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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
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    iPhone Photo Storage - Cloud - HD?

    Sorry if I didn't see a techtalk thread on topic here.

    Longtime external hard drive backup user for the iPhone and all my photos, which is really the entirety of my storage on the phone.

    I've lost shit to the cloud in the past and as a result have been gun-shy about loading 10 years'-worth of photos up to it and foregoing the monthly backup to the external HD.

    Windows PC user, no cross-Mac needs.

    Thoughts, advice or cautionary tales appreciated as I really need to free up some memory on the damned phone.

    I'd appreciate any tales of usability too i.e. searching for a photo by date, folder, etc, and how new photos slot in, etc. The current method of saving to HD makes it easy to keep things in chronological order for the most part and it would be nice to keep that in place.

    Thanks in advance all.
    I still call it The Jake.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2001
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    I'm just using 256G memory sticks.
    Cloud shit always ends up costing more and being more of a hassle.

    If you know how to make directories, do so naming them datewise with an appropriate tree structure.
    Years
    Under Year directory have Months, etc. Mark with special event directories under the months.

    Then it's easy to search, provided you know how to use "dir", like "dir /s " for recursive searches under a node.
    Merde De Glace On the Freak When Ski
    >>>200 cm Black Bamboo Sidewalled DPS Lotus 120 : Best Skis Ever <<<

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
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    Word, Buster.

    Good to know I'm not that far off the analog route that may still be the preferred path.

    The whole, "would you like to free up just about every inch of memory on your phone by uploading your pics to the iCloud" has been tempting instead of taking the time to organize the shit on the eHD.
    I still call it The Jake.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Dec 2002
    Location
    The Garden State
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    4,735
    Very interesting, need to pursue this as well. My phone memory runneth over.


    Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Upstate
    Posts
    9,674
    Google Photos is my go to. I pay $3/mo for 200Gb. Phone (iphone) syncs with Photos every time. Pics just go there and I never worry about them going away. Then within Photos (web or phone) everything is neatly organized and I can keyword search for features within photos (buildings, circles, people, dates). Some nice touch up tools right on the web site to fix lighting, etc. I also share my Photos account with my pops so that my parents can see anything new that's uploaded (usually of my girls). No brainer.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
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    West Coast of the East Coast
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    7,737
    I use SmugMug, which has been worth every penny. Super easy to DL photos there and create files while you dl.
    I occasionally just export every photo to it overnight and save it as a phone dl with the date. It covers video too.
    Once I spot check a couple of the photos and make sure everything loaded, I wipe all the old photos and videos.
    It has been pretty simple, and it is easily shareable for websites and stuff.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
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    Shadynasty's Jazz Club
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    10,248

    iPhone Photo Storage - Cloud - HD?

    iCloud FTW. Gives you the option to compress local photos which frees up a ton of space. Whole phone to the cloud makes new phone swap painless. It is a mirror, so if you delete photos from the phone, they’re deleted from cloud storage after xx days (my wife learned that the hard way).

    Google/Amazon/SmugMug are still “the cloud” but with more work.
    Remind me. We'll send him a red cap and a Speedo.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
    Posts
    17,747
    I think if you're only using the iPhone to take pics and want to easily take them to your next phone then bagtagley's advice to iCloud them is good. Though I find iCloud a bit cumbersome to share photos with Android/PC users compared to Google, or I'm just not willing to spend the time to figure it out.

    I take both camera and phone pics--probably 2:1 with camera, and shoot a lot of RAW camera which are big files vs .jpg, and TB drives are pretty cheap these days, so that's my preferred storage solution.
    "timberridge is terminally vapid" -- a fortune cookie in Yueyang

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
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    I assume if you back up to the cloud you can still plug the phone up to the computer and drag pics to a drive or no?
    I still call it The Jake.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    May 2009
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    inpdx
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    Yes

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Posts
    1,489
    Lost all my photos (on hard drives) when my house burned down. Do both cloud + hard drives IMO.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Oct 2014
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    Ottawa
    Posts
    801
    Quote Originally Posted by BmillsSkier View Post
    I assume if you back up to the cloud you can still plug the phone up to the computer and drag pics to a drive or no?
    With iCloud (or photo cloud of choice), install the iCloud client on your computer, and it’ll map them like any other drive on your machine. No need to plug In your phone
    Quote Originally Posted by jlboyell View Post
    Climate change deniers should be in the same boat as the flat earthers, ridiculed for stupidity.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Nov 2016
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    ++iCloud : on a family plan $10 a month. Get 2TB of seamless storage that is all cloud based. No brainer.


    Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

  14. #14
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    Mar 2006
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    Thanks all, very helpful. Looks like I might do belt and suspenders approach. iCloud + backup to external HD/Flashdrive.
    I still call it The Jake.

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
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    Sandy
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    Quote Originally Posted by SkiLyft View Post
    ++iCloud : on a family plan $10 a month. Get 2TB of seamless storage that is all cloud based. No brainer.


    Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums
    I’m not paying $120 a year in perpetuity to house my photos.
    I drop em on external HDs that go in the fireproof safe. Backups on memory sticks, and on each computer. Redundant, but hoping to keep those memories safe.
    "boobs just make the world better really" - Woodsy

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
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    1,489
    Quote Originally Posted by Buzzworthy View Post
    I’m not paying $120 a year in perpetuity to house my photos.
    I drop em on external HDs that go in the fireproof safe. Backups on memory sticks, and on each computer. Redundant, but hoping to keep those memories safe.
    Edge case, but I do not know of a single "fire proof" safe in my neighborhood (~300 homes) that survived the fire. I know of multiple that did not survive. Just a heads up to double check the rating on that thing and/or go with a different form of redundancy. My pro photog bud who is admittedly a bit zany mails a hard drive to a different friend/family members house a couple times a year.

