Hey everyone
Time to sell my late 2013 27” iMac that I only use now to store all my photos.
What is the best way to back up all my photos?
This is the way I was thinking about doing it
External Hard drive connected and go to pictures and find the photos file and copy that to the external.
This the best way?
Do you use an iPhone or iPad.
Yes I have both
I’m now using a MacBook Air but the internal hard drive is a 500SSD so I’ll backup photos file from iMac to external hard drive and then just hook that up to MacBook Air but keep it stored on external when adding new photos
Then iCloud is the best choice. It means paying for it if you have more than 5GB of total in iCloud. It's worth it anyway, backup your entire iPhone and iPad and if you ever lose or break them just restore it all to a new one.
But if you can't afford iCloud, then there's other online solutions for image storage. Or just use a hard drive. If the photos are precious you should consider both cloud storage and a hard drive backup.
I’m using external hard drive as 450gb is too big for iCloud and uploading would take a fair bit
@Twisty: You can convert them to HEIC to save some space, but yeah would still be a lot. You have kids or family members with Apple devices? Might be worth sharing iCloud storage with multiple people, cuts the cost a bit. Can share Apple Music too to save money.
@Twisty: Local backup only, what if you house gets burgled or there is a fire/flood etc - you lose everything.
You have dodged a bullet if this is your first backup in a decade.
I’ve always used Time Machine
Please tell me you've had an offsite copy of your files that are backed up with Time Machine?
I have now 2 copies of the photos file on 2 external hard drives
I don’t use time machine for this as time machine is only for this iMac and it won’t work on my new MacBook Air so that’s why I just copy the photos file as that’s the most important part
Why not use iCloud? Then you don't need to trust a local drive
450gb of photos & videos
Jaysus
That’s why hahahah
Even with that volume it probably still works out cheaper and easier in the long run to use iCloud. $15pm and you get 2TB
Do you go through your photos and videos and aggressively prune out all the duds?
If you can keep on top of things it will vastly improve your collection not having a dozen almost identical versions of every photo, from every time you went snap, snap, snap, just choose the best one and delete the rest.
Yer I would need to sit down and go through them all
But still uploading the ones I have now to iCloud would be a real pain
@Twisty: Just set it up and let it chug away in the background. Set it to only upload overnight if you're concerned about slowing down your network. Even if it takes a month it's worth it to have a cloud-based backup.
And iCloud on Mac / iPhone / iPad is ridiculously convenient once everything is in the cloud. Easy to scroll through the thumbnails and find photos on whatever device you have nearby at the time. I probably find myself using it at least once a week.
@RichardRides: Will look into it
If I connect my external hard drive to my MacBook will it still upload onto iCloud this way the same speed as if it was installed on internal hard drive?
Office 365 includes 1TB One drive storage. You can also get the family plan and shared with 6 other people.
I have 750GB of photos since 2003 stored in OneDrive… but I really want to stop paying for it 😂… OneDrive struggles to scan the whole folder, and it’s too big for my own Mac hard drive… how does iCloud go doing the library features for 450Gb?
My iCloud has:
77,435 photos
3,268 videos
which is 588.4 GB used in iCloud. Works fine.
@Twisty I can't see why it wouldn't upload from the external HD > iCloud. If you have any problems just call Apple support. I've always found them very helpful for this sort of stuff.
1300 321 456 is their phone.
From memory if they are all in the iPhoto app, you can copy the iPhotos library to a portable hard drive and that's it. Go to the location of the iPhoto library and check the file size, should all be there.
I have 3 or 4 iPhoto libraries stored in various drives for this reason.
Thanks
Just triple check it before deleting anything
In other words open it from external hard drive on MacBook
@richadam: Yer once I’ve finished copying it to external hard drive I’ll plug it into my MacBook Air which has never used photos before and open it from there to make sure it’s all up to date
don't we need to format a harddrive to work with mac? I had one which i used with windows laptop, but it never worked with mac.
