Alternatives to iCloud for photo backup?

[Kemik]

Hi all,

It seems my iPhone is struggling with its 16GB of storage. Hopefully this will be resolved when I upgrade to the iPhone 6 but until then I'm looking at ways to reduce the amount of storage I use - the biggest culprit being photos and videos.

I am thinking of disabling iCloud photo backup but want to keep an easy backup of my photos. Can anyone recommend any alternatives for photo backups on my iPhone? I don't want to keep a copy of the photos locally as iCloud already duplicates the photos and I want to prevent this.

Google Drive? Dropbox? OneDrive?

Thanks

 

[lamboman]

Hi all,

It seems my iPhone is struggling with its 16GB of storage. Hopefully this will be resolved when I upgrade to the iPhone 6 but until then I'm looking at ways to reduce the amount of storage I use - the biggest culprit being photos and videos.

I am thinking of disabling iCloud photo backup but want to keep an easy backup of my photos. Can anyone recommend any alternatives for photo backups on my iPhone? I don't want to keep a copy of the photos locally as iCloud already duplicates the photos and I want to prevent this.

Google Drive? Dropbox? OneDrive?

Thanks

Since we're only talking about a couple of months at most until you actually receive the new phone, you might as well just use whichever offers the most storage for free. In this case, out of those it's Google Drive and OneDrive. Mega offers 50GB (though security is apparently flawed, but then they're all cloud services at the end of the day). There's a new service called Copy (only just Googled) that apparently offers 15GB too.

 

[The_Baron]

Dropbox works fantastically well for me across all my devices

 

[lamboman]

Dropbox works fantastically well for me across all my devices

2GB storage vs 15GB...

Dropbox is by a country mile the best service because of the widespread integration, syncing and reliability, however for this purpose it's not what I would pick.

That said, their new price plan finally lines them up with the competition, and I'd pick them in a heartbeat if I needed a significant amount of storage.

 

[bsoltan]

Dropbox will give you a little extra space by performing a few tasks but it will give you 3GB (I think) if you download the Carousel app. Which is useful for uploading your photos anyway. The desktop software can also auto-import from an iPhone. However the initial space is rather limiting. I use Dropbox on my iPhone after running out of space on iCloud (fortunately even without paying I'm nearly at 10GB).

However, I also just had to do this for my Mother's iPad, she was in the same position as you and doesn't have a high capacity Dropbox account.

OneDrive from Microsoft gives you 15GB off the bat and I think gives you a bit more if you setup Photo Backup through the app. I don't know if there is Mac software but it links in well with Office. The App on iPhone and iPad can auto-backup images.

Google Drive also gives you 15GB and will link in with other Google applications, however I couldn't see an option within the App for it to auto-backup images which is why I went with OneDrive in the end. However Google's pricing is very good at a few £ a month for 100GB if you need the space.

Alternatively you should be able to drag the photos off your iPhone and backup locally on a home computer which could allow you to remove a lot of old images and video you don't need immediate access to but want to keep around.