Moving Photos to External HDD on MacBook

Question

Moving Photos to External HDD on MacBook

Hello. I have a question. I recently bought a WD My Passport 1 TB Hard Drive. After many tries, I formatted it correctly, but now I have another problem. Every time I import the photos on my phone to the hard drive, they don’t upload in order. Is there any way I can preserve the order they’re in on my phone? Like for example, when I opened the hard drive, the first thing was a video from around a year ago and not the three photos and screenshots I took today. Is there any way I can import all the photos and videos in the same order they are in the photos app on my phone? Just in case you guys need it for some reason, the way I’m importing the photos is I connect my hard drive to my laptop using a usb-c to usb-a adapter for obvious reasons. Then in the other port on my MacBook, I connected my normal iPhone charger (the usb-c to lightning port) into my phone. Then I open image capture on my laptop and I open photos on my phone. I then click the first photo/video that pops up and then scroll all the way to the bottom, hold shift and press the last photo/video so I can select everything. Then I right click, click import 15,113 recents and wait for it to do its thing. As I said before, when it says importing, the numbers aren’t in order. It does the middle part first and then goes to the old pictures then after it finishes it does the most recent. Then I see that it’s importing the most recent pictures which it supposedly already did because that’s what it told me so I get scared and I cancel it. Someone please help

MacBook Pro

Posted on Oct 29, 2022 1:42 PM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,984 points

Oct 29, 2022 3:27 PM in response to MacBoooooooook

Things don't import in a specific order. Many items can be imported at once, and larger items take longer than others. What you need is to decide how you want them to display after they are imported. That depends on the application you are using. You're posting in the iPhoto forum, but don't mention the app, only image capture. So can you tell us what application you are using to display the images?

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Answer 2

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,984 points

Oct 30, 2022 4:31 PM in response to MacBoooooooook

Trying to import 15k items at one go probably overwhelmed your RAM not your storage. I would import in 1k batches myself.

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Answer 3

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,984 points

Oct 30, 2022 12:06 AM in response to MacBoooooooook

Yes, that means you're using the Finder to store and manage your photographs.

That, in turn, means you're limited to the options the Finder has for displaying content. View Menu -> Sort By

Photo applications have additional options, tho they are not all the same. But in Photos, the app free on your Mac, you can create an album and drag things to your preferred sort order.

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Answer 4

Oct 31, 2022 3:29 PM in response to MacBoooooooook

Try to restart in safe mode.

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Answer 5

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,984 points

Oct 30, 2022 12:19 PM in response to MacBoooooooook

Any app that allows you to create albums where you can drag things to the order that you prefer. Or if you, for instance, rename the items you can do this in the Finder, by sorting on name.

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Answer 6

Oct 30, 2022 2:04 PM in response to Yer_Man

Ok I found the way to sorting them correctly so thank you. But I’ve ran into another problem yet again. Today when I tried to import ALL 15,000 photos and videos, it got stuck on the last few 100 and it stayed stuck for about 1 hr and a half and I had to sleep so I just cancelled everything and unplugged it. Can you explain this? I’m gonna try and import all the picture again tomorrow. Also, please don’t tell me it’s because of storage problems because the HDD is 1 TB and my photos are around 85-90 GB.

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Answer 7

Oct 31, 2022 1:24 PM in response to Yer_Man

Ok. Thank you. One day later, I picked up where i left and it looks like it did it all. But something isn't adding up (literally). If i open my photos app right now and click recents, it says I have 12,397 photos and 1,855 videos exactly which adds up to 14,252. However, when I load up image capture and connect everything, it says there are 15,148 photos and videos combined which doesn't make sense.

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Answer 8

Oct 31, 2022 2:11 PM in response to Yer_Man

One more thing, whenever I try making sure all the pictures and videos are imported and I exit Image Capture and I disconnect my phone, I double check and reconnect everything and open Image Capture, then it tells me I still need to import 43 Images/Videos. So I click import 43 images and videos. Then as soon as I do that it finishes apparently. Like there's no bar or anything it just instantly finishes always. Then I double check again by disconnecting and reconnecting everything but yet again, I have to import 43 images/videos and the same thing happens over and over. It just keeps telling me I need 43 images/videos to import and when I click Import, it finishes literally instantly.

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Answer 9

Nov 1, 2022 10:35 AM in response to MacBoooooooook

How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support

"Safe mode prevents your Mac from loading certain software as it starts up, including login items, system extensions not required by macOS, and fonts not installed by macOS. It also does a basic check of your startup disk, similar to using First Aid in Disk Utility. And it deletes some system caches, including font caches and the kernel cache, which are automatically created again as needed.

Safe mode is particularly useful when you're trying to resolve an issue that doesn't seem to be associated with using any particular app. As always, keeping your software up to date is the first step toward resolving any software issue."

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