My friend Marjorie called me on a Sunday afternoon, and I could hear right away something was wrong. "Cindy, the Christmas pictures are gone. All of them. The ones of Harold."
Her phone had been nagging her about being full for weeks. Her nephew had told her, "Don't worry, Aunt Marge, everything's in the cloud." So she went through and deleted a couple thousand photos to make room. What nobody realized was that her phone had stopped backing up months earlier, around the time she changed her password. The cloud didn't have them. Only the phone did.
We got lucky. Most of those photos were still sitting in the phone's trash folder, and we brought them back that evening at her kitchen table. But oh my goodness, the two hours before we found them were awful. And it was all so avoidable.
Why can deleting photos from my phone be risky?
Because "it's in the cloud" is a guess until you check it. A few things can quietly go wrong. Backup can be turned off, paused, or stuck without you noticing. You might be signed in to a different account than the one holding your photos. And with some services, like iCloud Photos, deleting a photo on your phone deletes it everywhere that same library shows up.
So the rule is simple. Before you delete anything precious, make sure a copy is really, truly somewhere else.
How do I check that my photos are backed up?
In plain words, do three checks. First, make sure backup is turned on and says it's complete. Second, make sure you're signed in to the account that actually holds your photos. Third, open a few of your most recent photos on another device, like a computer or tablet, and make sure the full picture loads, not just a tiny preview.
If you use Google Photos, tap your profile picture at the top of the app to see your backup status. Google's help page on backing up photos shows what "backup complete" looks like. If you use iCloud Photos on an iPhone, Apple's guide to iCloud storage explains how your photo library syncs across devices.
Should I keep a second copy of important photos?
For the pictures you could never replace, yes. I really really believe in this one. A synced cloud library is convenient, but it isn't the same as a separate copy you control.
Put simply, give your precious photos two homes. The first is your cloud backup, like Google Photos or iCloud, which is easy and automatic but can pass deletions along. The second is a copy you control, on a computer or a USB drive, in a folder with a plain name, stored somewhere you'll remember.
Name it something you'll recognize in ten years, like "Family photos through September 2026," not "New folder 7." And if a grandchild helps you, ask them to show you how to open a photo from the drive, not just copy it.
How do I free up space once my photos are safe?
Once you've done those checks, you can clear space with confidence. Bob wrote a step-by-step guide on freeing up phone storage without losing a single photo. Start with ten photos, not two thousand, and check that they're still in the cloud afterward. Learn the process while the stakes are small.
And if you ever do delete something by mistake, look in the "Recently Deleted" or "Trash" folder in your photos app right away. That's what saved Marjorie.
What Marjorie does now
Marjorie checks her backup status on the first of every month, when she pays her electric bill. Her Christmas pictures of Harold now live in two places: her Google account and a little USB drive in her jewelry box. She says it's the most valuable thing in there.
Take good care of yourself, and take even better care of each other.
Is there a photo you'd be heartbroken to lose? Tell me about it in the comments, then go check that it's backed up.
