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Photo backups when on vacation

B

b1scu1t

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 17, 2011
208
29
Hello,

We are going on vacation shortly and I plan to use my iphone exclusively to take pictures. We had an issue with a malfunctioning sd card with my camera the last time around and were unable to get any pictures.

My being a cheap dude, I thought I would use the Microsoft One Drive app to backup my photos, but it seems like I need to keep the app open and in foreground for the backup to happen.

Does iCloud photo backup also work in the same way? I don't mind spending the $ and upgrading to either the 20 GB or 200 GB plan if my photos/videos will automatically get backed up when we get on wifi.

Does dropbox/carousel work automatically or does it have the same issue as Onedrive?

Any thoughts/suggestions appreciated.

Thank you.,
b1scu1t
 
i don't know about the other one out there because i don't use those. i just use my photo stream and it will upload any new photos to all my iCloud enabled devices like my macbook when my phone is connected to wifi. this doesn't take any space in my iCloud storage. iCloud will do the same but will actually store it in the cloud i believe.
 
iCloud photo backup isn't a thing. You've got two options for iCloud backups, though. You can either switch to iCloud photo library, which stores a copy of all of your photos in the cloud and optionally also keeps a copy of each photo on your phone. This will happen in the background over wifi (and I believe over 3G/4G as well if you allow it to)

Alternately, you can use iCloud to back up your whole phone, including your photos. This will also happen in the background over wifi, but restoring is a pain as you can't restore just your photos... you would have to restore the whole iPhone.
 
Hello BrettDS,

I am not particularly keen on restoring my photos back to my phone, I just want to make sure they photos/videos as I shoot them and get on wifi get backed up every evening or so, and further if I run out of room in my phone, I can delete them on my phone and but still have them in the cloud which I can further restore to the "Photos" app in my desktop.

I just don't want to carry a laptop just to backup photos/videos.

BrettDS said:
iCloud photo backup isn't a thing. You've got two options for iCloud backups, though. You can either switch to iCloud photo library, which stores a copy of all of your photos in the cloud and optionally also keeps a copy of each photo on your phone. This will happen in the background over wifi (and I believe over 3G/4G as well if you allow it to)

Alternately, you can use iCloud to back up your whole phone, including your photos. This will also happen in the background over wifi, but restoring is a pain as you can't restore just your photos... you would have to restore the whole iPhone.
Click to expand...
 
b1scu1t said:
Hello BrettDS,

I am not particularly keen on restoring my photos back to my phone, I just want to make sure they photos/videos as I shoot them and get on wifi get backed up every evening or so, and further if I run out of room in my phone, I can delete them on my phone and but still have them in the cloud which I can further restore to the "Photos" app in my desktop.

I just don't want to carry a laptop just to backup photos/videos.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately neither option sounds like it would fit your needs then. Backing up your phone would, as I said above, require you restore your whole phone to recover any photos, but also would only back up the photos that are currently on your phone, so if you delete photos from your phone, then they will no longer appear in the current backups as well. (You do have the option to restore from previous backups, but that gets even more messy)

Additionally, the iCloud photo library option keeps the cloud synced with your phone... new photos that you take are uploaded to the cloud, but any photos that you delete from your phone are also deleted from the cloud. You do have the option to store the full version of the picture in the cloud and only keep a low resolution version on the phone to save space on the phone, but not everyone likes that option.

While onedrive and other similar apps like dropbox require you to manually start the backup they may still be the best option for you.
 
On my last vacation with my gf, we used Dropbox to backup our pictures (2 iPhones). We've just opened the Dropbox app and let it upload our pictures while we were in the room in the evening. And after we were back, we downloaded every picture from Dropbox to my MacBook and deleted them from Dropbox.

I think there were about 3.000 pictures.
 
Did you have to disable the screen saver etc? Did it have to have the power cord connected when the upload was being done?


Coupz said:
On my last vacation with my gf, we used Dropbox to backup our pictures (2 iPhones). We've just opened the Dropbox app and let it upload our pictures while we were in the room in the evening. And after we were back, we downloaded every picture from Dropbox to my MacBook and deleted them from Dropbox.

I think there were about 3.000 pictures.
Click to expand...
 
Coupz said:
On my last vacation with my gf, we used Dropbox to backup our pictures (2 iPhones). We've just opened the Dropbox app and let it upload our pictures while we were in the room in the evening. And after we were back, we downloaded every picture from Dropbox to my MacBook and deleted them from Dropbox.

I think there were about 3.000 pictures.
Click to expand...

