Here’s how to make sure you don’t lose your vacation photos

Accidents or thefts can happen very quickly, and this can have catastrophic consequences on vacation if you haven’t thought about backing up your photos. Fortunately, there are a number of simple, free solutions that can help you keep your most precious memories safe, whatever happens.

Year-round, the golden rule for never losing photos is to constantly back them up, whether by transferring them to your personal computer, or by copying them to an external hard drive or an online storage service. You can never be too careful.

On vacation, when you’re away from home, the best way to avoid losing your photos is to opt for the automatic online backup of all your new snapshots. It’s simple and mostly free, provided you don’t take thousands of high-resolution photos.

The best-known solution is undoubtedly Google Photos. Whatever smartphone you have, you can install the application and store a huge number of photos in it, up to the limit of 15GB of space across all your Google applications. In the Photos app, go to Settings and activate the backup of your photos (and videos) to your Google account.

From then on, all these files will be automatically duplicated on your account and accessible at any time from your phone or computer. When you return from vacation, you can always retrieve these photos and keep a copy on a hard drive if you’ve had a problem with your smartphone. And if you can’t manage to stay under the 15GB of free storage space offered by Google, you can always opt for a subscription to Google One, starting at €1.99 per month for 100GB of space.

iPhone owners can use Google Photos too, of course, but they may prefer to opt for iCloud, Apple’s own online backup solution. In this case, open the device settings, click on your ID and go to the iCloud section. Select Photos, then Sync this iPhone. Note that Apple limits total iCloud storage to 5GB in its free version.

Other reliable online backup solutions include Microsoft OneDrive, Amazon Photos and Dropbox. By opting for this type of backup, you can relax and enjoy a great vacation, whatever happens to your smartphone. – AFP Relaxnews