Storing media files long term - options?

opethdisciple · Sunday at 20:58

Mums got an iPhone that is complaining of being full and needs to make space.

As I am an Android person what are the best options for long term storage of the photos and videos on the phone and freeing up space on the device?

HACO · Sunday at 21:56

If you have Amazon Prime then Amazon Photos will store full res images for free, unlimited space. 5GB for videos though.

Other options from major providers are iCloud, Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox.

opethdisciple · Sunday at 22:20

HACO said:
If you have Amazon Prime then Amazon Photos will store full res images for free, unlimited space. 5GB for videos though.

Other options from major providers are iCloud, Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox.

If we go with the iCloud route, how does it work?

You pay for the space then are able to transfer the files from the phone to the cloud?

We need to achieve two things:

1. Store the files somewhere.
2. Free up space on the device.

Throrik · Sunday at 22:46

opethdisciple said:
If we go with the iCloud route, how does it work?

you pay for the space then are able to transfer the files from the phone to the cloud?

We need to achieve two things:

1. Store the files somewhere.
2. Free up space on the device.

Yep, they upload to iCloud, then you can turn 'optimise storage' on which basically keeps tiny copies on your device and the proper quality on iCloud. £0.99p for 50GB.

opethdisciple · Sunday at 23:32

Throrik said:
Yep, they upload to iCloud, then you can turn 'optimise storage' on which basically keeps tiny copies on your device and the proper quality on iCloud. £0.99p for 50GB.

How do you browse the files on iCloud? Or is it you get a tiny thumbnail preview on the phone and when you access the file it gets downloaded?

alex24 · Sunday at 23:40

opethdisciple said:
How do you browse the files on iCloud? Or is it you get a tiny thumbnail preview on the phone and when you access the file it gets downloaded?

You can view them online or on the phone. The files being on the phone or in iCloud is seamless, they all appear in photos app. As you say, full res is downloaded when you open or download one.

whitecrook · Monday at 00:15

Only thing is it's not so easy to get full res (non optimised) copies of the pictures back. Icloud becomes your storage rather than a secondary backup.

Throrik · Monday at 00:46

whitecrook said:
Only thing is it's not so easy to get full res (non optimised) copies of the pictures back. Icloud becomes your storage rather than a secondary backup.

Huh, it's extremely easy. You just find the optimised image, press and hold and hit save and it'll download the original quality copy from iCloud back to your device.

whitecrook · Monday at 01:00

Throrik said:
Huh, it's extremely easy. You just find the optimised image, press and hold and hit save and it'll download the original quality copy from iCloud back to your device.

Her device doesn’t have enough room. She going to do that for every single picture?
And when it’s on her device that has not enough room, what next?

Throrik · Monday at 01:09

whitecrook said:
Her device doesn’t have enough room. She going to do that for every single picture?
And when it’s on her device that has not enough room, what next?

Obviously you need some space, there is give and take - you either get more space to be able to hold all of the original high-resolution files, or you use the mechanism to compress them and if and when you need a device you download that original. You use the space you free up by optimising them in the first place. Obviously it only goes a certain distance. Your claim that it's not easy to get the full resolution image is simply false, it's nothing to do with space, that's always going to be the problem if you out size your capacity in general.

There's a lot of photos that you don't necessarily want, or need to keep full resolution copies on phone for I imagine.

whitecrook · Monday at 01:27

Throrik said:
Obviously you need some space, there is give and take - you either get more space to be able to hold all of the original high-resolution files, or you use the mechanism to compress them and if and when you need a device you download that original. You use the space you free up by optimising them in the first place. Obviously it only goes a certain distance. Your claim that it's not easy to get the full resolution image is simply false, it's nothing to do with space, that's always going to be the problem if you out size your capacity in general.

There's a lot of photos that you don't necessarily want, or need to keep full resolution copies on phone for I imagine.

Its easy to get ‘a’ photo out. My point is if you want to archive or back up your photos. Once all your photos are in icloud, and removed from your phone- which happens when optimise library is ticked) then Its not so easy to make a full copy of all of the full res photos from icloud.

How do you suggest one reasonably do this?

Throrik · Monday at 01:52

whitecrook said:
Its easy to get ‘a’ photo out. My point is if you want to archive or back up your photos. Once all your photos are in icloud, and removed from your phone- which happens when optimise library is ticked) then Its not so easy to make a full copy of all of the full res photos from icloud.

How do you suggest one reasonably do this?

You turn off optimise and it downloads all of the original full resolution originals. So I think that's fairly reasonable.

