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My photo library is on an external hard drive as it is so big!
How do I create a backup of this library that will be automatically updated? Or is the iCloud back up enough to ensure my photos are safe if the library ever becomes corrupted or hard drive fails?
Thank you
Helen
iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.13
Hi
Good call - see "iCloud is not a backup" below
Time machine is the best way in my opinion. Get a hard drive with enough space (At least 2, preferably 3 times the size of the data you want to back up). Plug it in and set time machine to backup to it. By default it doesn't backup external drives: you will need to specifically tell it to include the hard drive with your photos on in the backup, in time machine options:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250
Time machine keeps hourly backups for a day, daily for a month, and monthly backups until the drive fills up, at which point the oldest backup gets deleted. It is fully automatic and wonderful. The only thing you need to worry about is the backup drive needs to be connected to your mac as much of the time as possible. Not a problem for a desktop machine, but if a laptop, you need to leave it switched on somewhere with the backup drive connected long enough for the backups to take place.
Hi
Good call - see "iCloud is not a backup" below
Time machine is the best way in my opinion. Get a hard drive with enough space (At least 2, preferably 3 times the size of the data you want to back up). Plug it in and set time machine to backup to it. By default it doesn't backup external drives: you will need to specifically tell it to include the hard drive with your photos on in the backup, in time machine options:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250
Time machine keeps hourly backups for a day, daily for a month, and monthly backups until the drive fills up, at which point the oldest backup gets deleted. It is fully automatic and wonderful. The only thing you need to worry about is the backup drive needs to be connected to your mac as much of the time as possible. Not a problem for a desktop machine, but if a laptop, you need to leave it switched on somewhere with the backup drive connected long enough for the backups to take place.
iCloud is not a backup.
The problem with iCloud for photos (and files if you use iCloud drive) is it makes all the libraries across all the devices the same. While it does protect you from a drive failure - it doesn't protect you from accidental deletion. If you delete photos on your phone, they are deleted on your mac, and from iCloud - same if you delete on your mac - they'll be deleted on your phone. There have been rare cases of system failure also causing deletions (or just user error). There are also numerous examples of library corruption making it very difficult to access photos.
Every few days we get someone here saying "I deleted photos - how can I get them back". If it was more than 30 days ago (or they’ve been manually removed from recently deleted), and there is no other backup, the answer is "you can't"
Thanks Tony thats helpful. I will try that :)
Iphoto Library Back up
