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One thing that has changed since 2015 – storage limits on new MacBooks have increased a lot. It’s not the most attractive method, but it’s good backup hygiene for your collection of memories. The critical step is to keep a regularly updated Time Machine backup on a separate external drive. Either you have enough internal storage, or you connect enough external storage to have every photo and video if you library download locally. My method from seven years ago remains the best strategy today for desktop users. I would wager that the majority of users are on iPhone – Mac desktops probably rank last. The easiest way to keep an offline copy of your photo library is … own a desktop Mac. iCloud Photos really doesn’t encourage methods of keeping separate, offline copies of photos and videos. It’s really just your photo library in a single place - even if you don’t use Optimize Storage.
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Keeping a local backup of your photo library is mighty important. Still, iCloud Photos backups shouldn’t be ignored. Have a 300GB photo library? With an iCloud subscription and Optimize Storage, you don’t need a 512GB or 1TB iPhone to take your media with you. You can also manually initiate a backup anytime.ICloud Photos is a fantastic feature for syncing large photo and video libraries across all your devices. When activated, it will perform the backup automatically when your device is plugged in, locked, and connected to Wi-Fi. At the bottom there is a toggle to turn iCloud Backup on or off. It will show you how much total storage you have in iCloud, and how much is still available. Just go to Settings> iCloud, scroll down to the bottom and select Storage & Backup. To enable iCloud Backup, you can either select the option from the settings for your iOS device in iTunes when it is connected, or you can do it from the iOS device itself. ICloud Backup lets you back up your data wirelessly and automatically to your iCloud account. To ensure your iPhone or iPad data is fully protected, here’s a look at what each option backs up and when to use it. But these iOS backup methods were not created equal, and if you don’t choose carefully you could be risking significant data loss.
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With iOS 5 Apple introduced iCloud, essentially allowing users to cut the cord. Once upon a time one of the primary handicaps of iOS devices was the fact that you had to physically connect it to a Windows or Mac PC with a USB sync cable to back it up using iTunes.
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