There are two popular methods to get large videos off your iPhone.

The most common problem is having a large video on your iPhone that you need on your computer. Email programs usually limit file sizes to around 20 MB, so if the file is larger, what can you do?

Two popular options come to mind: using QuickTime or using a USB flash drive.

Option #1

Use QuickTime. Macs already include QuickTime in the operating system, but Windows users must install it. Before choosing this as your preferred method, here are a few things to consider:

• You must back up your iPhone through QuickTime before accessing the video
• You need an authorized computer to perform the backup
• Windows users must download and install QuickTime
• QuickTime is an invasive program that many Windows users dislike
• This is not a portable way to move videos off your iPhone
• However, this is a free solution

Option #2

Use a flash drive.

Yes, you need to purchase a specific flash drive, but after this one-time investment it becomes far easier to move videos off your iPhone. Some advantages worth considering:

• Transfer large videos without using a PC
• Share videos immediately with another user’s computer
• Use the drive as external storage for video backups

Point number one is really the value in all of this ?.

While you won’t be able to make the transfer immediately without the hardware, once you have the USB device the process is quick and repeatable.

Certain USB drives include software that works with iOS, allowing files to be copied directly from the phone to the drive. The device tested here is the SanDisk iXpand flash drive with 128 GB capacity, which typically costs around $40.

The process is very straightforward:

• Download the iXpand app from the Apple App Store
• Connect the flash drive to your iPhone
• Select the files you want to transfer

We all know what ransomware is — a type of malware that threatens to publish a victim’s data or permanently block access to it unless a ransom is paid. In most cases, ransomware encrypts the user’s files, and only after payment is made will a decryption key be provided to restore access.

One way to avoid paying a ransom is to restore data from a recent backup. If a company configures its backup software to run nightly, this can be an effective way to recover original files after an attack.

However, there is an even simpler preventative measure: making your PC appear “friendly.” A friendly PC is one that ransomware identifies as a system it should not infect.

To create a friendly PC, use the Windows language settings to install the Russian keyboard layout. When this language option is enabled, most ransomware software will recognize the system as one it should avoid and will not execute the attack.

This language feature is available in Windows 10 and Windows 10 Pro. We do not believe the language option is available in the Windows 10 Home edition.

Learn more about ransomware on Wikipedia.

Seagate offers a 40 TB expansion solution that is truly plug-and-play. At first glance, 40 TB may seem excessive, but when you break it down into real-world usage and modern content demands, it may not be as much as it sounds.

To illustrate the point, consider a family of four — two parents and two young children, ages two and five.

At that age, video recording happens almost daily. If it doesn’t, those parents are missing out on moments that are nearly impossible to recreate later.

Using an iPhone set to record video at 4K resolution and 24 FPS (frames per second), a one-minute video consumes roughly 270 MB of storage. If a parent records a four-minute video once per day for a year, that results in about 360 GB of data — roughly one-third of a terabyte.

Before continuing, it’s worth noting that the Seagate solution includes software that automatically syncs mobile devices with the storage system. Large videos can be difficult to move off an iPhone without a cloud or streaming backup service, and Seagate provides that capability. We also published an article covering manual transfers using a SanDisk USB iXpand device.

Given the age of the kids, a four-minute video is probably short for whatever funny or chaotic moment is unfolding. Rounding up to ten minutes of video per day, per parent, puts daily storage consumption at roughly 5.5 GB.

You could reduce resolution from 4K down to H.264, but who really wants to do that? High-resolution video is useful for editing, and five years from now today’s 4K footage may feel low resolution.

As the kids get older, they’ll start contributing their own videos to the Seagate storage system. The examples could go on, but the takeaway is simple: as technology improves, the amount of storage required to preserve our digital content grows right alongside it.

As a closing thought, consider how difficult and time-consuming it can be to migrate data from one storage device to a newer, larger one. While a 40 TB expansion may feel like a big purchase today, upgrading from a smaller system later often takes longer — and is more painful — than expected.