External hard drive for iPad and iPhone query - can anyone help?

[imip]

I am looking to get an external hard drive to back up my iPad and iPhone as I cAnt take anymore pictures/update apps because there is no storage left.

I've done a bit of research, but I am rubbish at understanding this, so just wondering if someone an tell me if my plan is good, or rubbish!

I was going to buy a wm external hard drive and then I would get iCloud so it would sync both devices and free up the space on the device.

Not an earth-shattering stuff, but am I understanding this correctly and is a wm external hard drive ok?

Can you not just back up to a cloud storage service like one drive / Dropbox / google drive? I'm not sure why you'd need a drive too.

That's, the third 'prong' of my back-up system. Right now all pics of the kids are in the one place.mso, I thought of putting pics both on a cloud service, and have horrid images of cyber terrorism involving all cloud storage services; then also an external hard drive.

Madness, I know... But we'll also move half way around the world in three years, so just want to find a robust system for backing stuff up!

My storage is full of photos and I currently have no pc or laptop to download to.
I'm slowly emailing them all to myself, which takes time but I'd rather keep the photos than delete them due to lack I storage :(

2 different cloud storage services? Or burn then to DVD every so often?

I have 2 clouds ( to make the most of the free bits!) and then drop box is also linked to my computer so I can save it via that to the external hard drive.

I have 2 clouds ( to make the most of the free bits!) and then drop box is also linked to my computer so I can save it via that to the external hard drive.
I also do photo books so I've them in hard copy too!

If anyone does have an external drive, how do you backup from ipad to the drive? I have a WD external nas but I can't figure out how to transfer from ipad to the device. I can stream movie files from the device fine using the WD MyCloud app.

Clumsy but safe as you can see what you're doing - back up your ipad photos to laptop or PC then move to external hard drive.

Or just back up direct to hard drive via laptop or PC. You have to change your 'save to' settings for this but once you've done it it's quick if you're going to do this regularly

Not sure what a WMD drive is so sorry if I've missed the point.

We or wm drive even ??