Today we'll explain how to back up your Android phone photos. This way, if you lose your phone, if it's damaged or if you delete your photos by mistake, you can recover them at any time. It will also be useful if you change your phone.
A few years ago we used to develop or print most of the photos we took, but nowadays we're content to keep a digital version of them. The problem is that, without a backup, you could lose hundreds or thousands of photos in an instant. Luckily, there are several ways to keep your photos safe with minimal effort.
There are many ways to back up your photos, almost one for each case. For example, some mobile phones have their own software or applications for this purpose. Here we will focus on the two main ways: copying photos to your PC and saving them directly to the cloud with Google Photos.
Making a copy on your PC has the advantage that you keep exactly the same quality of your photos: it's a perfect copy. Cloud copying is generally at lower resolution (even with acceptable quality), and in turn is much easier to do.
Make a copy of your photos with a PC
One of the most effective ways to back up your photos is by connecting your mobile phone to a computer at hand. To do this, you need to use a USB cable like the one that came with your phone: the small end connects to your phone and the larger end to your PC's USB port.
Normally, a few seconds after connecting your mobile phone to your PC, a window will appear telling you that a new device is connected. Click on the window before it disappears, as it only displays for a couple of seconds.
Tapping in the window opens a menu where you can choose what you want to do. There are many options, which can vary from one PC to another. Find the Open device to view files option and click on it.
Two things can happen next, open File Explorer and show you the folders that contain your mobile phone files or that are empty as in the previous screenshot.
If that's your case, chances are your phone is blocked. In other words, you need to enter the PIN code, the pattern or use your fingerprint to unlock the phone. This is a phone security measure to prevent anyone from accessing and copying your files without your permission.
Unlock the phone while it is connected to the cable, and the files will appear. You only need to do this once, then you can let the phone screen turn off quietly.
If your mobile phone has a memory card, you will be shown two items in Windows File Explorer: the internal memory and the memory card, under the phone and memory name or Phone and Card. If your phone does not have a memory card, only the first item will appear. Double-click Phone to view the files your phone has stored in internal memory.
You'll see many folders: this is where most applications save their data such as photos, videos, and other items they need to work. If you are only interested in photos, you can ignore most folders. The most important folder, where most of the photos are stored, is called DCIM, an acronym for Digital Camera Images. Double-click DCIM to view its content.
Most of your photos are in the Camera subfolder
The DCIM folder has more folders inside it, corresponding to different applications that take pictures. For example, in the Facebook subfolder you save photos you have taken directly with your Facebook application. The pictures you normally take with the camera are saved in the Camera folder.
In any case, you are interested in making a copy of the entire DCIM folder, so that you can put all your photos in a safe place, no matter what application they were taken with. To do this, right-click the DCIM folder and then click Copy, in the floating menu that appears.
With this you will have the DCIM folder and all its content copied to the Windows Clipboard. All you need to do is copy it to a safe place on your PC. It could be, for example, on the Desktop. Press the Windows + D keys on your keyboard at the same time to go to the Desktop.
Once on the Desktop, right-click anywhere on the Desktop that is free (i. e., not on other icons) and then click the New menu and then click Folder.
This will create a folder with the name "New folder". You're interested in changing the name to something that will help you remember that it has a backup copy of your photos. While the text is in blue you can type in another name. I suggest you use something like "backup" or "my photos."
Double-click on the folder you have created and you will see that there is nothing inside it. Now it's time to paste the DCIM folder you copied to the Clipboard before. Click the Paste button at the top of the File Explorer toolbar to start photo copying.
The process can take a long time if you have many photos and videos stored on your mobile phone. Be patient and don't disconnect the phone until it's finished, otherwise your backup won't be complete.
Repeat the above process to copy photos and videos you had on your memory card or other folders. For example, WhatsApp saves all the photos and videos you make and receive in its own folder, called WhatsApp as well.
Make a copy of your photos with Google Photos
A quick and easy way to make sure your photos won't disappear if your phone breaks or gets lost is to turn on Google Photos Backup, a free Google service. This copy may be in original quality or reduced quality.
Original quality photos waste your storage space. Not "high quality".
Google allows you to make an unlimited backup of your photos on its servers, as long as they are of reduced quality, which Google calls "high quality". If you want to maintain the original quality, they spend storage space, of which Google gives you 15 GB free to share between all services (Gmail, Google Drive and so on). Taking the average size of a photo to 3MB at original quality, you could save about 5,000 at full quality.
If you want to have the best of both worlds: original quality and ease of backup, you can always buy extra storage space, which is reasonably priced. 100 GB of space (about 34,000 photos) you get for 19.99 euros a year, and 1 TB (about 350,000 photos) for 99.99 euros. Before you check out, try the free service to make sure you need it.
Activating backup on Google Photos is fairly easy. The application is usually pre-installed on Android, but if it's not, you can download it from Google Play. Opens the Photos application to configure the backup.
The first thing Google Photos asks you is if you want to enable backup. It is enabled by default, so simply press Done to continue.
Tap the menu button (the button with three horizontal stripes at the top of the window) to display the side panel.
On the side pane, press Settings to go to the Google Photos options. We need to make a few changes in the configuration to make sure you don't waste the megabytes of your data plan just like that.
Once in the settings, tap on the first item, Backup and Sync.
Here you must check that all the boxes are disabled. The first two: Photos and Videos, are to disable Google Photos from backing up using mobile data, which could cost your data plan. Disabled will copy only when you have a Wi-Fi connection. Roaming, on the other hand, disables copying when using data while roaming.
In this same section you can set the backup quality by tapping on Image Quality.
Remember: the original quality copy uses storage space, so at some point you'll fill the space and can't save any more. The high quality copy, smaller than the original, is unlimited and therefore you can save as many photos as you want.
It's ready now! From that moment on, Google Photos will back up the photos you take with your mobile phone as soon as you have a Wi-Fi connection. Best of all, you don't have to do anything, but Google Photos will take care of all the background work.
One advantage is that you can view your photos from the Google Photos website
You can retrieve your photos at any time from within Google Photos application itself or in the web version of the service, via this link. If you lose your mobile phone, your photos will still be there and you can watch them from your new phone.