Please can someone help me understand phone/laptop memory and storage?

[Sparrowlegs248]

I'm not at all tech savvy. I had a problem with my last phone, constantly being "full" despite only having photos on it. No apps. On upgrade, I specified that I wanted more storage, for photos. I have got an sd card. Stop the phone is constantly telling me that I'm "dangerously low on storage. "
I got a laptop, thinking I could store my photos there, and regularly take them off the phone. I have somehow ended up with Microsoft One drive. So now I have both phone and laptop, telling me that I have no storage left. Again, when I got the laptop, I asked on here for advice and also when I bought it. All I want it photo storage, I don't download anything else.

I have just looked in settings on the laptop and I have 88.4GB free. So I'm assuming that it's the one drive that's the problem.

I don't particularly want my phone linked to the laptop, or to be using one drive.

Can anyone help?

I'm not teccy either, but wouldn't you be better saving them to external memory?

I use Sandisc micro SD cards inserted into a card reader and plugged into the USB port of my laptop. Then you just move or copy photos, videos, etc, into the external drive.

I'd rather do this than leave them on the laptop, having lost loads due to a total hard drive failure.

That's my low tech solution, others may have whizzier ideas!

Yes, that was going to be my next plan. What I don't understand, is why I'm having this problem, when the laptop has all that storage free?

Do I have to use One Drive? I don't know. Maybe I need to get someone to come and help me!

Your phone is probably saving your photos to its internal memory and your SD card (external memory) is possibly not being used at all. Your apps and your operating system will also be using that internal memory too.

Somewhere in your settings will be a way change where your photos are saved to. Possibly your photo app or even your setting app it depends what phone and operating system you're using.

OneDrive only gives you 5gb storage iirc

The best thing for you is to buy an external hard drive that you can use to store documents/photos on. They're very cheap these days .

What phone do you have? If it's an android you should buy an SSD card to increase storage if you can. Though apps will continue to use internal memory

and no you don't have to use onedrive. I use google drive - 15gb storage and an external HD

To use storage on your phone or laptop, like iCloud, One Drive, Google etc you usually get a small amount of storage and then have to pay to store more. Do you have the Google Photos app on your phone? That will store your photos externally allowing you to delete the photos off your phone. If you take your mobile to your mobile phone providers shop they'll be able to help you our with the phone issue. My FIL is always in Carphone Warehouse and they're always very helpful to him.

Can I just store the pics on the laptop? How do I stop using One Drive?
I have an SD card.

I do have Google photos. What I want to do, is put all photos on laptop. Go through, delete, put in albums and have some printed

I can't work out how to print from Google.

Depending on how much storage you have on your laptop then yes store them on there. But I would still back up to an external hard drive.

You should be able to change the default location when saving in your settings - otherwise manually choose a different folder when saving. I haven't used a Windows computer for a while but it should give you an option to choose the location when you plug in to transfer photos

I've just discovered that my phone has reverted to saving to internal storage despite me setting it to SD card previously, so that's obviously why I'm having the issue with it now. I just need how to figure out how to move the photos from one drive, to laptop storage. Then I can delete a liad, print sone and save to external storage.

Thanks.