Moving & Protecting Photos & Videos

[djr7572]

I think what I want to do is fairly straight forward, but I'm not sure.

What I want to do is, I want to take the 21 GB of photos & videos from the Photos app on my MacBook Pro, and drag them on to an external storage device (whatever type is best - USB drive?) for safe keeping, ultimately to be stored in my safe.

Is this just simply a "drag and drop" type of procedure?
Is there a specific type of USB drive I need (read somewhere that you DON'T want to use a USB flash drive??)

Would moving my photos and videos to a CD format be better? I do have an Apple external CD drive.

Just looking for some guidance how to best protect my photos and videos if I want to move them to another device.

 

[rm5]

Yes. I would NOT use a USB flash drive, they're too easy to lose. I once had a USB drive I put on the desk one night - the next morning I went to use the computer and it was gone—who knows where... I still haven't found it, and at this point, I probably never will, it's been several years. So DO NOT USE A USB FLASH DRIVE!!

Instead, grab yourself an external hard drive or SSD to copy the photos and videos to. I personally use a combination of:

• A 1 TB external SanDisk SSD to store sample libraries, "working projects," etc. It's also my backup drive.
• A 4 TB external hard drive to store various other things that won't fit on the SanDisk
• Two file servers (one of which I'm STILL, after 4 months, trying to fix)

If it's just "simple stuff" like photos, videos, and music you probably don't need to go the extra length to get a file server - that was just a personal choice.

So, just get yourself any kind of external hard drive or SSD. Also, that way, you can put more stuff on it when you need to.

 

[djr7572]

Yes. I would NOT use a USB flash drive, they're too easy to lose. I once had a USB drive I put on the desk one night - the next morning I went to use the computer and it was gone—who knows where... I still haven't found it, and at this point, I probably never will, it's been several years. So DO NOT USE A USB FLASH DRIVE!!

Instead, grab yourself an external hard drive or SSD to copy the photos and videos to. I personally use a combination of:

• A 1 TB external SanDisk SSD to store sample libraries, "working projects," etc. It's also my backup drive.
• A 4 TB external hard drive to store various other things that won't fit on the SanDisk
• Two file servers (one of which I'm STILL, after 4 months, trying to fix)

If it's just "simple stuff" like photos, videos, and music you probably don't need to go the extra length to get a file server - that was just a personal choice.

So, just get yourself any kind of external hard drive or SSD. Also, that way, you can put more stuff on it when you need to.

Thank you! Are all external hard drives/SSDs pretty much created equal? Do I need to pay close attention as to whether it will be compatible with my MacBook Pro?

Does brand make any difference?

 

[TorbenIbsen]

I prefer to keep the safe copy outside my home. So single incidents like flooding, fire, hurricane and burglary cannot destroy all my photos. So I use iCloud to keep my photos on top of having them downloaded to several devices. I even have an elderly iPhone with a complete copy of the 70 GB data. It is updated now and then but the rest of the time it is kept off-line so the data also are protected against ransomware.

 

[Fishrrman]

You can't fit 21gb onto a CD or DVD.
You'd need a bluray burner that can handle 50gb bluray discs.
Smaller BD discs (do they offer something in the 20+gb range?) might work.

My suggestion:
Buy a 2.5" SATA SSD.
You can get 128gb SSDs for around $20 these days.
Or... buy a larger one if you need it.

Then, buy an enclosure to house it.
Something like this ought to do fine:

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)

www.amazon.com

The drive and enclosure just snap together.

Format the drive to HFS+ (Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

Now, go to your home/pictures folder.
Find the icon for the "Photos Library" (it's actually a folder containing MANY files).
Grab it with the mouse, and "drag n drop" it onto the external drive.
The copying will take awhile.

When it's done, put the drive into a safe place.

----------------------

But I'd like to offer another solution that may work even better.
Get the external drive to be large enough to hold the contents of your entire internal drive. 1tb or 2tb, perhaps? I'd suggest something like the Samsung t7 "Shield".

Then, download SuperDuper from here:

https://www.shirt-pocket.com/mint/pepper/orderedlist/downloads/download.php?file=https://www.shirt-pocket.com/downloads/SuperDuper%21.dmg

Use SD to "clone" the contents of your boot drive to the external SSD.
SD is FREE to use for this purpose.
Now, everything you have is on a cloned backup, in POFF (plain ol' finder format).
You can just connect the drive and it will mount like any other drive, and you can even boot from it (in most cases).

