iPhone 11 Pro Best way to remove and store photos?

[MacMike81]

I have many years of photos on my iPhone. What is my best options for getting them off and storing somewhere else. Ideally I’d like to store them locally on a HDD and also on a cloud service.

I’d like to start fresh with my next iPhone instead of transferring years of photos. What are your thoughts?

 

[ericwn]

iPhones should attach to a traditional computer just like a digital camera and you can import your photos from there to a local hard drive of choice.

 

[seinman]

My photo archival system:

- 2 TB iCloud
- iCloud for Windows on my 34 TB home file server, set to automatically download all photos
- StableBit DrivePool for duplication of the iCloud photos folder across two physical local drives
- BackBlaze cloud backup

So at any given time, I have 4 copies of every photo I take: 1 on iCloud, 2 on my home server (each on a separate physical drive in case one fails), and 1 on BackBlaze. It's kind of a lot to get it all set up, but once it's up and running, it's been flawless.

 

[caligurl]

you can use iCloud, obviously.

you can use image capture on a Mac with your iPhone plugged into the make and transfer it from the phone to your Mac or an attached hd.

 

[caligurl]

My photo archival system:

- 2 TB iCloud
- iCloud for Windows on my 34 TB home file server, set to automatically download all photos
- StableBit DrivePool for duplication of the iCloud photos folder across two physical local drives
- BackBlaze cloud backup

So at any given time, I have 4 copies of every photo I take: 1 on iCloud, 2 on my home server (each on a separate physical drive in case one fails), and 1 on BackBlaze. It's kind of a lot to get it all set up, but once it's up and running, it's been flawless.

I have 2 external hard drives.... 1 a back up of the other. I use iCloud and I also upload to amazon prime photo and even google photo!

I almost lost my first digitals when my first computer crashed.... thankfully it was recovered but I've been uber careful with photos ever since!

 

[Antr7]

We have been using Monument for a couple of years now and love it. It will automatically send your photos to the device over wifi and back them up on an external hard drive. You can also install another external hard drive to back up the main hard drive

Monument Photo

You can buy them at Best Buy and Amazon

You can use their app to look through all your photos. We have photos on there from a few different iPhones

 

[iamthedudeman]

I have many years of photos on my iPhone. What is my best options for getting them off and storing somewhere else. Ideally I’d like to store them locally on a HDD and also on a cloud service.

I’d like to start fresh with my next iPhone instead of transferring years of photos. What are your thoughts?

Never put them on a HD, waste of time and higher chance of losing them. Just set up your phone to automatically upload them to icloud when you take a photo. I also have google photos upload them as well when picture is taken to access them on all my devices other than a Mac.

 

[MacMike81]

I hear you guys about iCloud. I use the 200GB plan now and it works great.

Problem is, I want to not have such a back log of photos on my phone. If I remove from phone they also delete in iCloud.

I’ve been thinking about not restoring photos from iCloud on my next phone. Starting fresh.. only restoring contacts.

 

[Jumpie]

I hear you guys about iCloud. I use the 200GB plan now and it works great.

Problem is, I want to not have such a back log of photos on my phone. If I remove from phone they also delete in iCloud.

I’ve been thinking about not restoring photos from iCloud on my next phone. Starting fresh.. only restoring contacts.

I use Google Photo for backups. Then you can delete them off your phone. When or if you want them, Google has them.

 

[orbital~debris]

I hear you guys about iCloud. I use the 200GB plan now and it works great.

Problem is, I want to not have such a back log of photos on my phone. If I remove from phone they also delete in iCloud.

I’ve been thinking about not restoring photos from iCloud on my next phone. Starting fresh.. only restoring contacts.

You know you can just choose the 'Optimise storage' option on your iPhone for iCloud Photos? Then iOS will manage how much storage your photo library consumes, and remove little-used full-res photos, leaving a thumbnail in their place?
It works well for me ~30GB of storage for Photos on my iPhone, while my iCloud Photos Library is 800+GB.

