Backing Up Your Photos

Updated October 2026

The rule we follow is called 3-2-1: three copies of your photos, on two different kinds of storage, with one of them somewhere other than your house. A cloud service counts as that one.

The cloud

Google Photos, iCloud Photos, Microsoft OneDrive and Amazon Photos can all back up your phone automatically. If you have Amazon Prime, Amazon Photos includes unlimited full-resolution photo storage. One catch is that some of these sync rather than back up. With sync, deleting a photo from your phone can delete it from the cloud too, so keep another copy.

Drives

An external hard drive or SSD is a cheap way to keep a full copy at home. Every drive fails eventually, so don't make one drive your only backup, and replace old ones every few years.

Old CDs and DVDs

We used to recommend burning discs. Home-burned discs break down over time and can become unreadable, and lots of computers don't even have a drive anymore. If you have a box of them, copy them to a drive and the cloud soon.

Memory cards and USB sticks are for shooting and moving files, not for storage. They're easy to lose and easy to overwrite.

Prints and testing

Prints and photo books don't need any technology to look at, which still makes them one of the most dependable ways to hand photos down. Whatever you use, open a few photos from each backup a couple of times a year to make sure they're really there. If something does go missing, here's how to recover deleted photos.