For as long as I can remember, I have been the unofficial tech support guy for my family. Part of that responsibility is maintaining the photos and videos of me, my wife, and my mother-in-law. We’ve all been on the iPhone platform for years, and built up a pile of photos and videos in iCloud , and over time the monthly bill has crept up as I upgraded to larger storage plans. Sure, it’s convenient, but these little monthly subscriptions add up over time, and I wanted something more sustainable.
If you’re like me, you don’t have to keep feeding iCloud your photos, and Apple your money. A reliable portable hard drive or SSD can give you more control over your photo library and cut down on recurring costs, while ensuring your files are safe and sound. In this guide, I’ll walk you through the process of downloading your iCloud photos to a Windows computer, then moving them to an external storage device, plus how to choose the best device for safe, long-term archiving.
Before you start pulling all your photos down, I recommend doing some prep work to make the job go a little easier.
Step one is making sure your computer has the storage space to handle your media files. Even though the end goal is to get the library onto an external storage device, the files will be downloaded and stored in the short-term on your PC or Mac. If your library is large, check your available disk space. Otherwise, you may experience download failures or a slow PC, which is not fun when trying to move important files around.
Finally, consider what type of storage device you’ll use for long-term storage of your data . When you’re choosing a device, you should consider how long these devices typically last. Traditional external hard drives are inexpensive and plentiful, but the moving parts inside of them make them more susceptible to failure than a solid-state drive. And while 1TB flash drives have gotten down to reasonable prices, I'm not sure that they have the same toughness and reliability of a good SSD.
Downloading Photos from iCloud to Your PC
I’m a Windows user primarily, so I’m going to use iCloud for Windows to get the job done. As the name implies, iCloud for Windows is Apple’s desktop app. For my purposes, moving a large library of family photos off iCloud, this is the best option. If I were to use iCloud.com, I would need to download my media in batches, where iCloud for Windows can pull down my entire library in the background, making this task much easier. That said, there are times when the iCloud.com approach is a better fit. If you just need to download a small group of photos, or you’re on a PC or Mac that isn’t your own, you can log in from any browser and find the photos you want.
Download and install iCloud for Windows on your Windows device. Once installed, the application will open. Sign in to your iCloud account using your Apple credentials. Once you are logged into iCloud, click on iCloud Photos.
On the next screen, you need to enable iCloud Photos. In this step, you can also change the default folder where iCloud Photos will reside.
At this point, the program will start syncing all your thumbnails to your PC, which can take a while. But what we really want to do is download the whole library. To do this, open File Explorer and in the left column find iCloud Photos, then right-click on the folder and click Always keep on this device.
Now iCloud will start downloading your entire library to your PC. This can take hours depending on the size of your media library.
Don’t turn off your PC or put it to sleep, or the download process will stop.
Organizing Your Photo and Video Library
Once the download finished, and I had all the photos and videos on my PC, the first thing I wanted to do was bring some order to the chaos. Since I’m managing not just my pictures, but also my wife’s and my mother-in-law’s, I set up three main folders with their names on my external SSD drive.
Moving Photos to an External Drive
From there, I opened two instances of File Explorer, one with my iCloud Photos library and another with the external drive, and snapped them side by side to make dragging files between them easier. Then it was just a matter of copying the right photos into the right spot. This way, I didn’t end up with a giant dump of files that I couldn't make sense of later. If you’re in the same boat, start simple and separate by person first, then you can drill down into years or events inside each folder if you want to get more organized.
Even though you’ve copied your photos and videos onto the external SSD for safekeeping, keep in mind that your photos and videos are still on iCloud. In other words, they are taking up storage space in your account. The next step is freeing up iCloud storage, but before you delete anything, you want to be sure nothing gets lost in the process.
Verifying Your Media Library
Start by looking at your external drive and ensure all of your media is there. Open several folders, scroll through the photos, and play several videos to confirm everything is copied over correctly. Make sure the images are unmodified and high-resolution, and that the metadata is intact. Next, check the total number of items in iCloud Photos versus the number on your external SSD. For extra peace of mind, consider making a second backup before you start deleting anything from iCloud.
Freeing Up Space in iCloud
Deleting files from your synced iCloud Photos folder will permanently remove them from all your Apple devices and iCloud, so only do this after you’ve triple-checked that everything is backed up to your external drive. They'll also be removed from the "Recently Deleted" album after 30 days. They cannot be recovered unless you’ve backed them up properly.
Once you’re satisfied that everything has been copied to your external device correctly, you can delete the photo and video files from the iCloud Photo folder via File Explorer. iCloud’s sync feature will automatically remove those images and videos from your iCloud library, and free up storage for new photos and videos, while the older ones are safely archived on your external drive.
Protect Your Memories With Redundancy
Even with a solid portable SSD, I still don’t like to put all my trust in a single device. Drives wear out, get dropped, or simply fail without warning. I like to keep at least one extra copy of my photo library, either on another drive stored in a safe place, and backed up to the cloud.
As a rule of thumb, I like to update my storage every five to seven years. When I upgrade to a new external drive, I copy the entire library over so I'm not relying on aging hardware to keep decades of memories safe. Following the 3-2-1 backup strategy is a great way to ensure all of your files are safe and accessible.
By taking the time to move my family’s photos and videos off iCloud and onto an external drive, I’ve cut down on another monthly bill and know that our memories are backed up in a way I control. The process takes some patience, but once you’ve got everything organized and safely copied, you can free up iCloud space without worry. In the end, it’s about making sure those once-in-a-lifetime moments are easy to find, share, and keep safe for years to come.
