I Never Pay for Cloud Storage: Here’s My DIY Method for Storing Photos and Videos

If you took a lot of photos and videos while on vacation, your phone is probably working lack of storage. And now ? You might be tempted to just upload all your files to the cloud, but if you do that, you’ll end up paying a pretty penny.

Cloud storage used to be cheap. When Google Photos debuted in 2015, it promised free, unlimited storage. I happily uploaded all my photos and videos, knowing they were safe in the cloud and accessible from anywhere.

Then, in 2021, Google pulled the rug out from under us. The free ride was over. All those thousands of photos were safe, but each new image started to eat into that measly 15GB of free storage. Suddenly my habit of taking photos came at a price, requiring me to pay for a Google One subscription if I wanted to continue uploading.

All those photos and videos took up a lot of space, because what’s stored in the cloud doesn’t disappear into the sky. These files exist on physical servers here on Earth. Essentially, they are stored on someone else’s computer.

And now I was being charged for using that storage space. I’ve always hated the idea of ​​paying monthly subscriptions: $10 a month becomes $120 a year, which becomes $1,200 after 10 years.

And Google One wasn’t a subscription I could just cancel, like Netflix or Spotify. If I stopped paying, I wouldn’t be able to upload new photos and videos, and I would potentially lose access to all my files after two years.

How can I save all my memories without the cloud?

Over the years I have developed a system for managing my files and keeping copies stored on an external hard drive. Although it takes a little more work to transfer everything manually, it’s a better long-term solution for me, and it doesn’t require paying for a subscription service.

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Why I use an external hard drive to store photos and videos

If you don’t want to pay for cloud storage, you might be tempted to get a phone with a higher storage capacity. After Google Photos stopped letting me download files for free, my first thought was that I’d rather pay more for a device with a terabyte of storage instead of paying forever for a Google One subscription.

But even the most upgradeable 1TB phone will eventually need to be replaced. And if I want to keep all my old files, my next phone will need to have at least as much storage as my current one, plus extra capacity for my future photos and videos.

Compounding this problem, image file sizes continue to grow. As phone cameras improve, the images they capture result in larger megapixel file sizes.

My iPhone estimates that each 12-megapixel image is about 2MB, and each 24-megapixel image is 3MB. Video takes up even more space: a minute of 4K footage can easily exceed 1GB. At these prices, even a phone with 256GB of storage (the new minimum for the iPhone 17 series) can fill up quickly.

Digital storage on an external drive doesn’t have to be expensive. You can easily get a 1TB SSD for less than $100. (For context, Apple charges $1,399 for the 1TB iPhone Air, a $400 premium over the $999 256GB model.)

The advantage of using an external drive is that you can save files on multiple devices. You can also continue using it long after you upgrade to a new phone. Typically, HDDs last three to five years, while SSDs last a minimum of five years.

Using an external drive requires more effort than backing everything up to the cloud. You have to wait for your files to transfer from your device to the drive and then sort everything into folders. Then, once the file transfer is complete, you need to delete these files from your phone or computer.

Fortunately, once you understand the process and repeat it a few times, it becomes quite simple. Here’s how I do it.

My photo backup process

When I need to back up my photos and videos (or my phone is low on storage), I like to make two copies of each file: one for my laptop and one for my external SSD.

My MacBook runs fewer apps and has more storage than my iPhone, so it gets a copy of all the photos and videos on my phone. The Photos app on my Mac also has a handy “Delete items after download” checkbox, which I recommend checking.

Once all the files are transferred, I plug my external drive into my computer and select all the photos I want to back up. The Photos app sorts everything by upload date. I can select all the images in the most recent batch by clicking on the first photo, holding Shift, then clicking on the last photo. I then drag and drop them onto the external drive. If I have a lot of photos (more than 500), I tend to split this step and select 200-300 at a time, otherwise the transfer process may be interrupted.

I try to back up my photos at least once a month or after a special occasion, like a vacation. Sometimes, as a safety precaution, I also do a backup before a major software update (like iOS 26). The process became for me a way of marking the end of one period and the beginning of another.

I was having trouble organizing files on my external drive. However, I now simply create a folder for each batch of uploaded photos and videos. I will label these folders either by date (e.g. July 2025) or by occasion (Travel to London, summer 2024).

You may find that a similar system works for you. Perhaps you will opt for more or less frequent backups. Regardless, I highly recommend this final step: make a backup of the backup to a separate external drive. This way, if one of your drives fails, you’ll still have the other.

I’m more intentional about the images I capture

One of the problems with keeping all my files on external drives is that I don’t always have access to them. But I think it’s a reasonable compromise. I don’t need to carry all the images I captured in my pocket. I can usually find the photos I need on my Instagram page or in my email inbox.

I leave some photos and videos on my phone indefinitely, but only those I need to refer to often (a screenshot of my insurance information, for example). I also keep a few photos that I like to see from time to time: an image of a family reunion, a day out with friends. It’s a curated collection, much like the one or two images people kept in their wallets.

Yes, managing all those files on an external drive can be complicated, but it’s worth it. Not only do I spend less money in the long run, but I also feel reassured that my memories are saved on a physical object that I own, rather than being dumped on someone else’s computer.

Even if I paid for Google One or another cloud storage option, it would feel like my files belonged to someone else. What happens if Google Photos changes its storage policy or raises its prices again? I would have no choice but to accept it. My memories would be at the mercy of a corporation. What if Google ever closed? Indeed, it is currently one of the largest companies in the world. But this was also true for Kodak, not so long ago.

There’s another unexpected benefit: by being responsible for creating these manual backups, I’ve become more intentional about capturing images in the first place. I realized that I don’t have to take a photo of everything I see. Most of the time I just remember it.