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Photo back up to iCloud

I currently have all my photos on the iMac is nice organised folders. Spain – 2012, France – 2013 etc etc Kids birthdays over the years, Christmas’s, New Year’s – you get the picture!! In total I have 260GB worth of photos (according to my mac that is over 60,000 of them) 

In an attempt to cut a long story short I currently have them backed up on/in a time capsule but that is playing up and winding me up no end. So I’m going to upgrade my cloud storage and back up all my photos in there. Safer any way as they will be in the clouds.

So finally my question is when I click on the ‘back up all photos’ option will my photos go over in their respective folders or will 60,000 + photos just get dumped in one big folder?

Hope this makes sense.

Thank you for any help and advice.

iMac 27″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Jun 28, 2021 9:43 AM

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Posted on Jun 28, 2021 11:25 AM

When it has finished syncing your photos on iCloud should be organized in the same way as they are on your Mac (they are on mine). Note that the syncing process can take quite awhile (days). Also, it has been several years since I first synced my much smaller photo library and when I did it, the album/folder organization appeared to be the last thing to sync.


Also, I always cringe just slightly when I hear the term backup used for iCloud Photos. I've never had a problem with iCloud Photos but I really value my photos so I insure that I have a local copy on my Mac (by not turning on the Optimize Photos option in the Photos app on the Mac) and I also make a backup to an external USB drive. Syncing with iCloud Photos has some of the benefits of a backup (and the benefit of being offsite) but is not the same as a backup. A major difference is the fact that if you delete something, accidentally or otherwise, there is only a limited time period (30 days in most cases) during which it can be recovered.



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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 28, 2021 11:25 AM in response to Jainser

When it has finished syncing your photos on iCloud should be organized in the same way as they are on your Mac (they are on mine). Note that the syncing process can take quite awhile (days). Also, it has been several years since I first synced my much smaller photo library and when I did it, the album/folder organization appeared to be the last thing to sync.


Also, I always cringe just slightly when I hear the term backup used for iCloud Photos. I've never had a problem with iCloud Photos but I really value my photos so I insure that I have a local copy on my Mac (by not turning on the Optimize Photos option in the Photos app on the Mac) and I also make a backup to an external USB drive. Syncing with iCloud Photos has some of the benefits of a backup (and the benefit of being offsite) but is not the same as a backup. A major difference is the fact that if you delete something, accidentally or otherwise, there is only a limited time period (30 days in most cases) during which it can be recovered.



Jun 28, 2021 12:19 PM in response to FoxFifth

As FoxFrith says - iCloud is not backup. Just buy a new external hard drive (it doesn't need to be a time capsule) and set up time machine to backup to that drive.


The problem with iCloud for photos (and files if you use iCloud drive) is it makes all the libraries across all the devices the same. While it does protect you from a drive failure - it doesn't protect you from accidental deletion. If you delete photos on your phone, they are deleted on your mac, and from iCloud - same if you delete on your mac - they'll be deleted on your phone. There have been rare cases of system failure also causing deletions (or just user error). There are also numerous examples of library corruption making it very difficult to access photos.


Every few days we get someone here saying "I deleted photos - how can I get them back". If it was more than 30 days ago, and there is no other backup, the answer is "you can't"

Photo back up to iCloud

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