 

[MacMike81]

You know you can just choose the 'Optimise storage' option on your iPhone for iCloud Photos? Then iOS will manage how much storage your photo library consumes, and remove little-used full-res photos, leaving a thumbnail in their place?
It works well for me ~30GB of storage for Photos on my iPhone, while my iCloud Photos Library is 800+GB.

Thats a good idea too... Does it effect "memories" and stuff. I feel like removing all photos from my phone that is one feature I will miss.

 

[seezar]

Thats a good idea too... Does it effect "memories" and stuff. I feel like removing all photos from my phone that is one feature I will miss.

You’ll still get all that stuff. Doesn’t really affect anything other than the amount of storage your photos take up on your phone.

 

[orbital~debris]

Thats a good idea too... Does it effect "memories" and stuff. I feel like removing all photos from my phone that is one feature I will miss.

You’ll still get all that stuff. Doesn’t really affect anything other than the amount of storage your photos take up on your phone.

Yep, all features seem to work properly, including Memories.

The only impact is that when preparing the movies, it helps to have a solid, fast connection to the Internet - to enable Photos to download the full-resolution images from iCloud.

 

[lamerica80]

Google photos, original quality, well worth it.

 

[fatTribble]

I think Google compresses your photos? OneDrive and Amazon Photos both support Live Photos and they store the original size

 

[haruhiko]

iCloud Photo Library for sure.

 

[diane143]

I use an app called Photosync. When I am within range of my wifi, it will sync to an iMac in my office with 1T of storage. I think it was $1.99

 

[seezar]

I think Google compresses your photos? OneDrive and Amazon Photos both support Live Photos and they store the original size

Google gives you the option to compress or to retain the original.

 

[pedzsan]

I use Lightroom Classic from Adobe. If you subscribe and put it on you home computer, then get the app and it will copy everything on your iPhone (or iPad) to the LR cloud (which has no limit on space I guess) and then down to your home computer. The only small catch is you need to start LR on the iPhone periodically to get it to sync.

 

[MisterSavage]

I use the Image Capture app on my Mac to move and delete my photos. Just did a big batch to get ready for my iPhone 13.

I'm a big believer in the 3-2-1 principle for backups. If it's something you care about you should have multiple backups, including offsite. I use BackBlaze for my offsite option.

Backup Strategies: Why the 3-2-1 Backup Strategy is the Best

A Backblaze survey revealed 54% of people said they know someone or have themselves recently lost data. Find out what you can do to prevent data loss.

www.backblaze.com

 

[ericwn]

Thats a good idea too... Does it effect "memories" and stuff. I feel like removing all photos from my phone that is one feature I will miss.

No it will not and the original photo safely goes to iCloud- a nice way of having both a small local copy and the master file online.

 

[teohyc]

I'm using Microsoft 365 with 1TB OneDrive cloud storage to store photos.

It's actually more useful that iCloud to backup Macs because you can still retrieve individual files if the Mac crashes.

 

[purdnost]

I hear you guys about iCloud. I use the 200GB plan now and it works great.

Problem is, I want to not have such a back log of photos on my phone. If I remove from phone they also delete in iCloud.

I’ve been thinking about not restoring photos from iCloud on my next phone. Starting fresh.. only restoring contacts.

Curious what you ended up doing. I have the minimum device storage on my iPhone mini, and I take lots of photos and videos, so just the thumbnails take up a lot of space. And that’s with dumping all of my media to a hard drive every year. Personally, I look at iCloud as a great way to sync media, but not so much an archive. I also find that having fewer photos and videos not only frees up tons of device storage, but browsing my library is also faster.

That said, I still would like access to all of my old media, and I’ve had enough hard drives fail on me to go with a good cloud service. Dropbox seems expensive, and while I like Smugmug, it would convert all my HEIF files to JPEG, which I don’t want.