO above. Plugs the bare SSD into any of the Pi's USB 3 ports.
The math
Base variant: ~$190 one-time.One copy of your photos.
Ideal setup: ~$270 one-time.Two copies. Drive failure survives.
iCloud 2TB: $119.88/year forever.
You break even in year 2. After that, every year is pure savings.
Features
Everything the cloud does. None of the rent.
Built for households.
Family accounts, day one
Each person gets their own private library. Admin invites family in seconds.
No quality compromise.
Live Photos & video
Full motion, full quality. The app preserves Live Photos end-to-end — including the audio.
Web portal included.
Browse from any laptop
Open your cloudHWS in a browser at home. Login, scroll, download, upload. No app required.
Forgiving by design.
Trash, not delete
Deleted photos sit in trash for 30 days. Misclicked? Restore in one tap.
Reclaim your phone.
Free up space, keep the photo
Same Google Photos pattern: photo lives on cloudHWS, removed from your phone storage.
Always in sync.
One library, every device
Phone, tablet, laptop browser — the same library appears everywhere you sign in. New photos sync across in seconds; deletes and edits propagate too.
Get cloudHWS
Coming soon. We'll tell you when it's ready.
In active development for Raspberry Pi and other 64-bit Linux devices. The companion app for iOS and Android ships alongside.
Waitlist
Want to know when it ships?
FAQ