How To Backup Photos (Android, PC)

Photos preserve all your special memory and losing them can be heartbreaking. Keeping all your mobile photos in your phone (or PC) is not a reliable option to preserve them: you can lose your device, or the photo files can become corrupted if there’s a hardware failure. It’s also possible to delete them by accident. That’s why it is important that you store your photos in an external storage with redundancy, whether it is physical storage or cloud storage.

In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to backup your photos on Android phone and PC and sync photos between them.

A few words about “backups”

First of all, we should mention that although “having a copy” is a very primitive form of backup, some of the services that we mention are designed for “file sharing” and not for “backup purposes”. They are very simple to use, but real backup systems keep multiple revisions of the same file to protect against human errors. Some of these apps do not. They will however protect you from the loss of your device.

Backup Android Photos With Photobucket

You can easily backup and sync photos on your Android phone using a dedicated app. In most cases, these apps will upload all your photos to the service’s server and you can just access the app with any other phone to restore the photos (in case you lose/change your phone).

For this purpose, Photobucket is an easy to use app that should fulfill needs of many. The app is free to use, but only offers 10GB of storage in which you can backup photos (videos as well). 10GB space should be more than enough for many people, but if you need more space, you will have to pay for it.

We have covered this app in our guide to backing up all data on your Android phone. If you need proper instructions on how to use this app, refer to this guide, we are going to cover the basics.

Once the app is downloaded and launched, you will be prompted to first sign in with a Photobucket account (you can sign up for it) or your facebook account. It is important to log in with one of these accounts, otherwise, it will be impossible to identify your data when you will have to restore it.

The app simply starts backing up all the current photos/videos in your phone when you log in. When photos/videos are uploaded, you can see them in “Your Library” option and interact with them however you like. Now, whenever you will take a new photo, Photobucket will automatically upload it to their server that you can access in app’s “Your Library” option on any android phone. You can also restore from the “Library” option by clicking on the sync button above.

Backup photos stored in your PC

If you just want to backup your photos stored in your PC, then copying them to an external storage device is a better choice. You can burn all your photos on a DVD disc that you can keep somewhere and copy data from it any time you like. It might seem like an old method, but still it is quite reliable if you don’t want to depend on third party services.

You can refer to our guide on how to burn data on a DVD disc to backup your photos on a DVD… Keep in mind that dics have a multi-year life span, but they do have a limited lifespan.

You can also just copy/paste your photos to a USB flash drive or a hard-disk, if DVD-burning doesn’t work out for you. The result is about the same: you now have one copy of your files elsewhere. It’s a lot better than having no copy at all.

But, these methods are not automatic and can be a bit inconvenient, because you need to take action and “think about it”. If you are looking for an automatic backup, then you will have to depend on a third-party service, which works for both PC and mobiles. Keep reading…

Backup, Syncs and Restore Android and PC Photos With Google Photos

You can backup and sync all your photos on both Android (iOS also) and PC using Google Photos. All you need is a Google account and  internet access. Google Photos app is available on both Android and iOS. However, it only offers a desktop uploader that will upload the photos from any PC. To view and edit the photos, it offers a web based client which you can access with your Google Account to see all the uploaded data.

Google Photos is not just a photo backup tool. It will organize your photos according to location, time and even visuals! You can also edit photos (that will sync to all devices) and also share the photos easily anywhere or with anyone. Best of all, it offers unlimited storage with a tiny limitation of only being able to upload 16 megapixel photos. If you want to upload higher resolution photos, your Google drive storage will be used (which offers 15GB storage for free)

To get started, you need to have a Google Account, which you most probably already have. If not, then Sign up for one before continuing.

Google Photos Android App

When you will launch the app, you will see all your backed up photos in the main interface. They will be arranged according to when they were taken and you can change view from the menu on the top right side (with three vertical dots).

 

Tap and hold on any picture and you will see options of share or delete the photo. You can also tap on main menu button located at top left corner (with three horizontal lines) to access all big features.

Here, you will find an option of “Assistant”, this option will organize your photos for you. It will create collages, panoramas, animations and movies, etc. to organize your photos. If you don’t like any of the edits made by Google Photos, just slide to the right on it to dismiss it.

 

In the main menu, you will also find all your albums, stories and other such content under “Collection” option. In the “Setting”, you can changes settings on how Google Photos should interact with your device or account.

Google Photos Web Based Client for PC

Google Photos web based client is similar to Android app with minor changes. Here, you will see an extra button of “Upload” next to the search bar. If you didn’t used the Google Photos desktop uploader to upload photos, you can use this “Upload” button to upload photos manually.

Click on the top left corner of any photo to select it and open selecting option, after that, just click on each photo which you would like to select. Once selected, you will see option to interact with them at the top right corner of the window. You can share, download (restore), delete or add them to a album.

 

In the search bar at the top, you can search for your photos or albums with real-time results. You can also click on the main menu button at the top left corner to access customization options. The menu is exactly same as the Google Photos Android app with same features.

The above methods should be enough to backup all your photos easily, if you know any other reliable method to backup photos, let us know in the comments below.

Karar Haider
Categories: Photo-Video
Tags: Backups