How to Back Up iCloud Photo Library to a Mac
If you use the iCloud Photo Library service, the images in your Photos or iPhoto Library are stored in iCloud, and new photos you take with an iOS device are added to it and are accessible on all your devices that have iCloud Photos enabled. The best way to back up your iCloud Photo Library is to download its content to your Mac. If your Mac doesn’t have enough hard drive space, back up your iCloud Photo Library to an external drive attached to the Mac.
Time Machine
If you use Apple Time Machine, the libraries used by Photos and iPhoto are automatically backed up as part of every Time Machine backup that occurs. While that’s a good starting point, you may want to consider additional backups, and here’s why.
Why You Need Additional Image Library Backups
Time Machine does a great job of backing up photos, but it’s not archival. By design, Time Machine favors removing the oldest files it contains to make room for newer ones. This isn’t a concern for the normal use of Time Machine as a backup system used to restore your Mac to its present condition should something catastrophic happen. However, it is a concern if you want to keep long-term copies of items, such as your photos. With digital cameras and smartphones, the original is stored on the camera’s flash storage or mobile device. Once the images are transferred to your Mac, the flash storage device is erased to make room for a new batch of photos, and you may not keep every image on your mobile device. The originals end up on your Mac and nowhere else. Assuming you use Photos or iPhoto as your Mac image library app, then the library may hold the only copy of every photo you’ve taken with a digital camera or your smartphone. Your image library should probably have its own dedicated backup method in addition to Time Machine to ensure that one-of-a-kind photos are retained for the long term.
Back Up Your Photos or iPhoto Library Manually
You can manually back up the image libraries used by Photos or iPhoto to an external drive, including a USB flash drive, or you can use a backup application to perform the task for you. Here’s how to make a copy manually.
What About Images Not Stored in the Photos Library?
Photos supports multiple libraries. If you created additional libraries, they need to be backed up, just like the default Photos Library. Additionally, Photos allows you to store images outside of the Photos Library. This is referred to as using reference files. Reference files are usually used to allow you to access images that you don’t want to take up space on your Mac. In many cases, reference image files are stored on an external drive, a USB flash drive, or another device. Reference files are convenient, but they present a problem when you back up. Since the reference images aren’t stored in the Photos Library, they’re not backed up when you copy the Photos Library. That means you need to remember where any reference files are located and make sure they’re backed up as well. If you would rather not have to deal with reference image files, you can move them into your Photos Library. If you can’t remember which images are referenced and which are stored in the Photos Library, choose some or all of the images and then select Consolidate from the File menu. After you have all the reference files consolidated to your Photos Library, they are backed up whenever you back up your Photos Library.
Back Up Your Image Library With a Backup App
Another method for backing up your images is to use a third-party backup app that can handle archives. The word archive has different meanings depending on how it is used. In this case, it refers to the ability to retain files on the destination drive that no longer appear on the source drive. This happens when you back up your Photos or iPhoto Library and then, before the next backup, delete a few images. The next time the backup runs, you want to be confident that the images you deleted from the library aren’t also removed from the existing backup. Several backup apps can handle this scenario, including Carbon Copy Cloner 4.x or later. Carbon Copy Cloner has an archive option that protects files and folders that are exclusively located on the backup destination drive. Add the archive feature to schedule backups, and you have a decent backup system that protects all your image libraries.
