• Backup Apple Photos Library
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• Best Mac Backup Drive

Mar 16, 2020  Best photo backup services for iPhone, iPad, and Mac Backing up photos is important for ensuring you keep your memories safe from things like lost or stolen devices and software crashes. These are the best backup services for taking care of your photographs! May 22, 2019  Launch the Finder, and then open your Pictures folder, right-click the Photos Library file, then click Show Package Contents. Right-click on the Masters folder then tag the folder with a color.

Have you ever had trouble finding a photo and feared the worst — that you accidentally deleted it? Or maybe you’ve heard a friend bemoan of how their hard drive failed and they lost everything from pictures of their firstborn to that once-in-a-lifetime selfie with Michael Jordan?

After taking a moment to realize how fortunate you’ve been to have not lost any pics yourself, you probably think, “I should start backing up my photos.” Well, you’ve found the right article. We’re going to go through a few solutions for backing up your Mac and, more specifically, your photo collection. Because while losing an important piece of work is tragic, it’s usually replaceable. The moments that your pictures represent are fleeting, and there’s no way to recreate them.

Before you back up your photos

There’s truth to the adage garbage in, garbage out. So before you even ask yourself, “How do I back up my photos?” you’ll want to make sure your photo library is cleaned up. Space is precious, so backing up duplicate and almost-duplicate pictures will be a waste. Thankfully, a Mac app like Gemini 2 can help you unclutter your photos before you back them up. And the best part is, you can download it for free to give it a try.

Best ways to back up your photos on Mac

As mentioned earlier, there are a couple ways to go about backing up your photos. The ones we’re going to go over are:

1. iCloud
2. Time Machine
3. Google Photos
4. External hard drive

After reading this article, you’ll be able to weigh out the cost versus convenience for each of these options and see which one works best for you. At the end of the day, the best way to backup photos is the one that’s easy for you to use on a regular basis.

iCloud for cloud-based photo backup

The first method is the one that comes standard with your Mac and doesn’t require you to install any additional software. iCloud is cloud-based storage made by Apple and available to anyone with an AppleID. Using iCloud to back up photos is easy thanks to automatic backups and syncing, built into both iPhone and Mac. All you have to do is make sure iCloud is turned on on each device, and you’re all set.

The catch, as there always is, is that you only get 5 GB for free. And that includes not only photos, but also anything else you decide to store on your iCloud drive. Additional storage can be purchased and is fairly affordable compared to other cloud storages.

How to back up photos to iCloud

Backing up to iCloud depends on the device you’re using. Since we’re talking about Mac here, this is how you set up iCloud backup in macOS: setting we’re going to go through how to do it on both iPhone and Mac.

1. Go to System Preferences > iCloud
2. Click Options next to Photos
3. Select iCloud Photos

After you turn on iCloud Photos, you’ll get access to other options for syncing and sharing your photos.

Time Machine to back up your photos and everything else

The next type of backup veers away from the cloud-based model. Time Machine is the built-in Mac application that will automatically backup your Mac to an external hard drive. Which means you will have to buy an external drive or use a network drive, but the bright side is as long as you have the hard drive plugged in your Mac will be backed up.

One of the major benefits to Time Machine is that it’s a differential backup. That means that after the initial backup it will only back up the files that are new and/or changed. So every backup after the first one will be faster because, in theory, it’s backing up fewer files.

Does Time Machine back up my photo library?

There can be some confusion as to what Time Machine backs up once it’s configured. Simply put, it backs up everything, including any photos stored on your Mac.

That being said the easiest way to search for photos and/or restore things from your backup is to ensure you’re using the Photos app on your computer. If you just have random photos scattered throughout your Mac it can be harder to track those down, whereas Photos helps you keep your library organized.

