Taking stock: where your photos are and how much space they use
Before you move or delete anything: a list of every place your photos are, about how many each holds, how much space they use, the date you last signed in to each account, and which places hold the only copy.
- Start here: the essentials
- Why the list comes first
- Where photos hide
- Counting photos and measuring space
- Rules that can delete photos from an unused account
- Inventories in depth: archivists, a relative's collection and one study
- See it: Nadia and Ruth
- Practice: make the inventory
- Your photos
- Check your work
- Knowledge check and scenario
Start here Essentials
For a first pass, this chapter asks you to write down every place your photos might be, about how many each holds and how much space they use, the date you last signed in to each photo account, and which places hold the only copy of something. Nothing is moved or deleted here.
- List every phone, computer, drive and account that might hold photos. Include old phones in drawers, memory cards, chat apps and social accounts (where photos hide).
- Write about how many photos and how much space for each place. Round numbers are fine; each device's own settings show both (counting and measuring).
- Sign in to each photo account, open its photos, and write today's date. A service can delete photos from an account nobody uses (rules that can delete photos).
- Mark each place that holds the only copy of something. Those places get copied before anything else changes (why the list comes first).
Minimum time: about an hour for one phone and one or two accounts; longer if an old device needs charging. Done when: the inventory lists every place with a count, and the accounts sheet has a sign-in date for each account.
Why the list comes first Understand
An inventory is a written list of every place that holds your photos, with what each place holds. It is the step that comes before moving, sorting or deleting anything, because you cannot protect photos you have forgotten about, and you cannot tell whether a copy is complete without knowing what the original held.
Three preservation bodies put this step at the start. The Library of Congress's guide to keeping personal digital photos opens with identifying where your photos are, and it says to include the photos you have put on the web (Library of Congress, Keeping Personal Digital Photographs). The Digital Preservation Coalition's report on personal digital archiving lists, as its first basic step, working out what your archive contains and what matters most (DPC Technology Watch Report 15-01). The National Digital Stewardship Alliance's levels of preservation put an inventory of the content, and of where it is stored, at their lowest level, and add that the inventory itself should be backed up separately (NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation, version 2.1). NDSA writes for institutions, but the idea carries over to a household: a list you keep apart from the photos.
What goes wrong without one
One study asked 18 parents in the UK to find photos of family events more than a year old. They failed in 39 percent of the attempts, and most of the photos they could not find were ones they believed were on their computer or on CDs. The authors name several storage systems and false confidence about access among the reasons (Whittaker, Bergman and Clough, 2010). The sample was small and the study came before smartphones and cloud libraries, so read it as a warning about scattered storage, not as a measure of your own chances. Its design is under Go deeper.
The inventory fixes two problems the study points to. It replaces "I think they are on the old laptop" with a line you can check, and it shows which photos exist in only one place.
What the inventory records
| Column | What you write | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Place | The phone, computer, drive, card, disc, cloud account, chat app or social account | A place not on the list gets left behind when you gather photos into one library |
| Whose | Yours, a partner's, a parent's | Someone else's device or account is theirs to open (see the Limits box below) |
| About how many | A round number of photos and videos | The count you compare against when you copy (Getting photos out) |
| Space | Gigabytes used | Tells you how big a drive or plan the library needs (space calculator) |
| Only copy? | A check if nothing else holds these photos | These places are the most at risk and get copied first |
| Last signed in (accounts only) | The date you last signed in and opened the photos | Some services delete photos from accounts nobody uses (below) |
The inventory sheet has two parts: places that hold photos, one row per place, and accounts, one row per photo account. Both stay in this browser unless you export them. Do not write passwords or sign-in codes on either part; write the account's email address or name so you know which account a row means. This manual's rule
An only copy is a place where some of your photos exist and nowhere else does. A phone with no cloud backup is usually one. So is an old phone that backed up to a service at reduced quality, because the full-size photo is still only on the phone. When you are not sure, mark it: a place marked by mistake costs you an extra copy, and a place missed can cost the photos.
