To transfer photos from Amazon Photos to an external hard drive, you can download them to your computer first and then copy them onto the drive. This process frees up cloud storage and creates a local backup of your memories.
Before you transfer photos from Amazon Photos to an external hard drive
You need a computer with internet access, an external hard drive with enough free space for your photos, and your Amazon account login information. Connect the external hard drive to your computer now using a USB cable. Wait for your computer to recognize the drive before proceeding.
Method 1: Download from the Amazon Photos website (best for small batches)
- Open your web browser and go to the Amazon Photos website. Sign in to your Amazon account.
- Navigate to the photos you want to transfer. You can browse by the "Photos" or "Albums" tabs, or use the search bar.
- Select the photos you wish to download. Click on individual photos, or use the "Select" option to choose multiple photos at once.
- Click the "Download" button. Multiple selected photos and videos will be compressed into a ZIP file and downloaded to your computer.
- Locate the downloaded ZIP file on your computer (usually in the "Downloads" folder). Extract its contents.
- Open the extracted folder, select all the photos, copy them, and paste them into a new folder you have created on your external hard drive.
Note that it is not possible to select and download entire albums directly from the Amazon Photos website; you must open the album and select the pictures within it. This method works best when you only need to transfer a few photos or a single album.
Method 2: Use the Amazon Photos desktop app (best for large libraries)
- Download and install the Amazon Photos desktop application on your computer. It is available for Windows 10/11 and macOS 10.13 or later.
- Open the app and sign in to your Amazon account.
- Click the Settings menu icon (usually a gear symbol), then click "Upload Status," and then click the "Downloads" tab.
- From the Downloads tab, select the folder you want to download. You can choose a specific album or your entire photo library.
- Set the destination folder to your external hard drive. You can create a new folder on the drive directly from the app's destination picker.
- Click the download button to begin the transfer. The Amazon Photos desktop application can detect existing files in a download location and will not download them again, helping to avoid duplicates.
This method is ideal for transferring large libraries because it handles bulk downloads efficiently and automatically skips files you already have on the external hard drive. If you also want to organize Google photos, you can use a similar desktop app approach to download and sort your Google Photos library before moving it to a drive, or you can transfer Google photos to external hard drive directly if you prefer a single-step backup.
Safely eject your external hard drive
Before unplugging the external hard drive, you must safely eject it to prevent data corruption. On Windows, locate the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon on the taskbar, click it, and select your drive. On macOS, drag the external hard drive icon from the desktop or Finder sidebar to the Trash, which changes to an Eject icon. Wait for the operating system to confirm that it is safe to remove the drive, then disconnect the USB cable.
