Backing up iPhone to multiple cloud services

[endomania]

Hi,

If I'm using iCloud Photo Library with storage optimization on, my phone keeps thumbnails of images. If start using another cloud photo storage service "e.g. Google". What's getting backed up? Thumbnails or full resolution images? How does it work?

Thanks.

 

[Just_Me_D]

Hmmm great question, and I'm not sure. Having said that, since iCloud is an Apple service and it states that your iPhone will maintain thumbnails of your images while the full size photos are stored in iCloud, I would assume that if you were to back up what's currently on the iPhone to a different cloud service, it would appear that you'll only be backing up the thumbnail images, but again, I'm not sure.

 

[Ecm]

Hmmm great question, and I'm not sure. Having said that, since iCloud is an Apple service and it states that your iPhone will maintain thumbnails of your images while the full size photos are stored in iCloud, I would assume that if you were to back up what's currently on the iPhone to a different cloud service, it would appear that you'll only be backing up the thumbnail images, but again, I'm not sure.

As far as I can check, this appears to be correct for photos (thumbnails) that are on the iPhone when the Google Photos app is installed and enabled. So yes, we'd be backing up the thumbnails. But, if Google Photos backup is enabled, as new photos are taken it uploads the new photos in the quality selected, not thumbnails. "High Quality" uploads are unlimited. "Original Quality" is at the full resolution of the photo taken, and you're able to store these up to what's available in your Google Account.

Onedrive also syncs original quality new photos to your account, but does not back up photos/thumbnails that were previously on the device. Though you could do so manually.

So either one of these makes a nice second layer backup for those (like me) who are either very careful about not losing those important Birthday snaps or don't use a Mac but want their pix immediately available on their desktop or other mobile device.

 

[Rene Ritchie]

That's my understanding as well. Google, Dropbox, et al can only access what's on the device so if they scan and pull "old" photos that are thumbnails-only as part of iCloud Photos Library storage savings (i.e. you're not "keeping full res on device"), they'll get the space efficient versions. For new photos, it'll depend how often you open them and what the state of the photo is when they try to grab it.

 

[blaine07]

I store full resolution pics locally on phone. I'm kinda paranoid; I backup pics to iCloud, I use "PhtoSync" to back up Locally to a NAS, backup to another hard drive on network, and back up remotely to paid hosting I have. It backs up full resolution pics/videos/live clips but I have the "Download and Keep Originals" on

 

[Ecm]

I store full resolution pics locally on phone. I'm kinda paranoid; I backup pics to iCloud, I use "PhtoSync" to back up Locally to a NAS, backup to another hard drive on network, and back up remotely to paid hosting I have. It backs up full resolution pics/videos/live clips but I have the "Download and Keep Originals" on

Heh. You sound as paranoid careful as me. Everything syncs to Onedrive, which backs up to my NAS with all our PC backups, which back up to CrashPlan.

 

[blaine07]

Heh. You sound as paranoid careful as me. Everything syncs to Onedrive, which backs up to my NAS with all our PC backups, which back up to CrashPlan.

Yes very much so haha. Need to get my NAS backing up to something.

 

[endomania]

I just checked and all the videos are backed up to Google photos, although I had it enabled after the space saving feature was turned on on my iPhone. If videos are in thumbnail qualilty on iPhone, the quality of the videos on Google photos should be low but it's not. Also, all the photos I'm checking on both sites are about the same quality! Could it be that these apps work by downloading the image, backing it up, then deleting it? I'm having the same experience with Prime photos too.

Thanks for the help.