Where photos hide
Most people know about the photos on the phone in their hand. The ones that get lost are elsewhere. Go through this table and add a row to the inventory for each place that applies, even if you think it holds nothing new.
| Place | What to look for | Why it is easy to miss |
|---|---|---|
| The phone's camera roll | The photos the phone's camera took, in Photos (iPhone) or the gallery or Google Photos app (Android) | It feels like the whole collection, and a phone app can show photos that are not backed up |
| Cloud libraries | iCloud Photos, Google Photos, OneDrive, Amazon Photos, Dropbox | A phone may back up to more than one, or to an account made years ago |
| Hidden and locked folders | Google Photos' Locked Folder; Apple's Hidden album | Their contents may not be backed up or may not transfer |
| Messages | Photos sent and received in Apple Messages | A setting can remove old conversations, attachments included |
| WhatsApp and other chat apps | Photos people sent you in chats and groups | The copy you see can depend on a copy saved on the phone |
| Facebook and Instagram | Photos you posted, sometimes years ago | Posting feels like keeping, and the phone's copy may be gone |
| Old phones, computers, cards and discs | Phones in drawers, a laptop or desktop in a closet, camera memory cards, CDs and DVDs | They are out of sight and may need a charger, cable or reader |
| Other people's devices | A partner's phone, a sister's chat uploads, a parent's computer | They hold your family's photos but are not yours to sort |
| A second account | An old Gmail address, a Microsoft account made for a phone's gallery | Nobody signs in to it, which is how photos in it get deleted |
A photo in an app is not proof of a backup
Google's help page on backup says the Google Photos app shows the photos stored on your device, and that seeing them there does not mean they are backed up (Google, Back up photos & videos). The same page says an item's details show whether it is backed up. So for each cloud library, write what the service says it holds, not what the phone shows. Product-specific
Locked and hidden folders
Google Photos' Locked Folder keeps items behind the phone's screen lock. Its backup is a separate setting. Google says items in it that are not backed up are stored only on that device, are lost if the device is lost, reset or the app's data is cleared, and are not moved when you transfer to a new device (Google, Locked Folder). On an iPhone, Apple's iOS 27 guide says items in a locked Hidden album won't be transferred when you export to a drive (Apple, Import and export photos on iPhone). If you use either, write it as its own row and mark it as a possible only copy. Getting photos out says how to unlock the Hidden album before a transfer.
Messages and WhatsApp
In Apple Messages, a setting called Keep Messages decides how long conversations stay. Apple's iOS 27 guide says that if it is set to anything other than Forever, conversations are removed automatically, attachments included; the path is Settings > Apps > Messages > Keep Messages (Apple, Delete messages and attachments on iPhone). Check the setting, and treat photos that only live in a conversation as only copies until you save them. Product-specific
WhatsApp's help center says a photo can look blurry when WhatsApp can no longer find it on your device, usually because the saved copy was deleted, and it points to the Media auto-download setting for saving photos to the phone. A family group can hold hundreds of photos that exist on your side only inside the chat. Count them as their own row, and note who sent them: the sender's phone may hold a better copy (Getting photos out explains why chat copies are smaller).
Facebook, Instagram and OneDrive
Facebook and Instagram each let you export a copy of what you posted, photos included; Getting photos out covers the export and its limits. For the inventory, write the account and about how many photos you posted. OneDrive's camera backup is one-way: Microsoft says it uploads photos and does not sync them both ways, so deleting from the phone leaves the OneDrive copies (Microsoft, Automatically save photos with OneDrive). That makes OneDrive a place where photos you deleted from the phone years ago may still be.
A second account you forgot
Microsoft's page on frozen OneDrive accounts gives the example of a second Microsoft account made for a phone's gallery app and then forgotten; that account can be the one that freezes (Microsoft, frozen OneDrive accounts). The same happens with an old Gmail address an Android phone backed up to. If an old phone backed up anywhere, write the account it used, even if you have not opened it in years.
Counting photos and measuring space
For each place, write two numbers: about how many photos and videos it holds, and how much space they take. A gigabyte (GB) is the unit storage is sold in; a terabyte (TB) is 1,000 GB. Round numbers are enough here. The exact counts matter later, when you copy a place and compare what arrived (check the counts).
