Clear iCloud Storage w/ Viewing Photos On iPhone

[_Refurbished_]

So my mother’s iCloud storage is almost full and most of the storage are photos. She doesn’t want to pay $10 a month for 2TB. She also doesn’t want to not be able to view her photo collection on her phone and have her collection only available to view from an external HDD.

Is there a way to backup the photos to the external HDD but still have access to the library on the phone? Is there a service that does this that I’m not thinking off?

 

[AgeOfSpiracles]

There a few NAS solutions that offer a "private cloud" environment, such as FreeNAS. But I suspect that is way more complex than your mom is willing to deal with, unless you're going to maintain it for her. You'd have to buy the hardware and install/configure the NAS software, which is probably going to make the $120/yr extra iCloud storage look a lot more attractive.

Another, cheaper route you might consider is that some home routers allow a USB HDD to be connected and accessed from outside the home. You'd have to check whether your mom's router offers this feature. My ASUS router is close to 10 years old and has it, so it's possible. That said, I don't think I'd necessarily trust the security of such a setup, but if you're just talking about a bunch of thanksgiving and vacation photos then you/she may not be so concerned about that.