My girlfriend has an iPhone 6 and an iPad. She has hundreds of pictures and some videos that she would like to store on something besides the phone and tablet themselves, but she has no computer. Can she store them on a USB Flash Drive? Can the flash drive plug into the tablet? Or would she need to get access to a computer and plug both the phone and the flash drive into the computer and transfer that way?
Any info on ways to do this and what are the costs?
Thanks!
In order to interface directly with the iPad/iPhone, she’s going to need a PC or Mac. The iTunes software for the computer can be downloaded for free, and the charging cable that came with the iPad/iPhone is what she will use to connect with the computer. The iTunes software is what will enable her to transfer photos from the iPad/iPhone to the computer (and from there to a flash drive, DVD, etc.).
I think the newest iDevices can also connect wirelessly to your computer through your WiFi router.
Alternatively, she could get an account with a photo hosting service such as SmugMug, which is what I use. Once you have an account subscription with them, you download the app to your device and use it to upload photos from your device to the photo-hosting account.
Supposedly there are USB Flash drives that have a Lightning connector that will plug into an iPhone. I’ve never used them so I can’t comment on how well they work. You can search Amazon for “lightning usb flash drive” to see some.
You could also use a Lightning-to-USB cable combined with an OTG cable to connect a regular Flash drive, but that would work only if iOS supports OTG. I don’t know if Apple supports OTG but given their history of hostility to standards, I would suspect that they don’t.
–Mark
I just plugged my iPhone into the computer as if to connect to iTunes but clicked on “My Computer” and looked for the external drive. I can’t remember the exact name of the folder but I think it was called DMC-something. In that folder there are bunch of weirdly-named folders, those are the picture folders. The pics are all mixed up but you can copy/paste them to your PC.
You can get free storage from the aforementioned SmugMug and also:
Amazon (with a Prime account), Apple (iCloud), DropBox, Facebook (Memories), Google (Drive), Microsoft (OneDrive)
There are actually many more cloud storage options but those are the “big names” that I would most trust with my data, to not get my password hacked, and to not close up shop in the middle of the night.
None of those require a computer. You might not be able to get all of your backing up done on one free account but there is nothing stopping you from using all of them at once! 
I believe that Apple gives you five gigabytes of iCloud storage for free. Given that she can easily configure the iPhone and iPad to backup to her iCloud account, that’s the option I’d pick.
Thanks for the info everyone. I think I got all that I need, just need to get a flash drive. I tried connecting my smartphone to my work PC and was able to bring up all my own pictures onto my PC. So now I know I just need her phone and a flash drive and I can transfer it all to the drive.
Thanks again.
Is your smartphone an iphone? Because iPhones are rather more difficult to transfer files from. They don’t really do drag and drop, or at least mine didn’t a couple of years ago.
That’s not true. I have an iPhone and when I have pictures on it I want to keep, I just connect it to the cable plugged into my computer’s USB port and then browse to it using Windows Explorer. It’s very easy to move the photos off the phone and into the computer.
My phone is an Andriod, but the one in question is an iPhone 6.
So if I plug the iPhone 6 into the PC, do I have to save the pictures onto the PC before I transfer to a flash drive, or can I just transfer straight to the flash drive thru the PC.
You should be able to do a direct transfer, but I like to keep my photos in multiple places, so if possible, also leave them on the PC.
Well, considering its my work computer, I don’t know if I should save all of those on it. It’s alot of pictures.
Just an update and another question.
My girlfriend got the USB flash drive and we brought all the stuff to my work computer, got all the photos saved on computer. Now we have another problem. Seems my work computer restricts the use of USB flash drives. You can plug it in and the PC will show it in the My Computer section. But when you try to click on the E:/ drive where it’s showing, it gives you an Error message saying access denied.
I’m assuming this is because it is a company computer and so we are restricted from what we can do. Don’t suppose there is any workaround for this, is there? Or am I just going to have to try using a friends personal computer?
Any suggestions??
I think the iCloud suggestion was the best one. Just let the devices sync to the cloud as intended. Everything else is going to be more difficult or require futzing around since that’s not the One True Path.
Well, she has a good majority of the photos saved on the cloud, but she would like to have them saved on a portable system as well - hence the flash drive. How reliable is the cloud? Any chance of losing whats all there already?
I’d say that is possible but less likely than the possibility that she loses the flash drive or it fails to be readable.
I have the photos from my computer backed up multiple places (an onlike backup service, multiple external drives, including one stored at the office, etc.)
Hmmm, so, ok, if she goes online to the The Cloud and she can see all the pictures she has saved on the cloud, would it be safe for her to go ahead and delete them from her phone?
Interestingly enough, I have been looking for a flash drive specific to the iPhone 6 with a lightning connector and USB, which advertises that it can also be used for remote photo and video transfer. In my case, I have the 16GB phone, which, once you fill it with music, podcasts, and basic apps, leaves no room for much of anything else. And I just took a very long trip to Scotland and Norway wishing I had some better entertainment options on the plane…if only there was a flash drive that could be used to hold movies, additional podcasts, and be used to offload pictures…and a search of Amazon indicated their was. I bought the 64GB one they had for $50 and it should be here in a few days…
That I’m not sure about. You need to make sure the cloud service you use isn’t just syncing to the iPhone. If it is, the photos will be deleted from the cloud service shortly after she deletes them from the phone.
I’ve never heard of such a thing. Can you provide a link?