Best way to back up 12,000 photos and videos?

33 replies

januaryblues46 · 05/01/2022 22:52

I have an oldish iPhone containing around 12,000 photos and videos, many of which are very precious showing family holidays, the DC growing up and suchlike.

I’m feeling increasingly paranoid about losing them especially after nearly dropping my phone down the loo today and was wondering how best to back them all up just in case?

Are they all backed up automatically on my laptop via iTunes when I plug my phone into that? It says my phone is backing up but I can’t find the physical photos on my laptop anywhere, so it’s not very reassuring.

If not, could something like iCloud or Dropbox be a good option?

I’m not tech savvy so if anyone could shed any light I’d be very grateful!

OP posts:

LibrariesGiveUsPower · 05/01/2022 23:41

If you’ve got Amazon prime you get free unlimited storage for photos.

Bratnews · 05/01/2022 23:32

Amazon Photos is a good option. Not too much free video storage though.

SkyBlueBlues · 05/01/2022 23:29

Additional hard drive?

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dustofneptune · 05/01/2022 23:24

When you plug your phone into your laptop and iTunes tells you it's backing up, it most likely means that it's saving a backup of your actual phone (like contacts, settings, etc.), so that if your phone crashes, you have a recent backup to restore your phone to.

I would definitely get yourself a cloud service. iCloud makes sense in your case.

The benefit of iCloud is that you'll be able to see all of your images on any new phone whenever you upgrade, and it will continue to upload new images you take automatically.

You can also use Dropbox, OneDrive, etc. Either as a second backup (that's what I do), or instead of iCloud.

BestZebbie · 05/01/2022 23:00

Mine seems to sync everything to ICloud photos, which I can then see as a folder on my PC.
I am very very dubious about this though - I used to just download pictures to the pc and then back them up to an external hard drive too, which worked well. Now I have to click on each picture to get it to actually download to my PC in a proper resolution rather than a thumbnail at all, and I worry that if I delete a photo from my phone it will vanish from the cloud and therefore the folder on my PC too. I do click everything and then copy it to another disc but it is incredibly time consuming and clearly intended to discourage ever removing any file to be hosted elsewhere.

1990s · 05/01/2022 22:58

Sorry should say - download Google photos app.

1990s · 05/01/2022 22:58

Google photos.

Create Google account if you don’t have one. Download app. Log in. Back up photos (use original quality). Set to auto back up on future.

Free. It’s probably also backing up on iCloud.

Ionlydomassiveones · 05/01/2022 22:53

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