How to best back up iphone / iCloud?

[Buel10]

Hi all.
I am using 1TB of storage of my 2TB apple iCloud. I do not like having one back up facility - I would like to back up to my external HD as well as another cloud-based version but there seem to be so many options.

Can anyone offer some tried and tested ways, please?

[Bruce]

I backup the phone via iTunes, which gets saved to here; %appdata%\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
that folder is part of my backup regime, so goes onto the NAS, and various ext HD’s.
don’t use cloud storage for backups, not because I’m paranoid, but because my upload speeds aren’t great.

[Buel10]

Thanks for that. However, I believe that only backs up the iphone, I would like to back up all my media from iCoud?

[Bruce]

Oh, OK, it’s your iCloud data you want backed up, not your iPhone.

what data do you have sitting in iCloud? the usual stuff you sync from your phone?
and why do you want to back it up? it’s like saying you want to backup OneDrive or DropBox.
those cloud storage systems don’t need backing up - as long as you have web access, your data is there.
they have redundant servers all over the world to guarantee access.

[Bastet]

As iCloud is not on your PC it is impossible to backup locally. It is already backed up.
Have you deleted the items from your iPhone after moving them to iCloud & this is why you wish not to use iTunes backup?
iTunes will create a full backup of your iPhone including anything backed up to iCloud if it is still on the iPhone.

[Buel10]

Thanks, just my photos and videos. Yes, I see what you mean but even if it were in case I had a head injury and lost my log in details, switched away from iPhone or even, heaven forbid, couldn’t afford the £7.99 per month storage. I’d like to back up on an external hard drive - this media has all the memories of my young children so far…!

[Bruce]

I only use iTunes to backup my phone to my PC.
I don’t use iCloud, so correct me if I have the wrong end of the stick here, but stuff in the cloud is only there because it’s on your phone.
so if you can’t access the cloud (forgot password, head injury etc), all those memories are still on your devices that use the same AppleID, which is how they were snyc’d to iCloud in the first place.

[Buel10]

ah, not quite: Shadow images and videos are on your phone but not all the content actually on your phone. Example: I have 256gb storage on my iPhone but my iCloud has 1TB full out of 2TB. Also, I share the iCloud with my wife’s phone…

[Bastet]

Thanks, just my photos and videos. Yes, I see what you mean but even if it were in case I had a head injury and lost my log in details, switched away from iPhone or even, heaven forbid, couldn’t afford the £7.99 per month storage. I’d like to back up on an external hard drive - this media has all the memories of my young children so far…!

You could connect the iPhone to a PC & open the photos & manually move these to the PC as you would with an external hard drive. If the videos are in that folder then you can also save these.
Otherwise you’d need to use iTunes to backup the iPhone.

[Bruce]

@Buel10 - still need help?