You come again from trip and discover that you’ve got taken greater than 1,000 footage. What do you do with them?Let’s make a journey down reminiscence lane to 2015, when Google Photos was the hero all of us wanted. They promised us free, limitless storage for each photograph and video, a digital Fort Knox for our recollections. It was good: My complete life’s photograph library, secure within the cloud and accessible from wherever, regardless of what number of occasions I dropped my telephone.Then, in 2021, Google pulled the rug out from beneath us. The free trip was over. All these 1000’s of images have been secure, however each new image began chipping away at that measly 15GB of free storage. Suddenly, my photograph behavior got here with a price ticket, forcing me to pay for a Google One subscription if I needed to maintain importing. None of the above was a shock. Even for an organization that makes as a lot cash as Google, providing free limitless storage is not a sustainable enterprise mannequin. All these images and movies have been taking over a number of area, as a result of what’s saved within the cloud — in contrast to the identify suggests — would not vanish into the sky. Those recordsdata exist on bodily servers right here on Earth. Essentially, they’re saved on another person’s laptop.And now I used to be being charged to make use of that cupboard space. I’ve all the time disliked the thought of paying for month-to-month subscriptions: $10 a month turns into $120 a yr, which turns into $1,200 after 10 years. And Google One wasn’t a subscription that I might simply cancel like Netflix or Spotify: If I ended paying, I would not be capable of add new images and movies, and I might probably lose entry to all my recordsdata after two years.How might I again up all my recollections with out the cloud? Over the years, I developed a system for managing my recordsdata and conserving copies saved on an exterior laborious drive. While it takes a bit extra work to switch every little thing manually, it is a greater long-term answer for me, and it would not depend on paying for a subscription service.Don’t miss any of CNET’s unbiased tech content material and lab-based opinions. Add us as a most well-liked Google supply on Chrome.Why I exploit an exterior laborious drive for storing images and moviesIf you do not wish to pay for cloud storage, you could be tempted to get a telephone with a better storage capability. After Google Photos stopped letting me add recordsdata free of charge, my first thought was that I’d fairly pay extra up-front for a tool with a terabyte of storage, than pay indefinitely for a Google One subscription. But I quickly realized that even probably the most future-proofed 1TB telephone will ultimately have to be changed. And if I wish to carry over all my outdated recordsdata, my subsequent telephone might want to have at the very least as a lot storage as my present one, plus further capability for my future images and movies.To complicate this concern, picture file sizes proceed to develop. As telephone cameras enhance, the footage they seize leads to higher-megapixel recordsdata. My iPhone estimates every 12-megapixel picture is roughly 2MB and every 24-megapixel picture is 3MB. Video takes up much more area: a minute of 4K footage can simply exceed 1GB. At these charges, even a telephone with 256GB of storage (the brand new minimal for the iPhone 17 sequence) can refill quick.There’s some excellent news: Digital storage would not should be costly. There are loads of choices for exterior laborious drives, and you’ll simply get a 1TB solid-state drive for lower than $100. (For context, Apple prices $1,399 for the 1TB iPhone Air, a $400 premium over the $999 256GB mannequin.) Western DigitalThe finest a part of utilizing an exterior drive is you could save recordsdata throughout a number of gadgets. You also can preserve utilizing it lengthy after you have upgraded to a brand new telephone. Generally, HDDs final three to 5 years, whereas SSDs final a minimal of 5 years. Using an exterior drive requires extra effort than backing up every little thing to the cloud. You want to attend on your recordsdata to switch out of your gadget to the drive, after which kind every little thing into folders. Then, after file switch is full, you could delete these recordsdata out of your telephone or laptop. Fortunately, as soon as you have found out the method and finished it a number of occasions, it is fairly easy. Here’s how I do it.My course of for backing up photosWhen I’m on account of again up my images and movies (or my telephone is working low on storage), I prefer to make two copies of every file: one for my laptop computer, and one for my exterior SSD.My MacEbook runs fewer apps and has extra storage than my iPhone, so it receives a duplicate of all my telephone’s images and movies. The Photos app on my Mac additionally has a helpful “Delete items after upload” checkbox, which I like to recommend choosing.Once all of the recordsdata have been transferred, I plug my exterior drive into my laptop and choose all of the images I wish to again up. The Photos app helpfully kinds every little thing by add date. I can choose all the photographs from the most recent batch by clicking on the primary photograph, holding the Shift key, after which clicking on the final photograph. I then drag and drop them into the exterior drive. If I’ve a number of images (over 500), I have a tendency to separate up this step and choose 200-300 at a time, or there will be some interruptions to the switch course of. Jeffrey Hazelwood/CNETI attempt to again up my images at the very least as soon as every month, or after a special day like a trip. Sometimes, to be on the secure aspect, I’ll additionally make a backup earlier than a serious software program replace (like iOS 26). The course of has turn out to be a manner for me to mark the top of 1 interval and the start of one other. I used to wrestle with organizing the recordsdata on my exterior drive. However, I now merely create a folder for every batch of uploaded images and movies. I’ll label these folders both by the date (e.g. July 2025), or the event (Trip to London, Summer 2024).You could discover {that a} related system works for you. Maybe you will go for roughly frequent backups. Either manner, I extremely suggest this last step: Make a backup of the backup on a separate exterior drive. That manner, if one in all your drives fails, you will nonetheless have the opposite.I’m extra intentional concerning the pictures I seizeOne concern with conserving all my recordsdata on exterior drives is that I do not all the time have entry to them. But I believe that is an affordable trade-off. I needn’t carry each single picture I’ve ever captured in my pocket. I can often discover the images I want on my Instagram web page or in my electronic mail inbox. I do go away sure images and movies on my telephone indefinitely, however solely ones that I have to refer again to typically (a screenshot of my insurance coverage info, for instance). I additionally preserve some images that I take pleasure in seeing every now and then: a picture from a household reunion; a time out with associates. It’s a curated assortment, a bit like these one or two pictures that individuals used to maintain of their wallets. Jason Chun/CNETYes, it may be a problem to handle all these recordsdata on an exterior drive, but it surely’s properly price the additional effort. Not solely do I spend much less cash in the long term, however I additionally really feel reassured: my recollections are saved on a bodily object that I personal, fairly than being dumped onto another person’s laptop.Even if I did pay for Google One or one other cloud storage choice, I might really feel as if another person owned my recordsdata. What if Google Photos makes one other change to its storage coverage or raises costs once more? I might don’t have any alternative however to associate with it. My recollections can be on the mercy of a company. And what if Google shuts down sometime? Sure, it is one of many largest corporations on the earth proper now. But that was additionally true of Kodak, not too way back.There’s yet one more surprising profit: By being liable for creating these guide backups, I’ve turn out to be extra intentional about capturing pictures within the first place. I’ve realized that I haven’t got to take an image of each single factor I see. Most of the time, I can simply bear in mind it.
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