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Is there a way to move my photo library to a cloud host?

prvt.donut

prvt.donut

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 1, 2008
525
26
but still be able to save photos into it?

I tried amazon cloud drive and ExpanDrive but I don’t seem to be able to open the library after it is transferred to the cloud.

Are their any workable solutions?

The ultimate goal is to save space, over time, the storage issue is only going to get worse and worse for my MacBook Pro’s 512GB of SSD.
 
"The ultimate goal is to save space, over time, the storage issue is only going to get worse and worse for my MacBook Pro’s 512GB of SSD."

My prediction is that -- if you do this -- you're going to regret it someday.

I'm an old codger, but I would never never never NEVER "trust the cloud" with my data.
Not Apple's "cloud".
Not ANYBODY'S cloud.

Always, always, always, ALWAYS keep your most precious stuff on a physical drive in your possession that YOU CONTROL. Probably on at least two or more drives.

What happens if "the cloud" you put your trust in suddenly goes.... "POOF!".....?
 
Why not use iCloud drive and turn on the "iCloud Photo Library" (Photos Preferences) it is the easiest way to do that?

That Said, I agree with Fishrrman - having a good back up of all your Photo's is highly recommended - things can go wrong - a bad sync, new computer confusion with different versions of Photos, lost apple ID or hacked apple ID etc.

I have all my Photos and iPhoto's libraries backup on a a separate drive - just in case.
 
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I have a time capsule, I use it as my router as well, so backups should be ok.

To be honest, I trust cloud services (running on enterprise hardware) than consumer hardware. I certainly don’t want to trust my libraries to SD cards. I would prefer to upgrade to 1TB SSDs. (My wife has a huge photos library as well).

I am now syncing my libraries to iCloud. I’m going to give them another chance, keeping everything in the Apple ecosystem is why I originally went with Apple for home usage. Is there a way I can control how much of the library is saved locally vs the thumbnails? It seems to just be an on/off button. I would like to say limit the local storage to 100GB.

If I had space, I would setup a vSphere cluster to host local storage servers and do it all myself.

But I don’t, and I move often, so keeping everything bound to our MacBooks and cloud syncing will hopefully be a clean and simple solution.
 
I am one who doesn't quite trust "the cloud" and therefore retain my data on external drives, both platter-based and SSD. Every month I go through the computer and pull off files and folders that have accumulated over that last 30-day time period, items that do not need to remain on my internal SSD, and stick them into supplementary drives (SSD) as well as also including them in backups. That way I still have the data close at hand and still have control over it. This is one situation where redundancy is a good thing, and I have several copies, both on drives kept at home and drives stashed safely in my safe-deposit box at my bank. I do put a few things on iCloud Drive, but nothing which is really important, personal or that should remain private. I really do not want my personal medical information or tax return information floating around out there "in the cloud"..... Some photos that I shot here-and-there, well, fine, that's different, especially if they are not something which would be considered worthy of selling for $$$$ or likely to be nominated for some big award.
 
i don't understand this fear about 'the cloud'; it's a drive somewhere else, accessed over the internet, not some mysterious, abstract 'place'.

i've relied on crashplan for years, on both my macs. works great, and when i've needed to retrieve a file, i do so. (only twice in years, when i was travelling. but a life-saver). PLUS i backup with carbon copy cloner regularly, to an external drive here as well.

your mac AND external get stolen. the house burns down. an electrical short wipes out everything (ok, am trying to make a point). so cloud storage could be a godsend...

EDIT: and for the OP, find storage online but ALSO backup to an external drive; the rule is, have EVERYTHING important in (at least) 2 places...
 
This is why redundancy is so important; if I were on a trip and my laptop and external drive that I had with me were stolen..... I have another computer and more external drives with the same files and folders on them back at home. If the house burns down or there is a flood of major proportions, again, I have external drives also stashed in my safe deposit in my bank that is several miles away. Some folders and files I do have on iCloud as well, too.
 
Clix Pix said:
This is why redundancy is so important; if I were on a trip and my laptop and external drive that I had with me were stolen..... I have another computer and more external drives with the same files and folders on them back at home. If the house burns down or there is a flood of major proportions, again, I have external drives also stashed in my safe deposit in my bank that is several miles away. Some folders and files I do have on iCloud as well, too.
Click to expand...

right. but let's say you're on a trip, and do some new, important work... and things got stolen. with a cloud backup, you'd be able to retrieve the new work (and even, for example, get a new macbook and restore your stuff).

either way, everything should be in (at least) 2 places... wherever that might be.
 
Backup rule 1 :

3 2 1

3 copies
in 2 formats
1 off site

Basically that means at a minimum

- have your originals on your computer.
- have a local backup drive
- have a cloud backup (counts as offsite and a different format as it will be some form of compressed cloud wizardry not HFS or AFS)

Or use my overkill strategy ;)

1 local copy
1 backup drive on a local NAS
2nd backup drive on a USB HD
3rd backup drive on a USB HD
4th backup drive stored at my parents house
Amazon photos
Google Photos
iCloud photos
iCloud drive
Crashplan
 
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