I just did it in Disk Utility
Why would you sell it?
You won't get much for it and its performing a vital role.
I think it’s time as when I smell the top of the monitor is kinda smells fumey / burning, don’t think this is normal
It’s not normal correct?
So I’m gonna sell it for parts / faulty what ever I can get for it
Just realised that I’ll need to get a USB A to C Adapter as my external hard drive uses A and my MacBook air uses C
Anyone recommend one of these while I’m at it?
nonda USB-C mini adapter
using one for 3 years, highly recommend. It used to be the most compact one, but now there are copy cats.
Where can I get one
I've got one of the samsung portable SSD's and it's good. It came with usb-c to usb-c and usb-a to usb-c cables.
Some routers support HDDs connection via usb for storage. That could be an option for you.
Yer a SSD would be nice being faster and smaller but I was told for storage a normal hard drive is better?
Not sure how true this is but I do need to get an adapter to get it working on my USB C MacBook Air
You need at least two back ups. HDDs are better for price per GB. SSDs are said to be more reliable but I've had an SSD die on me and only one HDD that I accidentally dropped.
I’ve got 4 external hard drives
2 big 4tb and 2 small 750gb and I’m gonna put the photos file on each one
Only problem is repeating this every time I add more photos is gonna take awhile that’s why iCloud would be great but uploading this amount is a pain
@Twisty: Ahhh I see. I use a program called freefilesync on my PC. It compares files and folders on different drives and can copy over the new stuff. I'm using it to copy photos to a secondary HDD in the PC and some movies and shows to my NAS.
External drive will be better if you don't view them often. If you do, go for some sort of cloud storage.
Just get a blank external drive and use Time Machine. It’s the easiest way to back up your Mac locally. Set and forget.
iCloud is also a great choice if you don’t mine the monthly cost. Otherwise something like backblaze is also an option.
Yer I use to use Time Machine but since I’m selling the iMac and moving to a MacBook Air with a smaller internal hard drive I’ve backed up the photos file to 4 different external hard drives.
Time Machine is great but it only is good for the iMac and not the MacBook
Honestly, get an iCloud 2TB storage plan and enjoy the convenience and redundancy of Cloud. Multiple have already suggested it.
Depending on your internet, 450GB could take a few days, but once it's done you have access to all of your photos across all of your Apple devices, and don't need to worry about a physical hard drive dying / being lost / stolen / destroyed.
iCloud is probably one my favourite Apple products. There's just something about never having to interact with something, but at the same time you interact with it every single day.
Are you a photographer or something? 450GB is a lot of photos (or you take a lot of videos, too).
Just take lots of photos and videos of family and it’s built up over the years plus the increase details of the iPhone camera doesn’t help hahaha
As you're using an iPhone (and iPad, and Mac) already, I can't stress iCloud enough. Set and forget.
It's probably painful, but you could always do a tidy up and cull anything you don't want anymore? Or just move that to an archive drive, and delete it from your main library.
I've not "backed up" a single photo since like 2011(?).
Sounds like a good idea
I’ll have to go through the photos which will take ages but it might be worth it
Honestly… the best thing you can do is go and buy a 2 bay nas enclosure, something like a ds218 by synology and whack those 2 4TB drives in it. That will give you redundant storage. You can then get an additional external hard drive to take backups of your synology nas and keep it offsite at a friend or a relatives house.
Advantages- the nas will let you know if one of your disks is about to die and you will have more than enough time to replace it. Even if it dies suddenly, the other disk has everything it needs to rebuild the backup when you get a new disk.
You also have a backup for if your house burns down.
Bonus - synology nas software has time machine natively integrated
Yer I’m not sure if I’m smart enough for that hahaha
It’s pretty simple. I have exactly that setup and point Time Machine to it. I run 2 x 4tb drives in it, the 2tbs were getting full (and old) with all the redundant backups. I prefer to buy the drives locally in case of any warranty issues.
Yes or iCloud. /thread