The best ways to store photos from your phone: how not to lose photos forever

To save valuable photos from your phone, backing them up is the best solution. You can choose the cloud or an external drive, the main thing is to make copies in time.

Fox News writes about effective methods. You can save files simply by using your phone's features.

Put your photos in the cloud

Both Android and iOS allow you to back up your photos to the cloud for safekeeping. It's easy, and you don't need to install any additional software.

On iPhone:

• Open Settings on your device and tap the icon with your name at the top.
• Tap iCloud, then tap Photos.
• Turn on iCloud Photos to start saving your photos to the cloud.

The process may take a while. When it's done, all the photos you take are automatically saved to the cloud. You can also view them on your desktop by signing in to iCloud.com with your Apple ID.

On Android:

• Open the Google Photos app and sign in if necessary.
• In the upper right corner, tap your photo or your account initials.
• Select Photo settings, then Backup & sync.
• Turn on backup and sync.

Once backed up, future photos are stored in the cloud. You can view, edit, and sort them in the Google Photos app, and you can also view them from your desktop at Google.com/photos.

Note. iCloud and Google Photos offer limited free storage. More storage costs 99 cents to $1.99 per month.

Use a secure external drive for backups

These devices usually have more storage and faster speeds, and are harder to lose. They are also cheaper today than they were years ago.

Things you shouldn't do to store photos

It's tempting to store photos on a flash drive - they're small and lightweight. But they are also easy to lose. In addition, the cheapest disks are usually not password protected.