[BrianL99]

Originally Posted by rsmurano

A lot of bad information here.
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None of the people here asked how you got your photos to iCloud in the 1st place. Nobody just drags photos to iCloud, you normally setup your Apple device to automatically move your photos/videos to iCloud and if you don’t modify this setting, all your future photos will go to iCloud and you will be in the same boat in the future as you are now.

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(Again, wrong info posted here. You don’t drag your photos to your computer).
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Before you do, move your photos library to the hard drive you want to use then Apple will move your photos from iCloud to your library.


If you were using a Mac, there are many reasons to get the next storage tier in cloud for .99 cents a month: private relay and hide email, and a place to backup all your iPhones and iPads automatically.

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Windows, you’re on your own, I never use windows, just Apple or Linux.

You really should get a better grasp on how MacOS works. Your information is worse than most that's been posted so far.

In MacOS, photos don't automatically flow into your Photo Library, they go where you put them. My Apple Photo Library contains exactly ZERO photos.

You absolutely can "drag" whatever photos you want, from iCloud (or another source) to your Hard Drive.

Your basic misunderstanding, is you appear to operate your iPhone & computer as a basic, "one size fits all" unit. That's not how it works in the real world. Photos/pictures/files have different origins and sources. Photo Library is nothing more than an idiot proof dumping ground (Folder) for iPhone photos.

[Freehiker]

Originally Posted by CTKID

Old Disaster Recovery guy here. I recommend three copies of your important photo's, documents, etc. One copy on your home computer, one copy by your home computer (thumb drive, remote hard drive, etc.) and one copy off site. Work with copy on your computer and use external drive copy by your computer as a recovery copy in the event the computer copy fails (hardware issue, user error - mistakenly delete file or photo). Use the offsite copy as a recovery copy in the event both the computer copy and the external drive copy fail (house fire). Do regular backups to all the drives. I would keep at the last the three backups. Hope it helps.

Facts! I was just naive and lost a ton of data when an external drive failed about 15 years ago. These days I have a 240TB NAS setup with RAID6 and then do a cloud backup via Backblaze on their unlimited plan.

[retiredguy123]

Originally Posted by BrianL99

You really should get a better grasp on how MacOS works. Your information is worse than most that's been posted so far.

In MacOS, photos don't automatically flow into your Photo Library, they go where you put them. My Apple Photo Library contains exactly ZERO photos.

You absolutely can "drag" whatever photos you want, from iCloud (or another source) to your Hard Drive.

Your basic misunderstanding, is you appear to operate your iPhone & computer as a basic, "one size fits all" unit. That's not how it works in the real world. Photos/pictures/files have different origins and sources. Photo Library is nothing more than an idiot proof dumping ground (Folder) for iPhone photos.

To clarify, you can put your photos into ICloud manually, but you can also turn on the "sync" setting which will automatically upload your photos to the cloud whenever you take a photo. Some people have this setting turned on, but they don't know it, and they are surprised when their ICloud storage gets filled up.

[M2inOR]

Key point of backing up:

Your backup is the 2nd copy of the data you are trying to protect.

Years ago, computers had small amounts of storage built into their computer or laptop. People bought external drives to copy info from their internal drive to the external drive, and without thinking, deleted the files from their internal drive, to make room, and thinking that external drive had that important "backup". Nope! All that info is the only copy as the original files were deleted from their internal drive.

If anything happens to that external drive, all is lost.

So...

Have an internal drive that is big enough. Make a copy to at least two different places in case something goes wrong.

A network server might be helpful to meet one of those backup locations. So does an external drive. With a fast internet connection, cloud storage satisfies that need.

I worked in the storage industry for years. My internal storage on my computers is large. I backup to a local server, as well as to cloud storage provided by Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Amazon Drive.

Those cloud storage services backup my computers, tablets, and smartphones.

I think I'm protected. 😁😉