How do I backup photos without deleting them form iCloud?

[RandyManis]

I have an iPhone 7, use Win10, and need to free up space on my device without losing my pictures and videos from the past several years. I upgraded to the 200GB iCloud plan and have over 100GB of pics/vids.

My question is: if I were to delete the pictures from my phone, how do I ensure they aren't deleted from the cloud?

I have tried to copy the entire contents of the iCloud Photos folder to my OneDrive or D: drive but it refuses (says I need to free up space on my C: drive

[ledtester]

Maybe this:

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-delete-photos-from-iphone-but-not-icloud

or:

https://www.easeus.com/iphone-data-transfer/how-to-delete-photos-from-iphone-but-not-icloud.html

[kripton2035]

my advice: don't rely on icloud to backup your photos...
a cloud service (**ANY**) is NOT a backup solution. NEVER.
make a separate backup on an external drive, with enough room of course.

[AndersJ]

Once backed up to a local drive,
what windows programs are available to sort, find and browse images
as elegantly as can be done on a iPhone or iPad?

For instance,
on a iPad the images can be overlayed on a map
based on where they were once taken.

 

[kripton2035]

I did not say to use only a local drive
you can still use a cloud based service, but do not rely on them for a backup solution.
it is only a easy synchronisation system.
if some pirate guess your password, or succed in hacking apple servers, they can wipe your photos, and nothing is left...
there are not many chances, but believe me I have some customers that were once in this situation (mainly with google drive but it's the same principle)

[golden_labels]

If you claim that Apple’s cloud service, as offered to iPhone users, is risky as a backup solution, I can’t argue against that.⁽¹⁾ But I have a feeling you are trying to say that about any cloud service. That is a bold claim, supported with questionable arguments.

An eyebrow should be raised for many of them, but I will focus on only one. Can you provide any reputable source confirming that there was even a single case of a customer, of any larger company, losing data in a cloud backup service⁽²⁾ due to the company’s infrastructure being compromised by an attacker? Just one, in the whole history of humanity and I promise to shut up in this topic.
____
⁽¹⁾ Not expressing support either.
⁽²⁾ Not a $5 VPS instance, which are not meant to protect data.

[BradC]

If you claim that Apple’s cloud service, as offered to iPhone users, is risky as a backup solution, I can’t argue against that.⁽¹⁾ But I have a feeling you are trying to say that about any cloud service. That is a bold claim, supported with questionable arguments.

An eyebrow should be raised for many of them, but I will focus on only one. Can you provide any reputable source confirming that there was even a single case of a customer, of any larger company, losing data in a cloud backup service⁽²⁾ due to the company’s infrastructure being compromised by an attacker? Just one, in the whole history of humanity and I promise to shut up in this topic.
____
⁽¹⁾ Not expressing support either.
⁽²⁾ Not a $5 VPS instance, which are not meant to protect data.

Social engineering still qualifies as "infrastructure being compromised". https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-apple-let-a-hacker-remotely-wipe-an-iphone-ipad-macbook/

[bw2341]

I don't use iCloud, but from my understanding, the whole point of paying Apple for iCloud is so you don't have to worry about running out of space on the iPhone, if you paid for a large enough iCloud plan.

I think this page has the correct setting.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205703

If you turn on Optimize iPhone Storage, your original full resolution photos will be replaced with lower resolution preview versions as needed to leave more free space. If you need to edit or share a photo, the original full resolution version will be downloaded from iCloud automatically. This should let you take new photos and videos until your paid iCloud storage is full.

As I understand it, when you use Optimize iPhone Storage and try to install an app, your full size photos will be shrunk to preview size automatically as needed to make space. The iPhone shouldn't show a no free space error unless you managed to fill it up completely with apps and app data.

[kripton2035]

An eyebrow should be raised for many of them, but I will focus on only one. Can you provide any reputable source confirming that there was even a single case of a customer, of any larger company, losing data in a cloud backup service(2) due to the company’s infrastructure being compromised by an attacker? Just one, in the whole history of humanity and I promise to shut up in this topic.

it's not just about attacker wiping datas, but also about data being stolen. your datas are not safe in such cloud services.
also in europe one major actor of the system OVH had a bunch of servers gone into flames in march 2021, making some 2000+ users losing the datas and the backups.

[BradC]

If you turn on Optimize iPhone Storage, your original full resolution photos will be replaced with lower resolution preview versions as needed to leave more free space. If you need to edit or share a photo, the original full resolution version will be downloaded from iCloud automatically. This should let you take new photos and videos until your paid iCloud storage is full.

Yep, that's how my mother in law manages 30G of photos on her 16 G iPhone. It's a bit of a nightmare when you want to back up pics from the phone though as it downloads each one before poking it out onto the media.

I managed to find a windows application that managed to download all her stuff from iCloud as a backup pretty easily though, even if i had to run it on windows in a VM.

[golden_labels]

Social engineering still qualifies as "infrastructure being compromised". https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-apple-let-a-hacker-remotely-wipe-an-iphone-ipad-macbook/

Indeed, social engineering is one of the methods. If kripton2035 can provide a single example of such an event, using social engineering or not, it’s ok. It seems they can’t.

it's not just about attacker wiping datas, but also about data being stolen. your datas are not safe in such cloud services.

This is a statement very different from what you have said before. I would argue with that new claim too, but so far you haven’t given the answer to the previous question about data loss.

also in europe one major actor of the system OVH had a bunch of servers gone into flames in march 2021, making some 2000+ users losing the datas and the backups.

The March fire hasn’t affected any single cloud backup instance. Zerto and Archive weren’t even in the affected datacenter. Instance Backup might have been, as OVH wasn’t clear on that, but those remained available — so were either not affected or restored. The people, who lost data in the fire, had no backups or used computing instances for that purpose.

tl;dr: please, stop FUD against cloud services. I would prefer to keep this short, as we’re getting a bit off-topic in here.