    Again, edge case but I didn't have time/foresight to grab any of my redundant devices (comp, drives, sd cards). Will try a service like backblaze when I start taking photos again.

  17. #17
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    That’s a nightmare scenario I hope no one here ever has to go through or again.
    I’m very sorry you endured that. And lost those special photos.
    Appreciate the heads up.

  18. #18
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    Nov 2016
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    SEA>DEN>Spokanistan
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    iPhone Photo Storage - Cloud - HD?

    Quote Originally Posted by Buzzworthy View Post
    I’m not paying $120 a year in perpetuity to house my photos.
    I drop em on external HDs that go in the fireproof safe. Backups on memory sticks, and on each computer. Redundant, but hoping to keep those memories safe.
    What’s your time worth? Even paying yourself at $50 and hour means that if you spend >3 hours annually dragging and dropping pictures iCloud is cheaper.

    Not to mention security of the redundancy on the cloud >>> hard backup.

    But do you boo


    Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

  19. #19
    Join Date
    Sep 2018
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    6,643
    As our video and photo library has expanded cloud storage just gets impractical. (The "serious" kids sports teams film every game and we store them all - gets large. Video from ski trips, beach/surf trips, mtn biking - like home movies.)

    So I bailed on cloud, which is too hard to organize especially as the kids start wanting their own photo dumps and folders. SO I unload the 4 phones into the computer every few months.

    Internal 6TB HD for primary storage, external 6TB for onsite backup, external 6TB that gets updated every month or two (or three) for off site backup. Worst that can happen is we lose a few recent months of stuff unless the whole damn city burns down or gets wiped by a Russian magnetic cyber attack. I'm already doing this for all the other files, so why not just add photos?

    That's the system I've made peace with, much like Buzz.

    Then we have a free google photos account where all the best ones go that is our family photo album. Show sup on all the google devices as a running slideshow. Starts off awesome and then become a tear jerker when they head off to collegge I'm told...

  20. #20
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Location
    Sandy
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    14,040
    The benefit for me is I get to see a bunch of pictures every so often that I may not have remembered I took as I back them up. So my time is used very well honestly.
    Life for me is no longer a race. I’m enjoying it a lot more this way.

    Edit: and yes, my daughter is off to college in one year. Seeing all the pictures is good for my soul. These last 17 years have gone by so fast when I look back now.

  21. #21
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
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    Among Greatness All Around
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    If you have Amazon Prime, you can use Amazon Photos app to backup and store them. It does not resize them, so usually want to do it when connected to Wifi. Google Photos also can do either original size or they have an option to resize and compress the photos that you have to choose one or the other. Don't have any Apple devices, but from what I see it is expensive - but slightly cheaper now than Amazon Prime but Prime has some other benefits to it other than just the photos (and music) storage.

    The biggest problem with just using 1 form of backup, is the risk of deleting, or the backup no longer syncing or similar. But just having them on local storage has risks too unless you do 2 locations (like fire or some natural disaster) so home and work or something like that and of course needing to do the backup 2 times or onto something like a NAS that then can replicate itself automatically to another NAS device elsewhere across the Internet (and having fast enough internet and maybe no data caps like Cellular may have on the phone...)

  22. #22
    Join Date
    Sep 2018
    Posts
    6,643
    If you're looking for a super simple free program to automate a physical backup, download replicator from Karen's Tools.

  23. #23
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    Sep 2001
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    Anyone use wireless hard drives ? I take a lot of big camera photos and also have the standard phone pics as well. Big camera photos go to Adobe but I’d like some local redundancy. Would be nice for the family to use something that leverages wireless.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    "All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring."

  24. #24
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
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    Quote Originally Posted by North View Post
    Edge case, but I do not know of a single "fire proof" safe in my neighborhood (~300 homes) that survived the fire. I know of multiple that did not survive. Just a heads up to double check the rating on that thing and/or go with a different form of redundancy. My pro photog bud who is admittedly a bit zany mails a hard drive to a different friend/family members house a couple times a year.

    Again, edge case but I didn't have time/foresight to grab any of my redundant devices (comp, drives, sd cards). Will try a service like backblaze when I start taking photos again.
    Oof. Yeah, if your files don't exist in three places, and one of those three is physically different than the other two, they aren't really THAT safe. I back up my phone to the cloud via iCloud until I dump my phone onto my hard drives every couple of months. Then, I delete all but a handful of the photos off of my phone. Two hard drives that are my working drives at the house, and one off-site drive for critical files that I update every couple months.

    Cloud storage just isn't practical if you have large files. The upload times can be really long for a couple TBs of data, and my ISP will charge me if I hit the data cap. So iCloud is just used to do a real-time backup of my phone in case SHTF, or for when I transfer to a new phone.

    Quote Originally Posted by The Reverend Floater View Post
    Anyone use wireless hard drives ? I take a lot of big camera photos and also have the standard phone pics as well. Big camera photos go to Adobe but I’d like some local redundancy. Would be nice for the family to use something that leverages wireless.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    I have a wireless router that I can plug a hard drive into to create a network drive, but i've never used a wireless drive. Seems like that could end up being limiting by the bandwidth, wireless tech, etc, that networking a drive through your router doesn't

  25. #25
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Reverend Floater View Post
    Anyone use wireless hard drives ? I take a lot of big camera photos and also have the standard phone pics as well. Big camera photos go to Adobe but I’d like some local redundancy. Would be nice for the family to use something that leverages wireless.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    Wireless as in wifi, bluetooth, or a network attached storage that then can be accessed by wifi from camera supporting wifi connection, phone, etc to sync? Wireless is going to be slower and more likely to disconnect and not complete syncing if not careful.

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