<story><title>Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos</title><url>https://www.amazonforum.com/s/question/0D56Q0000BAmuYXSQZ/is-something-wrong-with-amazon-photos-i-lost-240364-photos</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kylehotchkiss</author><text>Rough strategy:&lt;p&gt;1) use iCloud Photos&lt;p&gt;2) find a Mac with a very large system drive (1tb or above)&lt;p&gt;3) open the photos app on mac and ensure settings is configured to “download originals” not “save space”&lt;p&gt;4) make sure the computer is online on a regular basis. You should see ~&amp;#x2F;Pictures&amp;#x2F;Photos.app becoming massive over time.&lt;p&gt;5) setup Time Machine for that computer&lt;p&gt;6) success! You have a second copy of your photos library on Time Machine now.&lt;p&gt;7) Use Arq.app to backup your Time Machine drive to AWS glacier. Nice! Now you have 3 copies of your library.&lt;p&gt;An alternative path is making sure you have both a giant iPhone storage and giant Mac storage. Make sure photos on phone is set to “download originals”. Manually backup your iPhone to Mac monthly. These backups include photos library. I recommend encrypting your backup and keeping a key in safe and 1Password. Continue with Time Machine and Arq.</text></item><item><author>getoffmyyawn</author><text>I used to seriously stress out worrying about the huge amount of family photos I have saved in cloud storage and what it would mean to lose them. I&amp;#x27;ve got a local backup as well of course. Even that has to be upgraded every so often to make sure the hardware will continue to run reliably.&lt;p&gt;A few years ago my (very non-technical) mother asked me to make and send her a photo album of recent pictures. My wife and I had so much fun doing it that we kept doing it. Choosing the best pictures, arranging them and making nice layouts and titles itself is a fun walk down memory lane.&lt;p&gt;Now we have a shelf with about a dozen volumes of memories and we found we are far more likely to look at these than we ever were with photos in cloud storage.&lt;p&gt;I like to think that if I lost all the digital copies, I would still be happy with what I have in these bound albums. I highly recommend this to everyone.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>getoffmyyawn</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a nice comprehensive approach. I&amp;#x27;m actually pretty happy with my setup from a data loss prevention perspective. It is just that, as I approach 2 decades of saving digital photos, I question the utility of it.&lt;p&gt;My parents have photo albums going back a few generations. The family tradition is that they are passed to the cousin with the most children, to maintain for future generations. If I were handed 500K+ images in a drive or a cloud account from each family member, I doubt I would ever look at most of them. With a bound and curated album, I know they are full enjoyed by every family member with an interest in the past.</text></comment>
<story><title>Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos</title><url>https://www.amazonforum.com/s/question/0D56Q0000BAmuYXSQZ/is-something-wrong-with-amazon-photos-i-lost-240364-photos</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kylehotchkiss</author><text>Rough strategy:&lt;p&gt;1) use iCloud Photos&lt;p&gt;2) find a Mac with a very large system drive (1tb or above)&lt;p&gt;3) open the photos app on mac and ensure settings is configured to “download originals” not “save space”&lt;p&gt;4) make sure the computer is online on a regular basis. You should see ~&amp;#x2F;Pictures&amp;#x2F;Photos.app becoming massive over time.&lt;p&gt;5) setup Time Machine for that computer&lt;p&gt;6) success! You have a second copy of your photos library on Time Machine now.&lt;p&gt;7) Use Arq.app to backup your Time Machine drive to AWS glacier. Nice! Now you have 3 copies of your library.&lt;p&gt;An alternative path is making sure you have both a giant iPhone storage and giant Mac storage. Make sure photos on phone is set to “download originals”. Manually backup your iPhone to Mac monthly. These backups include photos library. I recommend encrypting your backup and keeping a key in safe and 1Password. Continue with Time Machine and Arq.</text></item><item><author>getoffmyyawn</author><text>I used to seriously stress out worrying about the huge amount of family photos I have saved in cloud storage and what it would mean to lose them. I&amp;#x27;ve got a local backup as well of course. Even that has to be upgraded every so often to make sure the hardware will continue to run reliably.&lt;p&gt;A few years ago my (very non-technical) mother asked me to make and send her a photo album of recent pictures. My wife and I had so much fun doing it that we kept doing it. Choosing the best pictures, arranging them and making nice layouts and titles itself is a fun walk down memory lane.&lt;p&gt;Now we have a shelf with about a dozen volumes of memories and we found we are far more likely to look at these than we ever were with photos in cloud storage.&lt;p&gt;I like to think that if I lost all the digital copies, I would still be happy with what I have in these bound albums. I highly recommend this to everyone.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>coolspot</author><text>You don’t need large system drive, just any drive connected (like USB) or even on the network.&lt;p&gt;Hold Alt (Option) when starting the Photo app to invoke a dialog where you can select custom photo library location.&lt;p&gt;You can have multiple photo libraries in different locations and switch between them during Photo app start.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;support.apple.com&amp;#x2F;guide&amp;#x2F;photos&amp;#x2F;create-additional-libraries-pht6d60b524&amp;#x2F;mac&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;support.apple.com&amp;#x2F;guide&amp;#x2F;photos&amp;#x2F;create-additional-lib...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>