Your Google Drive is essentially like having a flash drive, but you don’t have to carry around a memory stick. Google Drive saves your work, photos, and other documents to a digital drive that can be accessed on any computer or smart device with internet connection. Saving files to your Google Drive is a good way to ensure that you won’t lose them, and a way to make them accessible from anywhere. Here are simple steps for backing up your photos to your Google Drive on three different types of devices:

How to Backup Photos to Google Drive from a Computer

  • There are two ways that you can backup photos to your Google Drive on your computer: use the “Backup and Sync” option, or upload photos from your web browser.
  • To use the “Backup and Sync” option, you will have to download the web application. Click here to do so.
  • Once you’ve done that, sign in to your Google Account and select between backing up all of your files, or just photos and videos.
  • Choose the files or photos that you would like to backup to your Google Drive, and look for the button that says “photo & video upload size”. Click that button and select your file size. Click “start” to begin your upload.
  • To use the “Upload from the web” option, open Google Photos on your computer.
  • At the top right hand portion of your screen, click “upload” and then “computer”.
  • Select the photos that you would like to backup, and click “open”. Your photos will now start to upload and will be backed up.

How to Backup Photos to Google Drive from an Apple Device

  • To backup photos to your Google Drive from your iPhone, iPad or Apple device, open the Google Photos app. It appears as a rainbow colored pinwheel.

  • Sign into your Google Account and select “Menu”. It looks like three stacked horizontal lines.

  • Look for the gear icon within the “menu” tab and tap on it. This will open your settings. Within “settings” select “backup & sync”.

  • Tap the “backup & sync” to toggle it on or off. If it is on, your photos will be backed up.

How to Backup Photos to Google Drive from an Android Device

  • To backup photos to your Google Drive from your Android device, open the Google Photos app. It appears as a rainbow colored pinwheel.
  • Sign into your Google Account and select “Menu”. It looks like three stacked horizontal lines.
  • Look for the gear icon within the “menu” tab and tap on it. This will open your settings. Within “settings” select “backup & sync”.
  • Tap the “backup & sync” to toggle it on or off. If it is on, your photos will be backed up.

Does Google Drive automatically backup photos?

Google Photos lets you store, share, view, and edit photos and videos, and includes an AI-powered assistant to help manage your media. It works for both Android and iOS devices, and provides an automatic backup for your media.

Where does Google Photos backup to?

When you turn on Back up and Sync, your photos will be stored in photos.google.com. Learn other ways to find your photos.

Is Google photo backup safe?

Overall Google Photos is fairly secure. It doesn’t automatically post your photos for everyone to see. People won’t be able to google for them. The pictures that you upload are only viewable by you — unless, of course, you share them with other people.

Do Google Photos stay forever?

Google will keep your photos as long as your account is still active. In one way, you could call it forever as long as someone periodically logs into the account (Gmail, YouTube, Drive, Photos, etc.).

Why you should not use Google Photos?

When you use Google photos, then many of your images will contain hidden data, embedded into the files, that discloses the time and exact location the photo was taken, the device you were using, even the camera settings. Google admits it pulls this so-called EXIF data into its analytics machine.

Do photos stay on Google photos if deleted from phone?

Tap on Free up space from the side menu, and tap the Delete button to remove those photos from your device. The deleted photos will still be backed up in Google Photos.

Can I store my photos on Google?

Google Photos offers unlimited storage for your photos and videos, a slick website, and automatic-upload apps for Android, iPhone, Windows, and Mac. It’s a great option for storing your photos. This photo-storage service was previously trapped in Google+, so it was overlooked by many people.

How many photos can you store on Google Drive?

So you can easily squeeze in more than 300 photos per GB. So, with Gmail and Drive storage, you‘ll still have a lot of space for many photos. You can check your current storage consumption of Google Photos here. Since your photo upload from next June will count against your storage limit.

Can I save my photos on Gmail?

Open the email containing the image you want to save. Right-click the image and select “Save Image As” from the menu. Select the destination location on your hard drive where you would like to save the image. Click “Save” to download the image from Gmail to your computer’s hard drive.

How do I save files to Google Drive?

Drag files into Google Drive
  1. On your computer, go to drive.google.com.
  2. Open or create a folder.
  3. To upload files and folders, drag them into the Google Drive folder.

Where can I store my photos and videos?

Google Photos can auto-backup of your photos and videos to your Google account. You can choose to have it backup only when it is connected to a WiFi network — once the photos are backed up, you can remove them from your device to free up storage.

How do I store photos forever?

5 ways to save your photos from disappearing forever
  1. Back-up your hard drive. Make sure that your images are not saved only in one place (your desktop/laptop computer, for example).
  2. Burn your images on CDs/DVDs.
  3. Use online storage.
  4. Print your images and place them in a photo album.
  5. Save your prints, too!

Where can I store my photos permanently?

Many large companies offer photo storage services including Amazon, Google, Microsoft (OneDrive), and Apple (iCloud). However, these can be expensive if you need a lot of storage, and your photos will not be as accessible as they are on a local hard drive.

What is the safest way to store photos?

  1. Save to recordable media.
  2. Save to external drive.
  3. Store photos across multiple libraries.
  4. Archive photos in the cloud.
  5. Use cloud photo services as a backup.
  6. Print them out (just in case)
  7. Backup, rinse, repeat.