Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

All Devices Fastest way to backup 500K photos and 125K videos?

M

Moshe1010

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 27, 2010
874
99
Hi,

iCloud is killing my iPhone by being over flooded with data. My iCloud is about 1.6TB full, and my iPhone struggles to synch new photos/videos, so it sometimes restarts or freezes (iPhone XS and 11 Pro behave the same). When I setup a new iCloud/Apple ID user, both phones work fine, so it’s definitely iCloud syncing.

I want to backup the entire iCloud folder and delete everything from there. I want to either put it on an external hard drive and/or upload it to my Dropbox.

What’s the fastest/easiest way to do so? Photos app takes ages to export data, so it’s not useful (even if I download originals).

Thanks.
 
I exported 60GB so tiny compared to 1,600GB. When I gave my 240Mbps it still isn't fast enough as it was saved to external T5 SSD.

Don't know about DropBox but I wouldn't trust OneDrive for performance but businesses do rely on them.

AWS for such a task? Adobe?

What I've been doing is all my photos are also uploaded to Google, mostly as backup. Gives me peace of mind - and archive of photos.
 
My main problem is not the source of storage, but exporting them from the first place. It seems like if I select more than a few GBs of photos/videos in Photos app, it pretty much takes forever to export the files on my desktop (and I have a new 16" MacBook Pro). So I'm looking for a way to export the files from iCloud; it doesn't matter to where.
 
I don't think that you have more that 2 options: saving in batches from icloud.com or using iCloud for Windows and save them on the local drive first, then transfer to an external drive. Syncing with Photos app will fill your drive in minutes (unless you have 1-2TB local storage).
 
1600GB and 3 minutes per GB = 80 hours

When I exported iCloud photos on Mac, I could direct where and created a folder on my 400GB SDXC
 
maxjohnson2 said:
If you have a USB 3.0 port, or USBC port, and using a good cable could improve the transfer speed.
Click to expand...
It’s the cloud and how good iCloud servers ISP and your cable or FIOS Downloading. Once stored locally then yes. I also used SSD USBC but wasn’t a factor. So unless that ~2TB is already stored locally ...
 
Yeah, iCloud app for windows or Mac, over Ethernet, with Fios to a USB3 or Lightening SSD (or internal) would be your best bet. But it will still take several days.

For upload Amazon Photo App (for Windows) is soooo much faster than the Google photos app. And if you are an Amazon Prime member full res image storage (not video) is free.

I only have about a TB — roughy 220K images. The Apple photo cloud sync nonsense never worked for me.

I have three copies of all my stuff. Local external drive (or NAS), Amazon photo, and google photo.

The current AI/ML support is fantastic. I can find/search all of my photos by person, location, object, etc.

Eg pictures of beetles or flowers or my son (regardless of age) or pics I took on holiday at Niagara Falls, etc.
 
I tried iCloud Windows and it was always using 25% cpu cycles. Seems like Apple on Windows is more like it wants to take over the system.

Good to hear about Amazon, but then they should, what with everything depending on AWS.
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
I'm curious as to how you ended up with 500K photos? That's mind blowing! I'm pretty prolific with my camera and still only have about 30K photos and 1K videos since 2003 or so. Maybe I'm just selective about what I keep? If I take a 30 photo burst, for example, I only save the best photos in the burst and axe the rest.

If my library was that large, I think what I would do is create a new empty library to sync to iCloud. I would then transfer just my favorite photos and albums from my old huge library to the new one, and keep the old one as a read-only "archive library" on my Mac, stored on multiple disks to ensure it's backed up.

You can fire up Photos using a different library by holding down option when you start it. It means you can't search through every photo you've ever taken on your phone, but at least things will work for your favorites and what you take from now on.

It's messy, but it's an idea for controlling the massive size involved here.
 
Moshe1010 said:
Hi,

iCloud is killing my iPhone by being over flooded with data. My iCloud is about 1.6TB full, and my iPhone struggles to synch new photos/videos, so it sometimes restarts or freezes (iPhone XS and 11 Pro behave the same). When I setup a new iCloud/Apple ID user, both phones work fine, so it’s definitely iCloud syncing.

I want to backup the entire iCloud folder and delete everything from there. I want to either put it on an external hard drive and/or upload it to my Dropbox.

What’s the fastest/easiest way to do so? Photos app takes ages to export data, so it’s not useful (even if I download originals).

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Just two options I can see: photo app or iCloud website.
both cases are slow, but unfortunately was your fault to let so many contents to accumulate 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back