The simple trick I use daily to organize and back up all my photos without worrying about losing them

Using smartphones for over 20 years allows you to realize how much things have changed. Early models were very different from current models, in part because not all of them came with a built-in camera. Additionally, their quality was low enough that we didn’t want to jealously guard the results, at least not many times.

But technology evolves and over the past two decades, phones have not only improved in this aspect, but have completely supplanted a sector of the market, that of compact digital cameras. Few people take photos without using their phone, but many people keep their images only on their device, which is a problem.

Entrusting the longevity of your memories to a device allows you to We run the risk that if it is damaged or lost, we will lose all our photos and videos with it.. What happened a few years ago with contacts when you lost your cell phone was that we suddenly lost all the numbers of friends, work colleagues and acquaintances. And today many more photos are taken than before, either for the convenience of the smartphone or to save money since it is not necessary to develop them or look for a specific device to view them, as it was the case with computers in the late 1990s.

These days, taking photos usually goes hand in hand with storing them somewhere. Many opt for cloud services, like Google One or Amazon Photos. This allows us not to depend on a device to have all our images at hand and to be able to view them from several locations. However, It’s good not to limit yourself to that.

The cloud

Even though this may seem like a practice already adopted by everyone, There are still many people who don’t have a backup copy of their photos in the cloud. It is true that if you record a lot of videos or if you do it in high resolution, it is very likely that this service will not be free, due to the space required, but it still does not seem like a bad investment .

There are several options, such as Google One, which includes storage that can be shared between Google Photos, Google Drive, or Gmail. This allows this payment to be diluted into more uses, in addition to saving photos or videos. Additionally, being on this platform, It is possible to use the images on smart speakers with screen as a photo frame.

The advantages of cloud storage are multiple, such as being able to create compositions with several images, slide videos, sharing creations very easily with our contacts via the same platform or applications like WhatsApp, etc.

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On the other hand, it is also a way to locate old photos without having to use tags, give them names, etc.. This is true in systems with a powerful search engine, usually using artificial intelligence. Google Photos is a good example, because you can search not only by the name of a person who appears in the photos, but also by locations, landscapes, types of food, etc.

And also at home

But betting everything on one card is generally not a good option. Therefore, even though more than 26,000 photos and videos are stored in the cloud and still have plenty of free space, I have kept a backup locally for over 25 years.

This way I make sure that If something happens to my Google account, in my case I don’t lose these images and videos. And that’s something a lot of people don’t know. If for any reason, even if it is an error or hack, the Google account is lost, not only is access to email lost, but also to the YouTube account, Google Drive and yes , Google Photos. This also applies to services from other companies, such as Amazon or Microsoft.

How to save these images depends on the number of photos, budget, etc. The normal thing is to choose an external storage system, usually a hard drive, which connects either to the computer, if there is one in the house, or to the mobile phone, since the current ones allow the use of external storage for this. Another option, the one I chose, is to use the hard drive of a desktop computer that I have at home and no longer use for other things. And to store more files. It’s almost a NAS with a screen and a keyboard, come on. NAS is another option, but it’s more complex to set up and for the average user, it’s probably not worth it. The only problem with these devices is that they can crash, but that’s exactly why it’s a good idea to have that second backup in the cloud.

Only what is important

But just because you can store everything doesn’t mean you should. It is important not to save each of the images we makebecause many of them will be useless, like the one we did at the ticket to share it on WhatsApp, or the one we did at the shopping center parking lot to remember where we left the car.

Every few days or once a week it is a good idea to review the images we have on our mobile, clean those that are not necessary, check that they are not in cloud storage and do not occupy space that could be dedicated to other things and, finally, store them on a physical device other than a mobile phone.