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4:06 pm

February 15, 2019

I see lots of requests online to purchase the PhotoStick. Given that I use Google Photos and take most of my pictures with my android phone, I was wondering if there was any reason to purchase the PhotoStick or if I could backup ALL my photos using Google Photos on a 128 USB memory stick. Is there any special software that I need to use to put ALL my photos on a 128 memory stick? I also have a lot of slides I took in the 1970’s to 1990’s that I would like to scan to save onto a memory stick. I am open to suggestions to best accomplish this big task.
Dean
The “photostick” I’ve seen advertised is a regular computer USB drive that has special software to scan your computer for photos and copy them to the USB drive. I prefer using a regular USB hard drive for that. If your photos are mostly on your phone you may look for a USB drive with the micro-USB connector that fits your phone – or a USB-C if that’s what you have. It can be a pretty nifty way to copy all the photos off your phone.
If a lot of your Google Photos aren’t on your phone and you want to copy them all down to your computer, the only way to do that is with Google’s tool called Takeout. That is the only way to copy ALL photos at once. However, you can select big chunks of photos and manually download them to your computer. We will actually be covering this in episode 171 of our Button show.
As for scanning old slides, you have a few choices. I like getting out the old projector, setting up a digital camera on a tripod and having a slideshow. I snap a photo of a projected slide when I see one I like. There are also places, like Costco, that provide that service. Once you have them in digital format, I would put them all on one USB drive AND upload them to Google Photos. The real beauty of Google Photos is that it has unlimited storage and can gather all the photos from your entire life that you can peruse any time you like.
How many photos are on your Google Photos now? – you can find the approximate number on your Google Dashboard.
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