I'm sure you're going to go on about capacity again, but you can't beat maths. But... You can also use various methods on any computer, or tablet to download the original quality stuff via icloud.com which can go directly to a Mac, an iPad, a Windows PC, a Linux PC, a Raspberry Pi, A massive pile of Floppy Disks etc. I'm not sure why you've portrayed something which is literally as simple as a toggle as 'not easy'. Here's an example of how easy it was, <10s to do.

whitecrook · Monday at 06:52

Throrik said:
You turn off optimise and it downloads all of the original full resolution originals. So I think that's fairly reasonable.

I'm sure you're going to go on about capacity again, but you can't beat maths. But... You can also use various methods on any computer, or tablet to download the original quality stuff via icloud.com which can go directly to a Mac, an iPad, a Windows PC, a Linux PC, a Raspberry Pi, A massive pile of Floppy Disks etc. I'm not sure why you've portrayed something which is literally as simple as a toggle as 'not easy'. Here's an example of how easy it was, <10s to do.

I really dont know what it is about this particular issue that blinds people.

Your suggestion does not work if you do not have the capacity on your device, you know, the exact ‘problem’ that toggling that option solves. Un toggling does not make more space. It is not a reasonable option.

iCloud.com doesn’t support bulk downloading. I’m supposed to click and download and save each file individually, waiting for the ‘responsive’ web interface to load each picture before choosing to save it? This is not easy but if you suggest that is the solution then great.

This also doesn’t preserve your albums or collections etc. or make it clear what pictures you already have downloaded.

alex24 · Monday at 07:12

I use a tool called icloudpd to grab them and backup onto my NAS and elsewhere. Granted that’s something that should be out of the box from Apple but it’s not.

whitecrook · Monday at 07:17

alex24 said:
I use a tool called icloudpd to grab them and backup onto my NAS and elsewhere. Granted that’s something that should be out of the box from Apple but it’s not.

Brilliant! Absolutely amazing. Is this a fairly new script I haven't seen it before? Maybe 2024

alex24 · Monday at 07:33

I think it’s older than that. I’ve been using it not as long as I was looking to backup and upload elsewhere and I only got fast enough upload connection to make that feasible last year. It does work, but I would stress to use it with care - it may be pretty easy to destroy or make a mess of your backup folders. Maybe even iCloud itself? Not sure.

whitecrook · Monday at 07:55

alex24 said:
I think it’s older than that. I’ve been using it not as long as I was looking to backup and upload elsewhere and I only got fast enough upload connection to make that feasible last year. It does work, but I would stress to use it with care - it may be pretty easy to destroy or make a mess of your backup folders. Maybe even iCloud itself? Not sure.

Maybe 2023 first commit. So fairly
Recent.

Throrik · Monday at 09:06

whitecrook said:
I really dont know what it is about this particular issue that blinds people.

Your suggestion does not work if you do not have the capacity on your device, you know, the exact ‘problem’ that toggling that option solves. Un toggling does not make more space. It is not a reasonable option.

iCloud.com doesn’t support bulk downloading. I’m supposed to click and download and save each file individually, waiting for the ‘responsive’ web interface to load each picture before choosing to save it? This is not easy but if you suggest that is the solution then great.

This also doesn’t preserve your albums or collections etc. or make it clear what pictures you already have downloaded.

I mean, you're either being intentionally obtuse, or you have something wrong. Of course it doesn't work if you don't have the capacity on your device, this is maths. You have to have the space to download something. Nobody has said otherwise. What I have said is giving alternatives, and how to do this easily. You also talk utter nonsense, you can select all on icloud.com and download all in bulk at the original resolution in less than 10 seconds sans download time. Keyboard shortcut ctl+a even works on it. You simply keep changing the goalposts.

Simply put, to go back to your original point because you realised that you're just not familiar with how to use basic features of iOS/iCloud - it's incredible easy to download originals once you've turned on optimise storage. You simply don't want to admit that because you keep bringing the pointless argument about device capacity up, which is always going to be the case. Next you'll be complaining that to install an app you have to have capacity on your device and don't want to delete something else.

whitecrook · Monday at 09:12

Throrik said:
I mean, you're either being intentionally obtuse, or you have something wrong. Of course it doesn't work if you don't have the capacity on your device, this is maths. You have to have the space to download something. Nobody has said otherwise. What I have said is giving alternatives, and how to do this easily. You also talk utter nonsense, you can select all on icloud.com and download all in bulk at the original resolution in less than 10 seconds sans download time. Keyboard shortcut ctl+a even works on it. You simply keep changing the goalposts.

Simply put, to go back to your original point because you realised that you're just not familiar with how to use basic features of iOS/iCloud - it's incredible easy to download originals once you've turned on optimise storage. You simply don't want to admit that because you keep bringing the pointless argument about device capacity up, which is always going to be the case. Next you'll be complaining that to install an app you have to have capacity on your device and don't want to delete something else.

Who is this guy ? ?