Manual Backup Of Photos To The Cloud On Mac

Apple's iCloud Photo Library service works flawlessly to sync and back up your images and video to iCloud — but if you're serious about keeping your irreplaceable photos and video safe, you'll want a redundant (second) backup.

Best Cloud Backup for Mac: Backblaze With an easy to use interface, competitive pricing and unlimited storage, Backblaze isn’t just the best Mac backup; it’s earned first place among all our. Cloud Service Folders - services like Dropbox, SugarSync, and SkyDrive can be configured to store data on your local Mac. Although it’s good to have at least one backup of the data stored on. Back up the library in Photos on Mac. Even if you use iCloud Photos, it’s important that you always back up your library locally using one of the following methods. Use Time Machine: After you set up Time Machine, it automatically backs up the files on your Mac. If you ever lose the files in your Photos library, you can restore them from the Time Machine backup.

That can take the form of a local backup on your own drive or an external source, a secondary online backup, or both. Here's how to do it.

How to back up iCloud Photo Library to your Mac's hard drive

The best way to back up the images and video in iCloud Photo Library is to make sure you're downloading all your content onto your Mac.

Note: If you plan to back up your entire digital library to your Mac's hard drive, you'll likely want to do it on a desktop Mac with a 1TB drive or higher. Otherwise, consider backing up to an external drive.

  1. Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
  2. Click Photos in the App menu in the upper left corner of your screen.

  3. Select Preferences from the drop-down menu.

  4. Click the iCloud tab.

  5. Click Download Originals to this Mac.

Your Mac will now download full-resolution copies of all your images to your Mac's hard drive, stored inside your Photos app library.

How to back up your iCloud Photo Library content to an external drive

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There are two ways to back up your iCloud Photo Library to an external drive: by backing up your Photos library automatically, or manually. (You can also export sections of your library, if you don't want to back up the whole thing.)

Back up your Photos library automatically

If you've turned on the Download Originals option for your Photos library, you can back up your Photos library as part of your regular backup routine. Whether you use Time Machine, or clone your hard drive using SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy, your Photos library (and all images and video automatically downloaded from iCloud) will be backed up as well. (And if you don't currently use a backup service, well... now's a good time to start!)

Back up your Photos library manually

If you've turned on the Download Originals option for your Photos library but don't want to back it up automatically, you can always copy your Photos library to an external drive at regular intervals.

  1. Connect an external drive to your Mac via USB, USB-C, or Thunderbolt.
  2. Open a new Finder window on your Mac.
  3. Go to Users > [username] > Pictures.
  4. Drag your Photos Library to your external drive.
  5. Wait for it to copy.

Create an external library for backing up iCloud Photo Library

I recommend setting a bi-weekly reminder for these steps, so you keep your Photos library regularly backed up.

How to back up portions of your iCloud Photo Library

Don't want to back up your entire library? You can export individual images and video to your external drive.

  1. Connect an external drive to your Mac via USB, USB-C, or Thunderbolt.
  2. Open the Photos app.
  3. Select the photos and video you want to back up.
  4. Go to the File menu.
  5. Select Export > Export Unmodified Original For # Photos or Videos or Export # Photos or Video.
  6. Select an option for File Name and Subfolder Format, and then input your text as desired.
  7. Press Export.
  8. Choose your external drive.
  9. Press Export Originals.

How to make an online backup of your iCloud Photo Library

Even though your entire iCloud Photo Library is (as the name implies) stored online in iCloud, it's worth considering a second online backup as one of your redundancies.

If you store your entire iCloud Photo Library on your Mac

Good news: If you already use a service to back up your hard drive and you've synced your full iCloud Photo Library to your Mac, it's easy to back it all up. (If not, consider it a good time to start!)

If you don't store your iCloud Photo Library on your Mac

Manual Backup Of Photos To The Cloud On Mac Computer

If you don't store your iCloud images locally, this is a bit trickier: you can use the external drive method to export portions of your library to an external drive, then sync that drive to your preferred online backup service, but it's a bit more labor-intensive. In general, this is why I tend to recommend backing up your full library to your Mac or storing a library on an external drive.

Any iCloud Photo Library backup questions?

Have any questions about how to back up your iCloud Photo Library, or about backups or iCloud Photo Library in general? Drop them in the comments below!

February 2019: Added steps to exporting individual images and videos to an external hard drive.

Serenity Caldwell contributed to an earlier version of this guide.

iCloud Photo Library: The Ultimate Guide

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Backing up and archiving your Photos or iPhoto Library and all the images they hold can be one of the most critical tasks you need to perform regularly.

Digital photos are among the most essential and meaningful files you keep on your computer, and as with any critically important files, you should maintain current backups of them. If you've imported some or all of your photos into either the Photos app (OS X Yosemite and later) or the iPhoto app (OS X Yosemite and earlier), then you should be backing up your Photos or iPhoto Library regularly.

