25gb of photos - what’s the easiest way to organise and backup?

[Marty_Macfly]

Hi guys,

Photos from over 10 years, iPhone 3GS onwards, about 25GB storage in size
finally trying to do something with them, besides simply backing them up on the iCloud in the one default folder

I have recently bought a new Windows 10 laptop, and also the new iPhone SE. Very much trying to catch up with modern tech after years of not using laptops.

I’ve tried the iCloud app on the Windows laptop, but it only downloads 9999 photos thumbnails, out of order. Looks like for Windows 10, photo stream option is no longer available, which is a right pain.

Can you advise on:

1. Best way to start organising the sheer size of photos, before playing around with any thing else.

2. Do I have to download all the photos onto my iPhone, as opposed to the optimise setting? Once I have it on the phone, do I then USB lead to the Windows 10 laptop and literally download the whole lot onto the laptop?!

Note:
I have low bandwidth where I’m living, so So the iCloud window is very slow scrawling up and down. Will be frustrating, when trying to sort out 10 years worth of photos!

Hope you can advise on this start on my organising of mass photos

Regards
Martin

 

[Marty_Macfly]

Hi guys,

additional things need to do:

4. i’m going to be going through my photos, and deleting all the rubbish ones which I never got round to deleting. Bad photos, old stuff not need et cetera.

It would be a real pain to spend hours doing this on the laptop, (much easier to do on a bigger screen and full-size keyboard et cetera), and then when I re-import new photos from the iPhone, all the photos I deleted will come back again!

Ideally looking for way, of deleting photos on the big screen, on the laptop, and then having that synced onto my iPhone – iCloud etc.

I hope you know what I’m talking about, and quite possibly have hit the same problem.

Seeing as it’s over 10 years, I’ve really let this garden turn into a bit of a jungle

Hope you can help

Martin

 

[slimejester]

I’d just use Google Photos for this. It’s totally free and easy to use.

 

[Marty_Macfly]

Hi s,

would google sync with my iCloud?

want to avoid duplicating hours of deleting Crap photos

cheers
Martin

 

[zorinlynx]

I’d just use Google Photos for this. It’s totally free and easy to use.

Just a warning, Google Photos makes backups a pain. You can no longer back up your photos by downloading your Google Drive like you could before.

This change made Google Photos a forever non-starter for me unless they come up with a new way for you to back up your account.

I use iCloud Photos at the moment and it works for me but this won't help here as OP is a Windows user. I'm not sure of a good solution. Maybe OneDrive? I don't know how good Microsoft photo management is.

 

[slimejester]

Hi s,

would google sync with my iCloud?

want to avoid duplicating hours of deleting Crap photos

cheers
Martin

I don't think it will synch with iCloud.

 

[QCassidy352]

Hi OP, it would be helpful to know the answer to the following: Prior to getting your new Win10 laptop and iPhone SE, where were you keeping your photos?

 

[Marty_Macfly]

Hi OP, it would be helpful to know the answer to the following: Prior to getting your new Win10 laptop and iPhone SE, where were you keeping your photos?

hi Q,

Pre iPhones they were copied onto a old windows laptop and backed up onto external drive. Both over 10 years old. Old Laptop is creaking now and keeps freezing.

will get onto trying to retrieve them, once sorted out current 11 yr backlog! 🙂

 

[QCassidy352]

I see… that's unfortunate. I know you described the photos being out of order as being a problem with iCloud for windows, but I'm afraid you may have this problem with any application. In many instances, once photos are dragged into a folder on a hard drive, they're going to use the date they appeared on that device as the creation date. I suspect that's what happening to you. So whatever program you import them into, the order probably isn't going to correct.

So I think this is going to be a two-step process. First is just picking a photo organizer (for windows 10) in which you can dump all of these photos and then delete/reorder. Second is going to be exporting the photos to your iPhone. Ideally, the photo organizer you pick in step one will have native support for syncing with iOS, but if not, you can still make it work.

If the out-of-order problem is (as I suspect) not limited to iCloud, then you might as well use iCloud because at least you know it'll play nicely with the iPhone in step 2.

 

[russell_314]

From what I've been told, Google photos doesn't save full resolution copies. Just use an external hard drive to backup your Windows PC and iCloud for your Apple devices. There are online backup services that work well but they're not free of course.

 

[ian87w]

Hi guys,

Photos from over 10 years, iPhone 3GS onwards, about 25GB storage in size
finally trying to do something with them, besides simply backing them up on the iCloud in the one default folder

I have recently bought a new Windows 10 laptop, and also the new iPhone SE. Very much trying to catch up with modern tech after years of not using laptops.

I’ve tried the iCloud app on the Windows laptop, but it only downloads 9999 photos thumbnails, out of order. Looks like for Windows 10, photo stream option is no longer available, which is a right pain.

Can you advise on:

1. Best way to start organising the sheer size of photos, before playing around with any thing else.

2. Do I have to download all the photos onto my iPhone, as opposed to the optimise setting? Once I have it on the phone, do I then USB lead to the Windows 10 laptop and literally download the whole lot onto the laptop?!

Note:
I have low bandwidth where I’m living, so So the iCloud window is very slow scrawling up and down. Will be frustrating, when trying to sort out 10 years worth of photos!

Hope you can advise on this start on my organising of mass photos

Regards
Martin

Do you have Office 365 subscription?
If you do, migrate all your photos to OneDrive, and you have 1TB of OneDrive space. OneDrive can sync photos with the Photos app on Windows 10, and you can see your photos on your iPhone through the OneDrive app. And set the OneDrive app to automatically backup your camera roll.

It's not as ideal as using the iPhone's native Photos app, but it works.

Of course, the pain is the migration part as you have to download all your photos from iCloud to your Windows 10 PC first.

 

[Marty_Macfly]

Hi guys,

I think I found the best solution for us.

Will look at getting a iPad. That way, will have a bigger screen to look at all the photos, and be able to do the organising that we can’t on the little iPhones.

That is the best compromise for us I think, got the new Windows laptop, so to buy another laptop, a Mac book, would be overkill.

An iPad would be a nice compliment to the tech we’ve just acquired.
my first impression was that Apple was trying to suck us into simply buy more their tech, by putting up boundaries on easy photo organising. But from what we’ve discussed in this thread, it looks like all kinds of techissues that cause photos to be out of order et cetera

Thanks for all your help guys, it’s nice to get the reasons why tech doesn’t jell, when they’re different companies.

Anyway, it’s nice to Apple is very centred on making sure all their products work seamlessly together.

another point is, if I didn’t have iPhones, we would not have collected over 10 years worth of photos all in one place to start off with.

Okay, will get on with cutting down the weeds in this garden, then take a look at importing all the pre-iPhone photos!
thanks again guys


Regards
Martin