Using a 3Tb My Passport Ultra as an ext. drive, ie not for back-up

[HENRYF]

I want to use my drive as simply an external drive on which to to store my many picture files, so that I can then remove them from my C drive, which is a SSD. I don’t need to use this drive as a back-up since I run a home server which does the backing up automatically.

Once I have achieved this, I would then want to back up the external drive to the cloud.

Guidance on how to do this would be appreciated. Cheers.

[mike27oct]

You can simply leave drive connected to PC and copy the contents of it to your server like you would copy anything. It should be fastest doing it this way, too. Many people copy contents of external drives this way; me included.

[HENRYF]

Mike, thanks for your quick response.
What I want to achieve is to be able to upload picture files from my camera’s SD card straight to the external drive so that I’m not using up space on Drive C. I think I’ve found out how to do what I want to do.
I have created a new folder in My Passport, which I have named Pictures, and I’m currently transferring all of the existing picture files to that external folder. When uploading new picture files from the SD card, I’ll nominate an appropriate destination on My Passport. Once I’ve verified that all of the picture files have transferred, then I’ll delete them from the C drive, and free up much needed space. I’ve also disabled the Backup facility since I don’t need My Passport to do that for me,
I still have to figure out how to automatically back up this new folder on My Passport to the cloud, but I’m working on that.
As you suggest, I’ll manually transfer the files from My Passport to my home server. Cheers.

[mike27oct]

Is your home server one of the WD My Cloud NAS servers? If so, the WD My Cloud app can backup photos on iPhone and iPad to the My Cloud, automagically! Photos/videos not from these devices; I just copy to the My Cloud server from PC.