Seagate Advises Users to Back Up Social Media Photos

Protect Valuable Digital Assets with External Drives

MALAYSIA — March, 13, 2014 — A vast majority of people save their photos straight from the camera or camera phone directly to the web so you can share them with friends and family. We post our photos to social media and other sharing sites so people can tag images and comment on them. This is a fun way to keep in contact over time and long distances.

In a survey by Seagate and Harris Interactive, 72% of people consider their photos and videos as their most valuable digital assets. But only 27% of them have an external backup drive. According to the Washington Post, Facebook is now the world’s largest repository of photos, but most Facebook users don’t keep copies of their photos anywhere else.

There are lots of reasons to have a backup of your own photos. What if you want to print a copy or email a photo to someone and can’t immediately access your social media account? What if you want to switch to a different website or you need to change or cancel an account? Even forgetting a password may lock you out of access to your own photos.

For most websites, it only takes a few steps to copy the photos. Even if you take lots of pictures all the time, you can store backups quickly on easy-to-use portable drives like a Seagate Backup Plus or Wireless Plus. Then, no matter what happens on that website, you’ll have your own photos.

How to Back Up Your Facebook Photos
To download all of the photos you’ve ever posted on Facebook, you need to set up an account archive:
1. Click on the account menu at the top right of any Facebook page.

2. Choose Account Settings.
3. Click on Download a Copy of Your Facebook Data.
4. Click on Start My Archive.

You will be asked to verify your account. Then the site will create an archive of your whole account and all the photos and videos you’ve uploaded. You can’t select individual items to download, but the final .ZIP file, when expanded, contains multiple folders holding HTML files of your posts and folders of your photos and videos in the original size and quality that you uploaded them.

How to Back Up Your Flickr Photos
Flickr doesn’t have a batch download feature, but the service points towards a variety of third-party backup tools available for Windows and Mac. You can use those to download all your photos, albums, and sets.

How to Back Up Your Instagram Photos
Instagram doesn’t offer an archive service, but there are third-party tools you can use to export and back up your Instagram photos.

How to Back Up Your Picasa Photos
If you have Picasa installed on your computer, you can download entire albums from Picasa Web Albums to back them up. Just click on Actions > Download to Picasa. In the next window, click on Download.

How to Back Up Your SmugMug Photos
In your SmugMug gallery, select Tools > Download All. That will start bundling the gallery into a .ZIP file. When it's ready, SmugMug will send you an email link to download your archive. The file is good for two weeks.

Need more backup space for photos?
If you really love taking photos, plus video, consider bigger backup storage, such as Backup Plus Desktop Drive, for your computer. Or if you want both storage and streaming access to all your content, try the Seagate Central home network system so you can store all your photos, videos and more, then view it from anywhere in your house.

Want to manage your photos better?
You can easily manage your photos on Seagate Wireless Plus or Seagate Central devices with the Seagate® Media App. This free app is available for your smartphone or tablet and automatically organizes your files so you can enjoy them at home or on the go.

The Seagate Media app can access your entire photo library located on your Seagate Wireless Plus or Seagate Central devices. Create a slideshow, view your Facebook pictures*, or download a photo to your mobile device. Your photos and memories are never far away with the Seagate Media app.