How to set up a Time Machine backup

Once you plug an external hard drive into your Mac, you should be automatically prompted to use the drive with Time Machine. iIf you’re not, you can do it manually:

1. Go to Apple > System Preferences > Time Machine
2. Click Select Disk
3. In the Time Machine preferences window, select your external drive from the list of available disks
4. Then click Use Disk

If the hard drive is not formatted properly to be used with Time Machine, you’ll be prompted to format it. You’ll also notice an option to encrypt the hard drive and your backup, which adds an extra level of security in case you misplace the external drive.

Google Photos for a free photo backup

The next option is another cloud-based backup solution, Google Photos. While not as well-integrated into iPhone and Mac as iCloud, Google Photos offers equally easy setup and ongoing backups.

The biggest difference between Google Photos and iCloud though is that with Google Photos you can store an unlimited amount of pictures — as long as you agree to have those photos compressed. While most people won’t notice the difference between compressed and uncompressed photos, it’s still something worth noting. If you choose to upload your images at full quality, you’ll be using your Google Drive space, of which you get 15GB for free. Additional storage can be purchased.

How to back up photos to Google Photos

Like iCloud, Google handles backups on a per-device basis, but in this case we’ll be covering how to set up a Google Photos backup on Mac:

But there are some obvious downsides like you won’t have access to the cloud-based copy of the Mac’s iTunes library. Well, you can choose to turn off iCloud Music Library to prevent your local music from syncing across the board.Do note that you won’t have any problem in using Apple Music without iCloud Music Library both on your iPhone and Mac. But what if you have collected many non-iTunes or Apple Music songs and want to keep them separate? Should you wish to keep your entire music streamlined across your devices like iPhone, iPad, Mac, “iCloud Music Library” is the way to go.

1. Download and install the Google Backup and Sync app on your Mac
2. Sign in with your Google Account
3. Select whether to back up only photos or videos or all files
4. Select all folders you want to back up
5. Under “Photo & video upload size,” select your upload quality
6. Click Start

External hard drive: The old school way to back up pictures

This last option will definitely take the most manual labor. On the other hand, using an external hard drive will give you the most control over what you’re backing up, and many prefer to have it the old-fashioned way. Whether you’re using Photos, another photo manager, or just have pictures scattered around your Mac, you’ll be able to back them up. It’ll just take you a little bit of time to do it yourself.

How to back up photos to an external hard drive

1. Open Finder > Pictures (or wherever your images are)
2. Select your Photos Library, the folder you want to back up, or individual files
3. Drag and drop the file onto your external hard drive in the left column.

While this method gives you the most freedom and assurance that you’re backing up exactly what you want, if you make any changes to your Photo Library on Mac, you’ll have to back it up all over again.

Now that you’ve got some idea on how to back up your photos, it’s time to get started. The most important thing to keep in mind is that a backup is only as good as the last time it was done. So back up your pictures early, and back them up often. And if you’re truly worried about it — why only have just one photo backup? Combine a cloud-based option with an external HDD and sleep well knowing your memories are safe.

Free up your space by transferring your Photos library to another external hard drive. By freeing up space you will have valuable space for your work on your Mac. In addition to this, we will help you to back up your whole photo library to iCloud.

Why store photos on external drive

In today’s world, everyone loves to capture photos of every single moment and wants to save all those moments in his/her personal devices like Mac. But saving all your photos can fill-up your Mac storage quickly and you may face the shortage of space.

There are many options to store your photos data. One of them to store your photos on iCloud photo library but the drawback of saving your photos on iCloud is, if you delete the photo from your device it will be deleted from iCloud as well.

One question raised up here is that what we can do to store all our photos to some safe place if we are running out of space on Mac?

Fortunately, you have visited the right place to find the solution to your problem. There is a safer and easy way to transfer your entire photo library from your Mac to your external drive. The best of this trick is whenever you need to see your photos on your Mac you just need to open photo library app on your Mac it will automatically take you to your saved photos in external hard drive until unless it is plugged in.

Snapshot of the guide

There is a quick snapshot of the guide so you can understand quickly how to move the library to external drive.

