This is a recount of an experience from several months ago. I had a friend whose iPad screen did not function. We couldn't log in to it, so could not retrieve the photos of his family and his important life events. There are no device back ups anywhere except in iCloud. The iCloud login credentials could not be found. I tried everything I could think of to recover his photos, but it looked hopeless. I thought about replacing the screen, but his device was so old the local Best Buy could not get a screen for it. My friend was gravely ill and his family desperately wanted to recover his photos and videos.
Apple mobile devices with high quality cameras make it easy for us to record important life events, But where we often fail is in “backing up” those precious pictures and memories.
There are several ways to back up your devices—use a computer and iTunes or connect an external flash drive if your device has lightning or USB-C connectors. But for me, the easiest and safest way is to use Apple’s iCloud services. iCloud provides a free 5 GB of storge space, but this is probably not enough space for many. For $.99 per month, you can get 50GB of storage, which may be enough for most people. Here’s how to activate iCloud backup for your Apple devices. These instructions assume you have added a credit card to Settings>Wallet & Apple Pay.
Go to Settings and tap your name at the top of the left pane.
In the right pane, tap iCloud and then Manage Account Storage. Tap Change Storage Plan. Be prepared to enter your Apple ID password if prompted.
Choose a storage plan that suits your needs 50 Gb, 200 GB, 1 TB. In the upper right corner, tap Buy.
Apple will activate your new storage plan and will automatically bill your monthly cost to the credit card you chose from your Wallet.
Tap iCloud in the upper left corner to go back, then tap iCloud Backup. Next, turn on Back Up This iPad/iPhone.
Then below, tap Back Up Now. From this point forward, your device will automatically back up periodically.
Save your iCloud log in credentials using a password manager program. little slips of paper are easily lost.