Where each device shows the numbers
| Device or service | How many | How much space |
|---|---|---|
| iPhone | Settings > General > About lists the number of photos and of videos (Apple's iOS 27 guide) | Settings > General > iPhone Storage lists each app's space, Photos included (Apple, check the storage on your iPhone) |
| iCloud | As on the iPhone, when iCloud Photos is on | Settings > [your name] > iCloud, then Storage or Manage Account Storage (Apple, Manage your iCloud storage) |
| Android phone | Not stated on Google's storage page; check your own phone's gallery or Google Photos app | Settings > Storage, then a category; Google says settings vary by phone (Google, Free up storage on your Android device) |
| Google account | Not stated by Google | In the Google Photos app, Manage storage, then Usage details, shows the space used by each service (Google, Photos activity and storage) |
| Mac with Photos | In Photos, Library, then All Photos; scroll to the bottom of the window for the number of photos and videos (Apple, Check the status of your library) | Apple menu > System Settings > General > Storage, then All Volumes, in macOS 27 (Apple, See used and available storage) |
| Windows PC | Not stated on Microsoft's storage page; check your own computer's Pictures folder | Settings > System > Storage; under Advanced storage settings, Storage used on other drives breaks a drive down by file type, pictures and videos included, in Windows 11 and 10 (Microsoft, Storage settings in Windows) |
| Amazon Photos | Not stated by Amazon | In the app, Profile, then Storage, broken down by photos and videos (Amazon, How much storage do I have) |
Menus move between versions. If a path above does not match your screen, search your device's settings for "storage", and write down where you found it so the yearly check is quicker. Check your own device
Count like with like
Apps count differently, so a count is only useful beside a count of the same kind. Apple's Image Capture guide says a Live Photo downloads as two files, a still image and a video (Apple, Image Capture User Guide). A phone may show 1,000 items where a folder of the same photos on a drive shows more than 1,000 files. Write where each count came from ("About screen", "Photos app", "folder on drive") so you compare the same kind of count later.
The free amounts
Each service gives a free amount and sells more. These figures are the makers' own, read on 2026-10-30; plans and prices change, and the services table keeps them with their dates. Product-specific
| Service | Free amount | What shares it | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| iCloud | 5 GB | Everything in iCloud, device backups included | Apple, iCloud+ plans |
| 15 GB | Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos together | Google One, How your storage works | |
| OneDrive | 5 GB | Files and photos in OneDrive | Microsoft, storage quotas |
| Amazon Photos | 5 GB; Prime members get unlimited full-resolution photos plus 5 GB for video | Photos and videos | Amazon, What is Amazon Photos |
Write the plan or free amount on the accounts sheet beside the space used. A library that is close to its limit is the one most likely to stop backing up, which Google and Microsoft both describe for accounts over their limit. The space calculator takes the size now and the size added in the last year and shows what the library may need in a few years.
Rules that can delete photos from an unused account
Free storage does not mean storage kept forever. Three of the large services publish rules under which photos in an account can be deleted: when nobody uses the account for a long time (an inactive account), or when it holds more than its plan allows for a long time (over quota). Each says it gives notice first, by email, to an address you may no longer read.
| Service | Unused account | Over its limit | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Photos | Photos and videos might be deleted after 2 or more years without using Google Photos; Google emails at least 3 months before; Google One members in good standing are exempt | Content can be deleted after 2 years over quota, with at least 3 months' notice | Google Photos activity; Google storage |
| Google account | A personal account unused for 2 years may be deleted with its data; activity counts per account | (as above) | Inactive Google Account Policy |
| Amazon Photos | No upload, download or sign-in for 2 years: email at 18 months, then all files deleted after 2 years, with notice | After 180 days over quota, files are deleted starting with the most recent uploads, with notice | Amazon, File Retention Policy |
| OneDrive | Frozen if you don't sign in for a long time (no period stated on that page) | Read-only over the limit; frozen after 3 months; after 6 months Microsoft might delete it and its files | Microsoft quotas; frozen accounts |
| Microsoft account | Closed if not signed in at least once in two years | (as above) | Microsoft account activity policy (dated 2020) |
| iCloud | No inactivity rule for iCloud Photos on the Apple pages we read | When iCloud storage is full, Apple says iCloud features might not stay up to date; over the limit, deleted photos skip Recently Deleted | Apple, iCloud vs device storage; Manage iCloud storage |
Two things follow for the inventory. First, the accounts sheet records the date you last signed in to each account, so an old one is visible before its deadline. Second, Google's Photos page describes activity as using the service, not only signing in to the account. It lists examples: using Google Photos while signed in and connected, finding or sharing photos, or making an album. So open the photos when you sign in, not only the account settings. Product-specific
This manual's rule is to sign in to every photo account and open its photos at least once a year, and to write the date on the accounts sheet. That interval is ours, chosen to sit well inside the two-year rules above; no maker sets it. This manual's rule The services table has each rule in full with its source and date, and the routine sheet carries the yearly sign-in.
If an old account warns you that its photos will be deleted, copy them out before anything else. Getting photos out covers Google Takeout, and One home for your photos covers choosing where they go.
