How to transfer google photos to an external hard drive

Many of the users are searching for how to download google photos to hard drive or external hard drive because after June 2021, Google drive reduced their Google photo storage space from unlimited to a 15GB limit. If your Photo’s data size exceeds more than 15GB then you have to pay for more storage. This might be a reason lots of us want to transfer or download google photos to hard drive.

Let us find out more about the Google workspace suit in the reasons given below.

Various Reasons To Backup Google Photos To Hard Drive

A lot of us are using Google drive storage for so many years. But from summer 2021 the changes made by Google after the update drastically reduced the use of Google drive. All of us were downloading the photos from the drive and moving them into a hard drive. There are the following reasons to transfer google photos to external hard drive.

• Google drive has reduced their storage to 15GB, if your photos limit exceeds more than the storage limit then you have to pay for the extra storage.
• It takes a long time to upload and download the files from the photos from google drive. We can instantly access the hard drive whenever we need it.
• Sometimes we forgot the password of the Gmail account which makes it difficult to access Google drive whereas if we have the hard drive then we don’t have to remember the password.
• There is a security risk of losing valuable data when we are using Google drive. When we share a link of any photo or doc file to someone and that person sends the link to some other third party, then the files can also be misused and you can not do anything.

How To Download Google Photos to Hard Drive/External Hard Drive Manually?

There are a few methods that we are going to perform manually using the Google Photos and Takeout feature of Google. Follow the steps given below.

#1. Transfer a small number of photos

• Log in to your Google Drive account by going to Google Photos in your browser.
• Select the photos that you want to export and click on the three dots in the top right corner.
• Choose the download option from the menu.
• Then we can see that our photos are downloaded into our system. We can either move them into the hard drive by using copy-paste method or we can use drag and drop.
• If there is no default path set then it will ask for the location to save the file, then we just need to select the hard drive to save the files.
• The migration process is now completed.

If you want to transfer the whole Bunch of photos and videos then follow the below process.

#2. Download all the photos using the Google Takeout feature

• Open the Google Takeout and log in to your Google account.
• Then scroll down and click on deselect all because sometimes google drive selects all the data by default.
• After that scroll down again and tick mark on the Google photos.
• Click on the Next step to move forward.
• Now, customize the backup file based on file type, frequency & destination.
• Hit on the Create export button.
• Wait till the exporting process is completed.
• Click on the download button to save the photos files on your PC.
• Google will ask for the password for security reasons, type your password.
• Then after the completion of the process, we can see the downloaded zip file. Copy-paste your downloaded file into the hard drive.
• The process is completed. Now, we hope the “how to move files from Google drive to external hard drive” problem is solved.

The manual process that we have discussed above is easy but due to numerous and complicated steps, it has some limitations that are mentioned below.

Also Read: How To Backup Gmail Emails Automatically to Hard Drive

Limitation To Backup Google Photos To Hard Drive or External Hard Drive

Some of the limitations caused by the manual method are mentioned below.

• Due to long steps, the above process is time-consuming even the downloading can take hours to days depending on the size quantity of the photos.
• Steps are complicated for non-technical users.
• We can either export a few or export all the photos. There is no selective filter option based on days, months, or years.
• While migrating a large amount of the data there is a straight chance of data loss or file corruption.

The manual technique has so many limitations. Hence, we will provide you with the best alternate method below that will help you with the “how to download google photos to hard drive” question easily. 

How Do I Transfer My Photos To Hard Drive/External Hard Drive Using The Professional Tool?

The DRS Gmail Backup Tool is a prominent tool for backup Google photos to hard drive. This tool helps you reduce the exporting time as we don’t need to do lengthy steps. The interface is so simple and interactive that any non-technical user can easily access this application. It has an advance date range filter that allows us to download photos of the selected date and time. Using this tool we can also migrate the file into numerous other file formats like EML, PDF, PST, MSG, EMLX, MBOX, etc.

Conclusion

Here, in this blog, we have discussed how to download all photos from Google Photos to external hard drive. However, if you want to backup contacts, drive data, calendars, etc. from google, you can simply download DRS G Suite Backup tool. We have also gone through different reasons for transferring Google photos to the external hard drive. Although the manual method seems feasible it is a time-consuming process and not easy for non-technical users to perform. That is why we have gone through an even more suitable professional method that will solve the time utilization problem and provide various other features.