Image libraries are so important that multiple backups using different backup methods are needed to ensure you never lose your valuable memories.

ICloud Photo Library

If you use the iCloud Photo Library service, all the images in your Photos or iPhoto library are stored in iCloud, and any new photos you take with an iOS device are added to it and appear on all your devices that have iCloud Photos enabled. However, the images and videos in your iCloud Photo Library should be backed up just like any drive.

The best way to back up your iCloud Photo Library is to download all its content to your Mac. Your entire digital library is probably huge, so you may need a Mac with a massive drive to handle the volume. Otherwise, back up your iCloud Photo Library to an external drive attached to your Mac.

How to Back Up iCloud Photo Library to a Mac

  1. Open the Photos app on your Mac.

  2. Click Photos in the menu bar and select Preferences from the drop-down menu

  3. Choose the iCloud tab.

  4. Put a check in the box next to Download Originals to this Mac.

Time Machine

If you use Apple's Time Machine, then the libraries used by Photos and iPhoto are automatically backed up as part of every Time Machine backup that is performed. While that's a good starting point, you may want to consider additional backups, and here’s why.

Why You Need Additional Image Library Backups

Time Machine does a great job of backing up photos, but it's not archival. By design, Time Machine favors removing the oldest files it contains to make room for newer ones. This isn't a concern for the normal use of Time Machine as a backup system used to restore your Mac to its present condition should something catastrophic happen.

However, it is a concern if you want to keep long-term copies of items, such as your photos. With digital cameras and smartphones, the original is stored on the camera's flash storage or mobile device. Once the images are transferred to your Mac, the flash storage device is erased to make room for a new batch of photos, and you may not keep every image on your mobile device.

The originals end up on your Mac and nowhere else.

Assuming you use Photos or iPhoto as your Mac image library app, then the library may hold the only copy of every photo you've ever taken with a digital camera or your smartphone.

Your image library should probably have its own dedicated backup method in addition to Time Machine to ensure that one-of-a-kind photos are retained for the long term.

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Back Up Your Photos or iPhoto Library Manually

You can manually back up the image libraries used by Photos or iPhoto to an external drive, including a USB flash drive, or you can use a backup application to perform the task for you. Here's how to make a copy manually.

  1. Open a Finder window, select your home directory in the sidebar and choose Pictures.

  2. Inside the Pictures folder, you'll see a file called either Photos Library or iPhoto Library. You may have both. Copy the Photos Library or iPhoto Library file or files to a location other than your hard drive, such as an external drive.

  3. Repeat this process whenever you import new photos into Photos or iPhoto, so you always have a current backup of each library. Do not, however, overwrite any existing backup as this would defeat the archival process. Instead, give each backup a unique name.

If you've created multiple iPhoto libraries, be sure to back up each iPhoto Library file.

What About Images Not Stored in the Photos Library?

Photos supports multiple libraries. If you created additional libraries, they need to be backed up, just like the default Photos Library.

Additionally, Photos allows you to store images outside of the Photos Library. This is referred to as using reference files. Reference files are usually used to allow you to access images that you don’t want to take up space on your Mac. In many cases, reference image files are stored on an external drive, a USB flash drive, or another device.

Reference files are convenient, but they present a problem when you back up. Since the reference images aren't stored within the Photos Library, they're not backed up when you copy the Photos Library. That means you need to remember where any reference files are located and make sure they're backed up as well.

If you would rather not have to deal with reference image files, you can move them into your Photos Library.

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  1. Launch Photos, located in the /Applications folder.

  2. Select the photos that you want to move to the Photos Library.

  3. Select File > Consolidate and then click the Copy button.

If you can’t remember which images are referenced and which are already stored in the Photos Library, you can choose some or all of the images, and then select Consolidate from the File menu.

Manual Backup Of Photos To The Cloud On Mac Windows 10

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After you have all the reference files consolidated to your Photos Library, they are backed up whenever you back up your Photos Library.

Back Up Your Image Library With a Backup App

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Another method for backing up your precious photos is to use a third-party backup app that can handle archives. The word archive has different meanings depending on how it is used. In this case, it specifically refers to the ability to retain files on the destination drive that no longer appear on the source drive. This happens when you back up your Photos or iPhoto Library and then, before the next backup, delete a few images. The next time the backup runs, you want to be confident that the images you deleted from the library aren't also removed from the existing backup.

Several backup apps can handle this scenario, including Carbon Copy Cloner 4.x or later. Carbon Copy Cloner has an archive option that protects files and folders that are exclusively located on the backup destination drive.

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Add the archive feature to the ability to schedule backups, and you have a decent backup system that protects all your image libraries.