How do I keep my photos on my phone but turn off photo sync?

Hi, thank you for reaching out. My name is Deeksha and I'm a Microsoft user like yourself and I will try to help you as best as I can today. Check Current Sync Status: Open the OneDrive app on your Samsung phone. Go to the Photos section and ensure all your photos are fully synced. Turn off Camera Upload in OneDrive: In the OneDrive app, tap on 'Me' (profile icon) at the bottom. Go to 'Settings', then 'Camera Upload'. Turn off 'Camera Upload'. This stops new photos from being uploaded to OneDrive. Transfer Photos to Your Device: You may need to download the photos from OneDrive to your device if they're not already stored locally. In the OneDrive app, select the photos you want to download. Tap on 'Download'. The photos should download to a separate folder in your gallery, typically the 'Download' folder. Organise Photos into New Albums: Open the Gallery app on your Samsung phone. Find the downloaded photos, likely in the 'Download' album. Create new albums by tapping on 'More' (three-dot icon), then 'Create album'. Move the downloaded photos to the new albums you created. Preserve Original Date and Time: Avoid editing or copying the photos within the phone as it might change their metadata. If the original date and time are not preserved, you might need to use a third-party app to correct the metadata. Backup Photos to an External Source: Consider transferring your photos to a computer or an external hard drive as a backup. Connect your device to the computer via USB. Drag and drop your photo folders from your phone to the computer. Disable Sync and Keep Local Copies: After backing up, you can safely turn off sync in the OneDrive app. The photos in the newly created albums on your device should remain intact. Regularly Backup Your Photos: Make a habit of regularly backing up your photos to a computer or an external hard drive. This ensures you have a copy of your photos in case of any issues with your phone or cloud services. Try these steps and hopefully, it resolves your issue. In case you need further help or assistance, please let us know. You can also contact Microsoft Support if the problem persists. Best regards Deeksha

Resolved!

TLDR: I put the pictures that i transfered from my pgone to my computer in a zip file and then transfered them back to my phone which kept their original modification (creation) date. 

Let me break it down for the person who will find this thread 6 years from now.  As I was preparing to factory reset my phone, from past experience I learned that when I plug my phone into the computer and move my pictures out and put them back in, they will assume the date and time that I moved them out, rather than keeping the date I snapped the Pic. I copied my photos to my computer as a last resort because even if they are out of chronological order, at least I have them. I decided to back up my photos via OneDrive, as my Samsung cloud suggested. I thought that method would lead to me being able to keep the creation date on the photos. 

Unfortunately that wasn't the case. After spending a whole day messing around with my photos in my free time, my significant other finally found a forum somewhere that suggested putting the photos in a zip file and then transferring them to the device. They said they had a 70% success rate but sometimes there were batches of photos that it didn't work on. 

Side note: If you are preparing to reset your phone, first I would put your photos in a zip file to then transfer those out onto another device, that way you don't have to go through so much trouble doing it after you've already moved them 

So I went to my copied files on my computer and zipped each album, plugged my phone into my computer and transfered those zip files into my gallery folder. I opened MyFiles on my phone and found them under recent documents and I unzipped them all. They all appeared in my gallery with the correct creation date! 

The issue I was having was that I don't want my phone photos backed up to my one drive, let alone backing up every photo I take. I just prefer to not have my photos on one drive. But I couldn't turn off auto sync without it taking away all of my photos. Also I of course wanted to keep my photos original creation dates on there.