Transferring photos to a photostick

Question

Level 1

6 points

Transferring photos to a photostick

My Iphone has no storage so I haven;'t been able to update it for quite a few months. So I want to transfer all my photos to a photo stick and then delete them from my phone. My photos are stored in the cloud on my phone. I transferred all photo's to the stick but when I started to delete photos from my phone I saw that they were also being deleted from the stick. I realized the photos on the stick were still in the cloud. I want to disconnect from the cloud on my phone and then transfer the photos, but it looks like I have to download all originals first onto my phone, but I don;'t have the storage. What do I do? Thank you

iPhone 12

Posted on Feb 12, 2025 11:17 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Richard.Taylor

Level 6

15,825 points

Feb 13, 2025 11:51 AM in response to hilaryfromil

Do you have "Optimize Storage" turned on at Settings>AppleID>iCloud>Photos? If you don't, then you can save lots of storage space by turning this on. It saves space by keeping only small screen sized pictures on the phone and relying on iCloud to keep the original files.

With that in mind, you can see that if you have "Optimize Storage" turned on, then the full quality of your pictures is not on the phone, and so transferring pictures to a photostick may not really back up the pictures. I just checked by saving a picture from my phone to an external drive. The original picture is 55 MB, but the transfer was 2.9 MB. That's because I'm using "Optimize Storage" on my phone, so I've saved over 90% of the space, but I transferred only 6% of the original picture. If you're not using "Optimize Storage," they you would get the full picture file.

So, if the pictures are really precious to you, then the best procedure would be to use a computer to download the pictures from Photos at iCloud.com. Use (•••)> More Download Options>Unmodified Originals.

Also keep in mind, that iCloud always has exactly the pictures that your phone has, so when you delete pictures from iCloud they are deleted from your phone, and vice-versa. Is this what you want?

Reply

Answer 2

gsyrba

Level 2

388 points

Feb 12, 2025 11:21 AM in response to hilaryfromil

BY "photo stick" are you talking about a USB drive? If so, transfer the photos onto the stick. From there, create a folder that is not a subfolder of iCloud. Drag the photos to the new folder. From there they should only disappear from the cloud folder, but not the newly created folder. Be sure to unplug the photo stick before deleting from the cloud. Just do one at first to make sure you set the new folder up correctly.

Reply