Terabyte of photos with no back up!!

[Gettingbackagain]

We have so many photos on our iPhones. Dh thinks it getting on for a terabyte. They are stored on a cloud but that’s it. Dh said it’s enough and that it would be impossible to back them up now as there are too many!!

Surely there is another way? Please help me! I’m really worried I’ll lose all our wonderful photos and videos of the children growing up. I did try Google photos but it just got to a certain point and crashed!!!

[ThisNiftyMintCat]

If they are on the cloud they are backed up :)no need to worry

[madeinmanc]

Back up to a hard drive that is a traditional hard drive, not a flash one that can corrupt more easily. Then do another backup if they are really important, I'm not sure in which format tbh. Hopefully someone with better knowledge will say.

[MaitlandGirl]

I've got mine backed up through OneDrive. We've get 1TB each. It took a while to do the backup but now I just backup overnight with anything new. One drive storage is cheaper than iCloud storage.

We also have all photos from pre 2023 backed up on an external hard drive, we'll add the 2023 photos in January next year.

[MaybeDonkey]

I was an early adopter of Onedrive, when it used to be SkyDrive, so I have a shedload of photos on there, it's easy as everything auto backs up. I am conscious of how vulnerable all my memories are on just one backup.
I keep meaning to get a selection printed every week and also transfer some photos over to another cloud service.
Just maybe key photos. But as with everything I procrastinate and haven't done it yet.

[Dbank]

Do you have access to a Mac? If so it's easy back up the whole library to a separate drive.
Below are the steps required:

1. Open the Photo's application
2. From the Photos menu option select "Settings"
3. Click on the iCloud icon
4. Check that "Download Originals to this Mac" is selected. (This ensures all of the photo's are copied locally to your computer, if it wasn't selected, select it now, but you'll need to wait for all of the images to be downloaded from iCloud)
5. Return to Photo's and select Library (Top left)
6. Scroll to the bottom of your photos, and check that has completed syncing (It should say Synced with iCloud just now, or similar)
7. If it hasn't finished syncing, let it finish. (can take a while)
8. Return to Settings, select the general tab.
9. Note the name of library
10. Click show in Finder.
11. Copy the file to an external hard drive.
12. Optionally rename the copy and open it to ensure it works as expected.
13. Then reopen the original as noted in step 9. (ensure it's still selected as the use as system Photo library)
14. Sleep easy.

This assumes Photo 9, earlier version the steps may be slightly different.

You might find it easier to organise (i.e. delete!) some of your photos in the Photo application on Mac OS, it also has the ability to detect duplicates which can be helpful.

Photos is supported on Windows, as is iCloud, but I am unable to confirm the steps required to back up the library.

(sorry it appears the screen grabs aren't displaying correctly, despite displaying correctly in the editor)

[Dbank]

Just to add..
If you're concerned about your photo's being back-up on iCloud, you can always check by logging it to iCloud on a web browser at iCloud.com.

You should see all of the photos you expect.

Whilst one of the main advantages of using iCloud is that all of the devices signed in on the account remain syncronised which is usually exactly what you want.

It does mean that if someone "helpfully" deleted photos of the "family" iPad as it was running out of space as they though no-one looks at them on the iPad, it will mean the images will be deleted from ALL the other devices and iCloud. You get 40 days to recover them, but not much help if you only notice they are missing after 41 days

For this reason, it's a good idea to, copy the library "somewhere", and NEVER share devices or credentials.

If there is a shared device, use a separate iCloud account

[parietal]

There are lots of online backups you can get. I use BackBlaze which backs up everything securely like an insurance policy against losing my computers.

You can also buy a physical disk and copy stuff over.

[FixTheBone]

If its only backed up once, its not really backed up....

What computers do you have?

I wouldn't count the phone as a copy as its the most likely thing to be damaged, lost or stolen.

One copy in the cloud.

Synchronise your cloud account with a physical hard drive at home.

Ideally run a weekly backup of that drive to either a removable disk, network storage or a different online storage provider - ideally something in a separate physical location to the computer.