The inventory records what you found and counted. It does not prove that a copy is complete or that every file opens: the count check is in Getting photos out, and opening a photo from each copy is the test in Backups. Apps count differently (a Live Photo exports as two files), so compare like with like. Opening someone else's account, including a parent's after a death, goes through the provider's own process; Learn Funeral Planning's After the service covers accounts after a death. This sheet is not a way in, and questions about access or ownership are for the provider or a lawyer. Ask the provider
Inventories in depth: archivists, a relative's collection and one study Go deeper
The inventory as NDSA and the DPC describe it
NDSA's matrix sets four levels across five areas. At its first level for metadata it asks for an inventory of content and its storage locations, backed up separately; at its first level for storage it asks for two complete copies in separate locations and for all storage media to be documented. Its second level for integrity asks for checks whenever content is moved or copied. A household inventory meets the first level's spirit when it names each place, is kept apart from the photos (a printout with your important papers, or an export of the photo file on another device), and is updated when you copy. NDSA gives no interval for any check.
The DPC's report pairs "work out what your archive contains" with "prioritize", and its timescales section asks for a check on storage media at least once a year. That yearly check, and the Library of Congress's own "at least once a year", are where this manual's yearly sign-in sits alongside the drive check in Formats and the long term.
Taking stock of a relative's collection
When a parent's photos come to you, the inventory has the same columns and one more question: whose is each place? A box of prints, a computer, a phone and an online account are four different matters. The prints and a computer you have been given are yours to list and copy. An online account belongs to the person who opened it, and the provider's process decides who may reach it. List the account with "not mine; ask the provider" in its notes and go no further on this sheet. Prints and slides get their own row; Prints, slides and negatives covers counting and handling them.
Write who told you what. "Mom said the 1980s slides are in the attic" is a lead, not a count. A relative's collection often comes with photos you cannot place; the open-questions sheet in captions is where those go.
The retrieval study, its design and its limits
Whittaker and colleagues interviewed 18 parents (7 women, aged 38 to 43, professionals with medium to high computer skills) in their homes and set 71 retrieval tasks for photos of family events more than a year old. Participants found 43 (61 percent). Of the 28 failures, 21 were photos the participants believed were on their computer or CDs. Most participants kept a favorites folder of some kind, yet when they searched, they searched the whole collection. The authors' suggested reasons for failure include storing too many pictures, basic organization, several storage systems, not maintaining collections and false confidence about access.
The limits are large. The sample was small and alike, the tasks were partly suggested by the researchers, the photos came from desktop cameras before phone libraries and cloud search, and the study did not test whether organizing improves finding. It supports one modest claim: people can be wrong about where their photos are. It does not tell you how many of your photos you could find, and no study we found measures how often people look at their photos later.
Each service's rule in full
The table in this chapter shortens each rule. The services table gives each in full, with the trash period, what happens over quota, the inactivity rule, how to get everything out, and the legacy setting, each with its source and date. Two differences are worth knowing. Amazon's two help pages describe an over-quota account differently: one says you can still view, download and share, the other says you cannot upload, sync or share. Microsoft's deceased-user page gives a one-year freezing figure that its quota pages do not. Where makers differ with themselves, the stricter reading is the safer one to plan around.
See it: Nadia and Ruth See it
Nadia Brooks is a fictional person, and every fact about her here is invented for this manual. She is 34, uses an iPhone with 128 GB, and the phone says its storage is almost full. iCloud Photos is on, with a 50 GB iCloud+ plan holding 46 GB; Optimize iPhone Storage is off. She has about 7,800 photos and 260 videos since 2019, about 3,000 of them of her son Theo, who is two. She has no computer, and she has bought a 1 TB USB-C drive.
Her inventory. Going through the where-photos-hide table, she writes five places:
| Place | Whose | About how many | Space | Only copy? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| iPhone (and iCloud Photos, which syncs with it) | Mine | 7,800 photos, 260 videos | 46 GB in iCloud | No: the phone and iCloud hold the same library, but a sync is one library, not two copies |
| Old Android phone, 2016 to 2019, in a drawer | Mine | About 2,100 photos | Open | Yes, for full size (see below) |
| Google Photos, old Gmail address | Mine | About 2,100 (backed up from the old phone) | Open | No, but at reduced quality |
| WhatsApp family group | Posted by her sister Lila | About 400 photos of Theo | Open | On her side, yes; Lila may have her own |
| Mine | About 300 posted photos | Not needed | No, under the assumption below |
Known: the phone, the iCloud plan and its 46 GB, the 7,800 photos and 260 videos, the old phone in the drawer, the Gmail address it backed up to and the backup quality (Storage saver, which compresses photos), Lila's 400 photos in the group, the 300 Facebook photos. Settled here: whether the old Google account still exists. She last signed in in 2021, more than two years ago, so Google's inactivity rule could apply. She signs in: the account exists, and Google had emailed a warning to that address, which she had not been reading. She opens Google Photos while signed in and writes today's date on the accounts sheet.
