Uploading 26GB of photos (~15k) to iPad without iTunes

I use Photo Transfer App, but I haven't tested the folders part of the process. The writeup says the photos all go into the Saved Photos folder.

Glad it's going OK for you but the discrepancy in memory usage is confusing to me.

Hey, last year, there was a reported issue with the original iPad that the device could only support 16 GIG of photos. Maybe that was the problem before you reduced the sizes, if the problem still exists.

During the discussions last year, a suggested workaround was to use the iPad standard photo app to manage up to 16 Gig of their more 'static' photo's, like family albums, etc, then use a 3rd party app to manage the photo's in excess of 16 gig, but I haven't seen any feedback if this workaround helped anyone.

Anyway, glad you are up and running.

Last year there were a lot of postings that turned out to be corrupt image files that worked on iPhoto and other programs, but caused syncing issues.

The solution then was to break the syncing into smaller groups and add photos a group at a time to the sync stack as a way to isolate the bad files. Not sure that you have any bad files, but to test, we can try this:

Start with about 20 photos in your sync folder, just to prove sync is working.

Then add about 10% of your photos at a time until sync fails, making sure you keep track of what files were added when the sync failed. Then isolate any bad files by trial and error.

This will be quite tedious but I don't know a faster method of isolating any bad files.

Also, remembering some of the posts from last year, you could sync 50% at a time, but with as many files as you have, you could have a few bad files in each group.

Well, after a lot of work, you have narrowed it down further. Don't lose track of the last group that made it fail.

You can do a few things:

Remove all the others and try to isolate that last group down to the bad file(s).

Maybe make them into one folder, but I don't think it the folder structure. (I could be wrong on that)

Below is the exact process i use to manage mine:

For windows pc's Photo albums:

1) Create a master sync folder on your pc with no photo files at the root level of the folder.

2) Create sub-folders within the master sync folder with the subfolders named what you want the ipad's photo albums to be named.

3) Place the photo files you want to sync in the appropriate subfolder within the master sync folder.

4) In itunes on the photos tab, select the master folder as the sync folder.

5) After syncing, each subfolder will be an album on the ipad with the proper photos contained there-in.

Since you are working with so many files, it takes forever to test all this and I applaud your patience.

Hope this helps, and please let me k ow what you try and what you find out.

FWIW I'm having similar problems syncing to my new iPad 2 - about 10,000 pictures.

The crazy thing is that iTunes can put them all onto my iPhone 4 with no trouble at all.

Funny ole' world, innit?

Nick

@msinanian,

It is not only with photos I find, I also have problems transferring anything large like a 1Gb file through an FTP connection. Like yourself, I had pretty much given up with iTunes syncing and giving me errors for any large collection of files, so I sync photos, videos and music via a HTTP and FTP solution.

You don't really need a cloud solution though, because there is a solution in a form of a $99 wireless server called Air Stash which takes a SD card and then serve it on a WIFI network. My solution is like Air Stash, but I use an Android tablet running various kinds of HTTP, FTP and WebDAV serving apps with great success. SInce my Android tablet has a USB port, it can take a card reader so I can show photos taken. I even have a cheap toyish digital projection called EyeClops Mini Projector (about $40 from Amazon) hooked up to an iPad via the RCA video connector. Slideshow on the cruise ship no problem! I only sync with iTunes for firmware upgrade, so it goes to show that it can be done. Still, my current problem with wireless syncing is with large files (like 1Gb or larger) and then sometimes iOS would simply just stop transferring with an error for no reason at all. Which means, it is not only an iTunes problem, but an iOS one as well as I tried 3 apps for iPad and all the same result. Most of the time though, it works like a charm.

I had problems transferring large mpeg files via wifi using FTP client and ifiles web based uploader on an IPAD2.

Any file bigger than about 1.5gb gets corrupted. The file transferred looks truncated and it cannot be reproduced on any movie player. Transferring the same files by iTunes via USB cable seems to be the only way to overcome the problem.

I've also been having problems with my iPad and photos on NAS. My external HDD on my Windows PC (yes, I know! Legacy stuff) was starting to get flakey so I purchased a NetGear Duo NAS system with 2 x 2TB hi-speed disks mirrored, and moved all my photos, music, videos, etc., to this (leaving lots of room for expansion).

Everything sync'd fine to my Apple TV (1st gen). I then connected my iPad to update it. While the music and movies sync'd OK, the photo sync kept hanging and eventually failing with a pretty unhelpful message about the sync failing. I have about 11K photos. I tried reloading iTunes (seems to be a common fix-all), rebooting the PC, NAS, etc. Nothing made a difference.

Eventually copied the photo library back to the still-flakey external HDD and it syncs fine. I can only assume from this that there is something in the iPad sync that is more sensitive to drive speed than for the Apple TV (you'll never get the same response from a NAS that you get from a directly connected HDD).

Would be nice to see an update from Apple that acknowledges the growing use of NAS for storage and takes account of the slower response times this means.

Of course, if anyone has any other ideas about how to successfully use the NAS, that would be great.

I've had pretty good luck with large numbers of photos by bypassing the built-in Photo App altogether. The two photo management Apps that work well are SortShots and Photo Manager Pro. They work differently from each other, but both have import functions. And most importantly for me, both allow you to retain or create filenames for the photos that can be used as captions, etc., somethnig that the built in App doesn't offer. SortShots also allows you to tag the photos with keywords and sort on those. Very powerful.

I found this interesting since I am trying to sync 55K photos - 25GB+ into my new iPad 2 iOS5 - but through iTunes it stops at 38K+. I had exactly same problem with an iPod Touch when I upgraded to iOS5 and lost all my photos so after many resets, restores, reinstall iTunes, etc., I visited the Genius Bar twice but upon the third visit they gave me a new iPod Touch with iOS4.3.5 and said you will not have a problem now - and I didn't. Sync'd no problem.

So my question is which of the two Apps - SortShots or Photo Manager Pro will allow me to 'upload' all my photo folders ( about 500+) with no alteration?

Seems to me the problem is iOS5 so I wonder if Apple will fix that eventually.

Thanks

I'm having the exact same issue with my Netgear Duo NAS (except I'm using two 1TB drives). Keeps hanging up with importing photos. It works maybe 1 in 10 tries (with repeated restoring of iPad mixed in). It must be related to file transfer speed.

I also had issues purchasing songs from iTunes. Saving directly to the NAS was too slow so I would always get errors. Ended up having to purchase songs directly to my local drive and then transferring to the NAS later (which is a pain because then you need to tell iTunes where you moved the music everytime).

The latest firmware updates for the Duo NAS includes iTunes server support... I haven't played with that yet... but I can't see how that would help with photo sync.

If anyone has a good solution for using their NAS, please let me know!

Thanks.