Whatever is on your main drive, will be on the backup, in "the same place".

CarbonCopyCloner can do this, as well.
But for a quick cloned backup, SD is a little easier to use.

 

[rm5]

Thank you! Are all external hard drives/SSDs pretty much created equal? Do I need to pay close attention as to whether it will be compatible with my MacBook Pro?

You don't need to pay attention to compatibility, because 99% of drives can be Mac-formatted. Grab yourself an external SSD like the SanDisk Extreme Portable. I have one and it delivers read/writes of about 1.5 GB/s, which is pretty good.

 

[djr7572]

You can't fit 21gb onto a CD or DVD.
You'd need a bluray burner that can handle 50gb bluray discs.
Smaller BD discs (do they offer something in the 20+gb range?) might work.

My suggestion:
Buy a 2.5" SATA SSD.
You can get 128gb SSDs for around $20 these days.
Or... buy a larger one if you need it.

Then, buy an enclosure to house it.
Something like this ought to do fine:

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)

www.amazon.com

The drive and enclosure just snap together.

Format the drive to HFS+ (Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

Now, go to your home/pictures folder.
Find the icon for the "Photos Library" (it's actually a folder containing MANY files).
Grab it with the mouse, and "drag n drop" it onto the external drive.
The copying will take awhile.

When it's done, put the drive into a safe place.

----------------------

But I'd like to offer another solution that may work even better.
Get the external drive to be large enough to hold the contents of your entire internal drive. 1tb or 2tb, perhaps? I'd suggest something like the Samsung t7 "Shield".

Then, download SuperDuper from here:

https://www.shirt-pocket.com/mint/pepper/orderedlist/downloads/download.php?file=https://www.shirt-pocket.com/downloads/SuperDuper%21.dmg

Use SD to "clone" the contents of your boot drive to the external SSD.
SD is FREE to use for this purpose.
Now, everything you have is on a cloned backup, in POFF (plain ol' finder format).
You can just connect the drive and it will mount like any other drive, and you can even boot from it (in most cases).

Whatever is on your main drive, will be on the backup, in "the same place".

CarbonCopyCloner can do this, as well.
But for a quick cloned backup, SD is a little easier to use.

Great info, thank you!

 

[djr7572]

You don't need to pay attention to compatibility, because 99% of drives can be Mac-formatted. Grab yourself an external SSD like the SanDisk Extreme Portable. I have one and it delivers read/writes of about 1.5 GB/s, which is pretty good.

Thank you!

 

[djr7572]

You can't fit 21gb onto a CD or DVD.
You'd need a bluray burner that can handle 50gb bluray discs.
Smaller BD discs (do they offer something in the 20+gb range?) might work.

My suggestion:
Buy a 2.5" SATA SSD.
You can get 128gb SSDs for around $20 these days.
Or... buy a larger one if you need it.

Then, buy an enclosure to house it.
Something like this ought to do fine:

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)

www.amazon.com

The drive and enclosure just snap together.

Format the drive to HFS+ (Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

Now, go to your home/pictures folder.
Find the icon for the "Photos Library" (it's actually a folder containing MANY files).
Grab it with the mouse, and "drag n drop" it onto the external drive.
The copying will take awhile.

When it's done, put the drive into a safe place.

----------------------

But I'd like to offer another solution that may work even better.
Get the external drive to be large enough to hold the contents of your entire internal drive. 1tb or 2tb, perhaps? I'd suggest something like the Samsung t7 "Shield".

Then, download SuperDuper from here:

https://www.shirt-pocket.com/mint/pepper/orderedlist/downloads/download.php?file=https://www.shirt-pocket.com/downloads/SuperDuper%21.dmg

Use SD to "clone" the contents of your boot drive to the external SSD.
SD is FREE to use for this purpose.
Now, everything you have is on a cloned backup, in POFF (plain ol' finder format).
You can just connect the drive and it will mount like any other drive, and you can even boot from it (in most cases).

Whatever is on your main drive, will be on the backup, in "the same place".

CarbonCopyCloner can do this, as well.
But for a quick cloned backup, SD is a little easier to use.

Just picked this up:

 

[rm5]

Great!! That should work just fine!