Backup Apple Photos Library

• Prepare your external hard drive to move Photo Library. Make sure drive is formatted as MacOS Extended Journaled.
• Go to the location of the Photo library and move it to external drive.
• Set the external library as a System Photo Library (So whenever you open the Photos app it will open the photos library from the external hard drive.)
• After completing trasfer to drive, make sure this external drive is connected to your Mac whenever you want to access photos.

Our article will help you to move your photos from Mac to external hard drive. Continue reading the steps are about to start.

Do not worry if you have already stored your photos on iCloud photo library. Our article will help you to get back your already saved photos in iCloud photos library and will help you to move them to external hard drive. Here is how to do it.

System Photo Library vs Other Library

When you run Photos app on your Mac first time this will ask you to create a new or use an old library. That default Photo library became the system library automatically. Only System Photo Library are allowed to access iCloud services.

You can create multiple other libraries and work with photos only in one library at a time. To work in another library you have to switch the library. You can also change and set one of the other libraries as a System library.

How to transfer the Photos library to a hard drive

First, make it sure the hard drive you are going to use for Photos library is faster and have enough space. It will save your time and stored your memories quickly. A good hard drive always keeps your stuff secure and there are fewer chances of losing your data.

Before going step by step to move your photo library to external hard, first make it sure that your external hard drive is already formatted for Mac OS Extended (journaled). If it is not formatted for Mac first erase all the data from it and format and choose the option of Mac OS Extended (journaled). Use the Disk Utility on your Mac to erase any hard drive (When you erase any drive in mac everything will be deleted, so please save any important data ).

1. Find the Photos Library on your Mac, it will be in your Pictures folder. Click the Go menu on the top and then select Home option from the menu.
   
2. Open the Pictures folder and there you will find the Photos library.
   TIP: In order to see how much storage your photos have taken, just Ctrl+Click on the photos library icon and click on Get Info. Now you can make sure that you have enough storage in your external hard drive.
   
3. It’s time to copy your Photos Library to your external hard drive using drag and drop trick. Now sit back and wait until copies over. The time of transferring photos depends on the size of your Photo Library.
   
4. When transferred completed, press and hold the Option/Alt key from keyboard and click the Photos app icon from Dock to open it. Keep holding the keyboard key until you see a window otherwise this will open the Photos app.
5. You will see a new window to choose the library. On that window hit the button Other library. Navigate to the new location on your external hard drive and choose the Photo Library.
   
6. If there is a message that shows “there are some items that need to be downloaded from iCloud Photo library” then you need to click on delete incomplete items and download all those incomplete items.
   

   Set a photo library as System Photo Library
   

   We have already moved the library to an external drive now its time to set it as System Photo Library. Doing that will allow it to use iCloud service.

7. Open the Photo Library from the external drive.
8. Click Photos men and then select the Preferences option.
9. On the next window click General and then click Use as System Photo Library button (this will help you to get it to work with iCloud Photo Library)
   TIP: Remember this is the step you need to perform in future If you accidentally unlinked the external drive’s photo library from the Photos app.
   
10. Go to System Preferences then iCloud then Photos then Options, and choose iCloud Photo Library to turn that back on. See if you have stored all the photos here.
    

Note: you will need to plug in your external hard drive in order to see your photos).

Delete Photo Library from Mac

Once you have confirmed that all the photos in the library moved to the external drive. You can delete the Photo Library from your Mac computer. Go to the Pictures folder and delete it to free up space from your mac.

How to back up your iCloud Photo Library

If you want to move all your photos which you have already backed up to your iCloud photo library to a storage device connected to your Mac. Follow our step by step guide above, but you need to download all the images from iCloud first.

If you have already transferred your Photos library onto the external storage device, now you need to follow these steps.

Best Mac Online Backup

1. Open Photos on your Mac.
2. Click Photos then click on Preferences.
3. Click on the iCloud tab.
4. Choose Download originals to this Mac.

Backup Mac Photo Library

Now all your iCloud photos will be saved on the storage device. (If you are running short of space you would probably not want to do that)

Best Mac Backup Drive

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