Phone as a tool, backing it up?

[redtom]

So, now that this smart phone thing is now pretty much a part of life I feel I should back mine up in case I wreck it. I have an Android. I have photos of a restoration project that i'd hate to lose. The other morning when the news casters do their weekly hawking of new products they had a little "Y" shaped thing you just plug in to your phone. I shopped online and see many. Is there a best one? Are they plug and play so this luddite can figure it out? Or will I have to go to the phone store to get tutoring? (They hide when I come in). I remember 10 or more years ago my wife bought a backup for our PC. It was expensive.like $200. It sits in a drawer, none of us could figure it out, kids included.

 

[Tom from Buckeye Lake]

PhotoStick. Haven't used it yet. Photos only I think.

 

[dcarp]

So, now that this smart phone thing is now pretty much a part of life I feel I should back mine up in case I wreck it. I have an Android. I have photos of a restoration project that i'd hate to lose. The other morning when the news casters do their weekly hawking of new products they had a little "Y" shaped thing you just plug in to your phone. I shopped online and see many. Is there a best one? Are they plug and play so this luddite can figure it out? Or will I have to go to the phone store to get tutoring? (They hide when I come in). I remember 10 or more years ago my wife bought a backup for our PC. It was expensive.like $200. It sits in a drawer, none of us could figure it out, kids included.

Here’s a Google search result

 

[Janicholson]

A simple way is to use a usb cord from the phone to your computer. (probably a USB C if a new cell phone) plug it in both units. Use the file manager to access the phone (it will appear in the left hand column). select the phone, then select internal storage, then DCIM, then Camera. All the images should show on screen. Highlight all, then copy and paste them where you want on your HDD or (better) a USB one TB USB drive they are cheap. Jim

 

[DoubleO7]

So, now that this smart phone thing is now pretty much a part of life I feel I should back mine up in case I wreck it. I have an Android. I have photos of a restoration project that i'd hate to lose. The other morning when the news casters do their weekly hawking of new products they had a little "Y" shaped thing you just plug in to your phone. I shopped online and see many. Is there a best one? Are they plug and play so this luddite can figure it out? Or will I have to go to the phone store to get tutoring? (They hide when I come in). I remember 10 or more years ago my wife bought a backup for our PC. It was expensive.like $200. It sits in a drawer, none of us could figure it out, kids included.

I just copied 724 phone photos from my Android phone to a usb memory stick.
Using a female USB A to male USB C adapter. Readily available from Amazon, etc. for less than $3
And can then plug the memory stick into my laptop and copy them over.

P.S. if you wanted to skip the memory stick you could get an adapter that has two male ends instead.
Just need the proper end for your phone.

 

[Janicholson]

I just copied 724 phone photos from my Android phone to a usb memory stick.
Using a female USB A to male USB C adapter. Readily available from Amazon, etc. for less than $3
And can then plug the memory stick into my laptop and copy them over.


View attachment 80976

The advice I gave may be relevant to copying the image files to USB stick. Jim

 

[DoubleO7]

The advice I gave may be relevant to copying the image files to USB stick. Jim

Yes, yours will work too. And I actually tried to do as you described directly with usb cable.
My laptop does not "see" my Google Pixel A phone when plugged in with the charging cable.
Therefore I did the two step version with the adapter.

 

[Dingo3]

You could always email them to yourself and store them on your computer. Much easier to use a stick on your laptop if you want a back up.

 

[Duner Wi]

I added SD card to my android for storage. Move stuff to pc periodically like has been described.

 

[adediesel]

get the Google cloud

 

[Watthour]

Phone as a tool? Backing up? I've found that an iPhone is a poor substitute for a piece of lumber as a wheel chock.

 

[Watthour]

get the Google cloud

That way, you can be certain that Alphabet has every last piece of information about you that they could ever hope to garner.

 

[GChief]

Whatever browser/email you use will probably also have a certain amount (often alot) of free cloud storage.

We have our phones set up to do an auto cloud back up twice a week. We also dump our pics to our cloud storage often. I rarely have more than 20 pics actually on my phone.

 

[1948CaseVAI]

Just use google photos and let a professional worry about bavcking them up plus you can look at them from ay computer any time. You should be sotrring all of your contacts on google contacts as well. If you have a google account (free) the photos and contact features are free unless you need to buy bigfger storage, but most everyone gets by fine on the free accounts. You "memory stick" is a tiny SSD which will eventually fail.

 

[wp6529]

That way, you can be certain that Alphabet has every last piece of information about you that they could ever hope to garner.

^^^ Bingo

I archive all my pics and vids and other stuff of importance regularly to my local mirrored secure storage and remind my wife to do the same. She once lost her phone at MSY or on the plane, never found it or the pics/vids of the kids first visit to NOLA. At least with regular archiving the loss was limited.

As for backup for a critical tool, it's not a bad idea to keep a backup phone on hand in case your current one breaks so you can quick switch and be back in operation in a matter of minutes. This is most helpful for those of us who do not use carrier phones i.e. we use unlocked phones.

 

[zuhnc]

If stuff like the recent whole-world Windows upgrade debacle happens on a more regular basis, the cloud will become inaccessable. Local backup, kept in your local (house/business) FIRE RESISTANT, LARGE, HEAVY, safe, with an off-site backup, will preclude losing any information. And, the information is NOT available to anyone not of your choosing, regardless of how secure the cloud providers say it is. Just takes one ill-informed or malicious person/LEO/Judge/hacker to make that information basically public domain. zuhnc