HOT 253: Backing Up a Large Photo Library - Effortlessly Back Up Your Large Photo Libraries
Hands-On Tech (Audio)
Leo Laporte
4.3 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 8 February 2026
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Hands-On Tech, Mikah offers Scott some suggestions for managing a large photo library for his wife that are simple enough for her to handle and can be automated as well.
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Host: Mikah Sargent
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming up on Hands-on Tech, let's take a look at what we can do to back up a large photo library. |
| 0:08.0 | Stay tuned. |
| 0:08.9 | This is Twit. |
| 0:15.6 | Hello and welcome to Hands-on Tech. I am Micah Sar Sargent and today we are taking a look at a very important question because, as you know, this is the show where I take your tech questions and do my do god on best to answer them. Today we hear from Scott who is asking about backing up a large photo library. |
| 0:38.3 | Let's hear what Scott has to say. |
| 0:40.3 | Scott says, I have looked at several possible solutions to backing up a large I photo library, |
| 0:45.3 | but have not found a satisfying one. |
| 0:47.3 | My wife has a very large I photo library that is too large to fit on the SSD for her MacBook Pro. |
| 0:52.3 | ICloud storage has been quite reliable of late, |
| 0:55.2 | but I don't want to rely totally on ICloud for all of her photos, should something happen. |
| 0:59.7 | I do have a Synology NAS at home that I back up my computer to with time machine backups |
| 1:05.3 | that is completely automated. I currently pay for 4 terabytes of iCloud storage with an Apple One bundle, |
| 1:10.8 | most of it is my wife's iCloud photo library. |
| 1:13.6 | Is there a seamless way? |
| 1:14.6 | I can back up her entire iFoto library that sits in iCloud as it's too large to fit on her SSD? |
| 1:20.6 | Is there a way to automate this? |
| 1:22.6 | I prefer not to use a large external SSD that is large enough to fit her entire iCloud photo library as it would |
| 1:28.7 | require her to actually have the disc available on a regular basis and i don't feel that i can rely on her to do |
| 1:33.7 | this she's not a techie uh he says in in parentheses please help hopefully you can suggest a solution to |
| 1:39.7 | this problem that i feel is not that rare. Good question. Okay. This is something that is a little |
| 1:50.2 | complicated because you are dealing with file saving issues that a lot of people experience when it comes to the photo library, |
| 2:07.1 | and in particular with Apple's system. So first and foremost, you've got a problem here in that |
... |
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