Google Photos Backup: Copy It to a Drive, NAS or PC by Date

How to back up Google Photos to an external drive, a NAS or your PC with Google Takeout, keep the real dates, sort into Year/Month or albums, and keep it current.

11 October 2026

Google Photos is not a backup of itself. It is one copy, in one account, which one mistake or one locked account can take away. A real Google Photos backup is a second copy you control: download the library with Google Takeout, write the dates and places from the .json files into the photos, sort them into folders, and copy the result to an external drive, a NAS or your PC. Then repeat it on a schedule.

Why Google Photos needs a backup

Google Photos syncs. If you delete a photo on your phone with backup on, it goes to the bin in Google Photos as well, and the bin empties itself after 60 days. If your Google account is suspended or hacked, the whole library goes with it. A backup is a copy that a mistake in Google Photos cannot touch.

The "Backup" switch in the Google Photos app means the opposite direction: it copies your phone to Google. This guide is about copying Google to you.

What works, and what does not

Google Drive for desktop syncs Google Drive, not Google Photos. The two were separated in 2019. Drive for desktop can upload folders to Google Photos, but it cannot download your Photos library.

rclone and NAS apps. On 31 March 2025 Google changed its Photos Library API: third-party apps can now only see photos they uploaded themselves. Tools that used to pull a whole library, such as rclone's Google Photos backend, can no longer copy what you uploaded from your phone. For a full copy, Takeout is the only route left.

So every reliable backup starts with Takeout. How to download all your Google Photos covers the export itself, every setting included. The short version is below.

A backup without dates is half a backup

Here is what most people find when they open their first Takeout. Thousands of photos show the day of the download, not the day they were taken. Screenshots, WhatsApp images, scans, edited photos and anything you re-dated in Google Photos carry no date inside the file. Google kept the real date in a .json file next to each photo, like IMG_1234.jpg.supplemental-metadata.json. Locations are the same.

Copy that folder to a drive and you have a backup that sorts wrongly in every app, shows nothing on a map, and depends on thousands of small text files that no photo app reads. In ten years, when you need it, that is not something you want to sort out. A backup is only complete when each photo carries its own date and place. See why Google Takeout photos have the wrong date.

What a complete backup contains, and what it cannot

Takeout gives you every photo and video in your library, the albums as folders, and a .json file per photo with the date taken, the location and the description you typed. Live Photos come as a still and a short clip, and photos you edited in Google Photos come as the original plus an -edited copy.

Some things do not leave Google at all. Face groups and the names you gave people are not exported. Favourites survive only as a field in the .json file. Comments and likes in shared albums stay behind, and photos other people added to a shared album are only included if you saved them to your library. See Takeout lost face tags and what happens to albums.

So the goal is realistic: every photo and video, each with its real date, time and place inside the file, in folders you can browse without Google. That is what the steps below produce.

Step 1: Export with Google Takeout

1. Go to takeout.google.com and click Deselect all.
2. Tick Google Photos, then click Next step.
3. Choose Send download link via email, Export once, .zip and a size of 10 GB (2 GB on a weak connection).
4. Click Create export. Wait for the email, which takes hours to days.
5. Download every part within 7 days. You can save the zip files straight onto the drive you are backing up to.

Step 2: Write the dates and places into the photos

You can do this with our app, Takeout JSON Metadata Fixer, on Windows or Mac, with no command line: drop in the zip files and it finds each photo's .json, writes the date taken and GPS into the photo and sets the file dates. It also handles the cut-off sidecar names, (1) duplicates and edited copies that trip up scripts. The first 500 photos are free, and Premium is one payment of $19.99.

Free alternatives exist if you are comfortable in a terminal: exiftool (tested commands here), GooglePhotosTakeoutHelper, or immich-go if your backup is an Immich server.

Step 3: Organize it so you can find things

A backup you cannot browse is a backup you never check. Choose a folder layout that still makes sense without any app:

• Year / Month, like 2019/07-July/. The simplest and most durable. Any computer can show it. See organize photos into year and month folders.
• Albums. Takeout gives each album its own folder of copies. You can keep those folders, or, on Windows, have the app sort photos into folders named after your Google Photos albums with the rest in Year/Month.
• Place, like 2019/Paris/, if you think in trips. See photos by location folders.

File names matter too. A name like 2019-07-14-1205_Paris.jpg sorts correctly anywhere, even on a TV or a cheap USB stick that ignores the date inside the file.

Step 4: Copy it to the backup drive

External hard drive or SSD. Use exFAT to move between Windows and Mac, NTFS for Windows only. FAT32 cannot hold files over 4 GB, which breaks long videos. Drag the finished folder across. Step by step: back up Google Photos to an external hard drive.

NAS (Synology, QNAP and others). Copy the finished folder into the NAS's photo share over the network, or run the fix with the NAS share as the destination. Synology Photos and QNAP QuMagie both read the date taken from the photo, which is why it must be inside the file. See Google Photos backup to a NAS.

Your PC. Put the library in your Pictures folder. On its own, a PC is not a backup, it is a second copy. Back the PC up too, or add a drive. See download Google Photos to PC.

Step 5: Verify the backup

A copy you have not checked is a hope. Spend ten minutes on this:

1. Count. Compare the number of photos and videos with the count in Google Photos. Album copies and edited versions make the export a little larger, not smaller.
2. Open samples. Open ten photos from different years on the backup drive, not on the computer.
3. Check the dates. Look at the date taken in File Explorer (Properties, Details) or in Finder (Get Info). How to check photo dates are fixed shows more ways.
4. Check places. Open the folder in a photo app with a map. Photos with a location should land in the right place.
5. Check videos. Play two or three, including an old one.

Step 6: Keep it current

Takeout always exports the whole library, not just what is new. The simplest routine:

1. Every three or six months, request a new Takeout export.
2. Fix it into the same destination folder as before. The app skips photos that are already in the destination, so only the new ones are added.
3. Delete the zip files once the new photos are checked.

Takeout's Export every 2 months for 1 year option automates the request, but each export is still a full copy. Keep your Google Photos backup up to date covers the routine in detail.

Follow the 3-2-1 rule

For photos you cannot replace, keep three copies, on two kinds of storage, with one somewhere else. In practice: Google Photos, an external drive at home, and a second drive at a relative's house or a NAS that syncs to another place. A single drive can fail, get lost or be in the same house fire.

Frequently asked questions

Can I back up Google Photos automatically to a drive?

Not the whole library, since Google's 2025 API change. Takeout can repeat itself every two months for a year, but you still download and copy each export.

Is Google Takeout a backup?

It is the way to make one. The zip files are a copy, but without fixing the dates and opening the result, you do not yet know that it is a usable one.

Does backing up delete my photos from Google Photos?

No. Takeout only copies. Nothing changes in your Google account.

How much space does a backup need?

About the size Google Photos shows on your storage page, plus the album copies. Plan for twice that during the work.