Her assumptions: that the old phone still holds its own full-size copies of the photos it backed up; that the Facebook photos were posted from her iPhone and are still in her library. Under these assumptions, the old phone is the only full-size copy of 2016 to 2019 and goes on the list to copy first, and Facebook is not an only copy.
Open: how much space the old phone's photos use (Nadia settles it by charging the phone and reading Settings > Storage); whether the phone's own copies are better than Google's (Nadia settles it by copying them, in Getting photos out); whether the 400 WhatsApp photos exist at full size anywhere (Lila is the one who can say whether her own phone still has them).
Ruth Feldman (fictional, she/her) is 72. She has a MacBook with Apple Photos, about 31,000 photos, with iCloud Photos off, and an external drive she backs up to with Time Machine. Her setup answer for cloud accounts was "I don't know".
Known: the MacBook and its count, which she reads at the bottom of All Photos; the Time Machine drive; a Windows tower from 2008 in the closet; three CD-Rs labeled "Photos 2004-2006"; two SD cards from an old camera; a shoebox of about 600 prints; two slide carousels, about 160 slides, taken by her late husband, Arthur. Open: whether any cloud account holds photos (Ruth settles it by checking the email addresses she has used for an Apple, Google or Microsoft account and signing in to each); whether the CDs still read and whether the tower holds photos the MacBook does not (Ruth settles both in Getting photos out). Until then, she marks the tower, the CDs and the SD cards as possible only copies. The prints and slides are only copies by nature.
- Library of Congress, Keeping Personal Digital Photographs: the four-step checklist that starts with finding where your photos are.
- Apple, How to check the storage on your iPhone and iPad: the iPhone Storage screen, with what Photos uses.
- Google, About your Google Photos activity and storage: the two-year rule, the notice, and what counts as activity.
- Microsoft, What does it mean when your OneDrive account is frozen: frozen accounts, including the forgotten second account.
Practice: make the inventory Practice
Minimum: a row on the inventory for every place you can think of, a count and space for the phone you use and each photo account, and a sign-in date for each account. Time: about an hour; add time to charge old devices. Materials: your phone, any old phones, computers, drives and cards you can find, their chargers, the email addresses you have used, and the inventory sheet (or paper).
- Walk the where-photos-hide table. Add one row per place, including "maybe" places. Put old devices on charge as you find them.
- Read the counts and space for each device. Use the paths in the counting table and write where each count came from.
- List every photo account. Include old email addresses an old phone may have used. Write each on the accounts part, with its plan or free amount.
- Sign in to each account and open its photos. Write today's date and the space used. If a warning email or banner says photos will be deleted, write the deadline in the notes.
- Mark the only copies. Ask of each place: if it disappeared tomorrow, would any photo be gone? If yes or not sure, check it.
Fill in the deletion rule for each account. From the services table, copy the rule that applies into the accounts sheet's "rule that can delete" column, and add the date it would apply if nobody signed in. Size the library. Put the total space and the past year's growth into the space calculator and write the result in the notes.
Your photos Your photos
Check your work Check your work
Criteria
- Does the inventory have a row for every phone, computer, drive, card, disc, cloud account, chat app and social account you could find, old ones included?
- Does every row have an approximate count, and say where the count came from?
- Does every account have a sign-in date from the day you actually opened its photos?
- Is every place that may hold the only copy of something marked?
- Is the sheet free of passwords and codes?
Worked example
Nadia's inventory has five rows, each with a count, and the two accounts (Apple and the old Google address) have today's date. The old phone and the WhatsApp group are marked as only copies, the old phone because Google's copies are compressed under her assumption. The old phone's space is blank and labeled "open: charge it and read Settings > Storage". It passes. It does not say that the iCloud library is backed up, because a sync is not a backup, and it does not say what Lila has.
Common mistakes
- Listing only what the phone shows. An app showing a photo is not a backup, and old accounts do not show on a new phone.
- Treating iCloud or Google Photos as a second copy of the phone. They are one library seen on two screens; One home for your photos explains why.
- Signing in without opening the photos. Google counts using Google Photos as activity; open the library.
- Comparing counts from different screens. A Live Photo is one item on the phone and two files on a drive.
- Writing passwords on the sheet. Write the account's email address, not its password.
What is still unresolved
Which place becomes the one library is settled in One home for your photos. Whether each copy is complete is settled by comparing counts in Getting photos out. Whether a copy opens is the test in Backups. Who may open a relative's account is the provider's decision, and legal questions about it are for a lawyer.