If you switch from Dropbox's "Photos" to their "Carousel" app, I'm 99.99% certain it will do it in the background. Occasionally I will open it up to see that it's just wrapping up with the last few photos or videos. (It does videos too.) The one possible downside is that uploading lots of photos = lots of data used. But you can set it to only upload over WiFi (as opposed to WiFi + Cellular).

And you have to have enough storage space in Dropbox for everything.
 
I think we leaved the phones on the table with running display. I'm not sure.
 
Carousel works very well in the background. You do need to periodically make sure it is still running in the background. I check every couple of days. Also, after a reboot you'll want to check as well. Other than that it is a great solution. I find it more dependable as a backup than IPL.

jdechko said:
If you switch from Dropbox's "Photos" to their "Carousel" app, I'm 99.99% certain it will do it in the background. Occasionally I will open it up to see that it's just wrapping up with the last few photos or videos. (It does videos too.) The one possible downside is that uploading lots of photos = lots of data used. But you can set it to only upload over WiFi (as opposed to WiFi + Cellular).



And you have to have enough storage space in Dropbox for everything.
Click to expand...
 
have you already signed up for Photo Library?

if you have NOT signed up for Photo Library (which is still optional at this point), and have instead just stayed with Photos - and just checked the boxes to just use Photo Stream and as well checked the box for Photo Sharing, then in fact, the last 1,000 photos you have shot with your iPhone are able to be safely stored in the cloud, and are automatically downloaded to all devices that share that apple ID on both iOS and OS X.

this way acts as a backup (if only for the last 1,000 photos) not as a Syncing app that Photo Library is.
meaning: if you use it this way, you can safely delete photos from any device but they still are in iCloud Photo Stream and redownloadable as well.
Photo Library is really only for synching: if you delete a photo from one device it will be gone from all devices and also gone from the iCloud since its synching everything according to your last instruction (Delete It!)
 
Coupz said:
On my last vacation with my gf, we used Dropbox to backup our pictures (2 iPhones). We've just opened the Dropbox app and let it upload our pictures while we were in the room in the evening. And after we were back, we downloaded every picture from Dropbox to my MacBook and deleted them from Dropbox.

I think there were about 3.000 pictures.
Click to expand...

This. I've been using dropbox for years. As i move in between iOS and android all my photos are still in one place. You do have to leave the app open(unlike android) to get them backed up.
 
BrettDS said:
Unfortunately neither option sounds like it would fit your needs then. Backing up your phone would, as I said above, require you restore your whole phone to recover any photos, but also would only back up the photos that are currently on your phone, so if you delete photos from your phone, then they will no longer appear in the current backups as well. (You do have the option to restore from previous backups, but that gets even more messy)

Additionally, the iCloud photo library option keeps the cloud synced with your phone... new photos that you take are uploaded to the cloud, but any photos that you delete from your phone are also deleted from the cloud. You do have the option to store the full version of the picture in the cloud and only keep a low resolution version on the phone to save space on the phone, but not everyone likes that option.

While onedrive and other similar apps like dropbox require you to manually start the backup they may still be the best option for you.
Click to expand...
I won't even start talking about how ****** onedrive background function is.....
More important: WATCH OUT FOR THE IOS CAMERA BACKUP BUG!
Basically it just skips some of your photos and does not return an error message.

We've been complaining for months on an important bug and Microsoft, despite acknowledging the bug, just released a interface update? That's just disrespectful.
Link for the bug report: http://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/suggestions/8072763-reliable-ios-camera-backup
 
I´ve been using the RavPower 5 in 1.
I can connect an SD card and a Hard Drive simultaneously.
Accessing it through it´s Web Based interface I just make it copy everything from the SD to the HDD.
Why through the web interface? Because that way the RavPower will mange the transfers. If you do it through their IOS app the iPhone/iPad will manage the transfers and it will stop whatever it is doing whenever the app is put to sleep (10 minutes is the maximum any non-apple app can run in background).
I use safari to access the web interface.
I haven´t tried two HDDs with a powered hub, but it might work, if you´re interested I can test it at home.

PS: The Ravpower is well worth the $40.
 
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Petry said:
The new Google Photos has two options:
  • Unlimited storage with compressed files. Up to 16mpx.
  • Limited storage with untouched files.
Click to expand...
Well, that was more about Google+, but even with new photos it seems like there's still some compression with the unlimited option even if below 16 MP.
 
C DM said:
Well, that was more about Google+, but even with new photos it seems like there's still some compression with the unlimited option even if below 16 MP.
Click to expand...
yeap, they do compress your files.
 
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