Importing photos to external hard drive

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Importing photos to external hard drive

I was trying to import photos from my iPhone to an external hard drive. I plugged my phone and hard drive into the Mac and imported my photos using Image Capture. It worked fine until I realized that Image Capture had only recognized 1,000 or so images and videos in total, when on my phone it says there are 4,400 images and videos in my library. I'm not sure why it's excluding the other 3,000 photos and videos. Does it have anything to do with the fact that some of those photos are from iCloud and were not actually taken with my current phone, but rather a shared device? Every so often I'll check back as my phone is still plugged in and I will notice that a few more photos have been uploaded, yet it doesn't show any where that my phone has been uploading this whole time. Is there any way that someone can tell me how to import all of these photos? I apologize for the confusing question, but I hope it made sense.

iPhone XR

Posted on Aug 12, 2021 7:17 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

muguy

Level 10

81,739 points

Aug 12, 2021 7:26 PM in response to Cottoncandy_941

So, you're trying to move all of your photos from your phone to the external drive. And, you currently use iCloud photos? Are you keeping your Mac photo library in sync? Why are you moving the pictures to an external drive (backup, storage,e some other reason)?

Sorry for the questions. It seems to me that the easiest thing to do would be to sync your Mac photos library completely. That will give you an album of one truth. Then back up the library on an external drive. Or, export all of your pictures from photos to the external drive.

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Answer 2

Aug 12, 2021 8:44 PM in response to muguy

Yes, I am trying to transfer all the photos on my phone (which consists of iCloud shared device photos and then the ones taken with said phone.) My Mac photo library is not in sync with iCloud so it’s doesn’t have any photos, but I know that you can import from your phone library to your Mac library. I’m backing up the photos to an external hard drive because they take up too much storage on my iCloud so there isn’t enough room to back up my phone. (It was cheaper to get the hard drive versus paying for 1Tb of storage per month.) I was going to turn off iCloud photo back up once they were on the hard drive.

Don’t worry about the questions, I did make mine kind of confusing, sorry to be such a hassle. I unfortunately already tried using the Mac library, but I couldn’t find a way to export the photos onto the hard drive. Where is that option?

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Answer 3

muguy

Level 10

81,739 points

Aug 12, 2021 8:50 PM in response to Cottoncandy_941

From your library it should be as easy as selecting all photos and then dragging them onto the hard drive. Of course, that only takes the images, not the structure (albums, etc.) It may be easier to try the following:

Upgrade your iCloud storage (if necessary) if only for 1 month.

Sync your Mac photos with the Cloud to download all of your images, from all devices.

Once you verify that your Mac album is in sync, you can turn off iCloud photos.

Then you can either export your images, or (better solution) make a time machine backup of your machine. That way you still have two whole copies of your albums, just in case.

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Importing photos to external hard drive

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