A Case for Backing Up Your Precious Photos and Files at Home

Tyler Anderson profile photo

Tyler Anderson, CFP®

President
Mint Hill Wealth Management
Office : 833-421-1140

Ask people who’ve lost their home to a fire or hurricane, and they’re often most heartbroken about the family photos that no longer exist. 

To safeguard against this fear, we’ve largely embraced backing up our precious photos and files through the cloud, like Apple’s iCloud or Google One. You take a picture and it’s suddenly on all of your devices. You don’t really know where it is, but it’s somehow everywhere. It’s magic. 

Until it isn’t. 


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Some cloud services have unexpectedly shut down or severely scaled back the space they give users. Some users have gotten locked out of their accounts, never able to access their photos again. And, unless you suddenly stop taking photos, you’re bound to use more cloud storage over time, which means your monthly subscription costs will keep rising. If you don’t want to pay more, you’ll have to delete files to free up space.

It’s also just smart to have multiple copies of your important files. If there’s a computer outage, like the major one that hit Microsoft Windows devices this past week, you’ll know your photos are safe.

Storage analysts recommend three moves. Back up your files in the cloud and on solid-state drives, and keep another copy in a remote location, such as a bank safe-deposit box. 

Having your data in multiple locations ensures that you’ll still have access to your files “in case there’s something that compromises a location, such as if your house burns down,” says Brent Ellis, a senior analyst at research firm Forrester.

Backing up files can be a pain, but you shouldn’t wait. Here’s how to get started. 

SSDs vs. HDDs

You may think your files are safe because you put them on a hard-disk drive years ago. Think again. 

HDDs store your files on discs that spin, much like records on a record player. While both HDDs and SSDs can degrade over time, the moving parts inside hard drives make them more fragile. Drop one, and it can stop working entirely. 

SSDs, on the other hand, don’t have moving parts. While you shouldn’t throw your SSD like a Frisbee, some newer models can withstand drops from nearly 10-feet high and come with dust and water resistance. 

The biggest drawback for SSDs in the past tended to be their high prices. They’re more expensive than hard drives, but pricing for external SSDs and those built into computers has fallen 90% over the past decade, according to research firm IDC. They’re also cheaper long term than cloud storage. 

Apple and Google both charge $10 a month in the U.S. for 2 terabytes of storage (Google’s annual plan is $100). Nicer 2TB SSDs from Western Digital’s SanDisk brand retail for about $200. SSDs should last about three to five years before you need to upgrade, storage analysts say. 

While SSDs from no-name brands may be cheaper, don’t trust your most important files to companies you’ve never heard of. Wall Street Journal personal tech columnists and editors have long used devices from Samsung and SanDisk, including the SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD.

When SSD shopping, buy one at least double the size of what you’re backing up, Ellis says. One or 2TB is generally sufficient.

How to transfer your files to an SSD

There’s no magic way to make the backup process completely pain-free. It can take a long time to download files from the cloud, and transferred photos sometimes show up with wonky dates. If you want to be sure to keep the files organized, transfer smaller batches at a time and check them as you go along. And update your computer to the latest operating system. 

If you’re a Mac user, connect your SSD and open the Finder. If you already have files saved on your Mac, you can select them in the Finder and drag them to your SSD. (The process is similar on Windows PCs.) 

For photos saved in iCloud, first download them to your Mac. Open the Photos app and go to Settings. Navigate to the iCloud option, make sure the iCloud Photos box is ticked, and choose Download Originals to this Mac. That gets you full-size files rather than lower-quality copies. Once complete, select your photos in the app, click File in the menu bar, Export, then Export Unmodified Originals and save them to your SSD. You can also do this from iCloud.com, including for non-photo files and if you use a PC.

Exporting unmodified originals maintains the correct date and time the photo was taken, but you may have to dig to find it. You can see the correct information under Content created in the Finder Gallery view. Dragging images from the Photos app to your SSD rather than exporting them can result in incorrect dates, even in the metadata. 

Save files from Google’s cloud on your SSD by logging into your Google account. Click on the small picture of yourself in the top right and choose Manage your Google Account, then select Data & Privacy. 

Scroll to where it says Download your data to access Google Takeout. Select what you want to download, like your Google Drive files or Google Photos, then select Next Step and choose how you want to receive your data, such as an emailed download link. Once you receive the link, download the files and save them to your SSD. 

Once you have your files saved to your external drive, store it in a safe place. Jeff Janukowicz, a storage analyst at IDC, owns two SSDs: One he carries around with him, and another he has tucked away in a fireproof box in his home. 

“It’s always better to be safe than sorry,” he said. 

Write to Cordilia James at cordilia.james@wsj.com

Tyler Anderson profile photo

Tyler Anderson, CFP®

President
Mint Hill Wealth Management
Office : 833-421-1140