Gear

How I Back Up My Travel Photos on the Road

A friend of mine lost her phone in a taxi in Lisbon. She got the phone back two days later, which is a small miracle. But when she tells the story, she talks about the six weeks of photos she realized she’d have lost if it hadn’t come back.

None of them were backed up. Hotel Wi-Fi was slow, so she’d turned uploads off and forgotten about it.

That story is why I built this setup. It’s simple, it runs mostly on its own, and it means I could lose every device in my bag tomorrow and still have every photo.

The rule: two copies, two places

The phone itself doesn’t count as a copy. It’s the thing most likely to get lost, dropped or stolen.

So every photo needs to end up in two other places:

1. A cloud service, so it survives even if I lose the whole bag.
2. A small drive in my bag, so I have a copy that doesn’t depend on Wi-Fi.

Those two cover each other’s weak spots. The cloud fails when the Wi-Fi is bad. The drive fails when the bag is gone.

Copy one: the cloud

I use iCloud Photos, because I’m on an iPhone and iPad and it just runs. The 2TB plan is about $10 a month in the US. Google Photos with a Google One plan costs about the same and works on any phone.

Two settings make it work while traveling:

• Optimize Storage on the phone. Full-size photos live in the cloud. The phone keeps smaller versions. My phone stays half empty even after a month of shooting.
• Check the upload status every few days. On an iPhone, it’s at the bottom of the Library tab in Photos. If it says hundreds of items are waiting, I find better Wi-Fi.

The hotel Wi-Fi problem

This is where my setup almost broke. Cloud backup assumes decent Wi-Fi. Travel doesn’t always give you that.

In Cambodia, I had a guesthouse with Wi-Fi so slow that 300 photos took three days to upload. Videos didn’t go up at all. For a week, I had nothing backed up except what was on the phone.

My fixes, in order of how often I use them:

• Cafés and coworking spaces. I sit down with a coffee, plug in the phone, open Photos and leave it for an hour. Coworking Wi-Fi is usually much faster than hotel Wi-Fi.
• Upload on my eSIM, in small amounts. You can let iCloud use mobile data. I only turn this on for a day when I’ve got a lot waiting and data to spare. My eSIM plans usually have a few gigabytes left near the end anyway.
• The drive. Which is copy two.

Copy two: a drive in the bag

I carry a small portable SSD, 1TB, about the size of a credit card. It cost around $100. It plugs straight into the iPad’s USB-C port.

Once a week, I copy the new photos from the iPad to the drive in the Files app. It takes about 10 minutes. No Wi-Fi involved.

The drive lives in a different part of the bag from the phone and iPad. If someone grabs my tech pouch, the drive is still in the inside pocket.

Is it a perfect backup? No. If I lose the whole bag, I lose the drive too. But that’s why the cloud is copy one.

What about videos

Videos are the hard part. They’re huge, and they’re what slow uploads choke on.

My compromise: I shoot fewer, shorter videos. Most of mine are under 30 seconds. And I delete the bad takes the same day, so I’m not uploading three versions of the same sunset.

What it costs

• iCloud 2TB: about $10 a month
• Portable SSD: about $100, once
• Time: about 10 minutes a week

That’s it. For two months of a trip, it’s the cheapest insurance in my bag.

My friend in Lisbon uses this setup now too. She told me the first night she checked her upload status and saw “Synced,” she slept better than she had all trip.