Why SO many random DCIM Folders? I want ONE!

tab1075 wrote:

I wonder what determines how many DCIM folders we end up with after updating to iOS 9, because ARPU99 said they went from 39 folders to 22. Even 22 seems high because I went from over 40 down to 4. And I see where you went from 77 to 4 as well. I wonder why ARPU99 ended up with a different result?

Thanks tab1075. I wondered the same thing. My first guess would be that it only consolidates when it knows it won't be conflating folders with the same (or crossing) image numbers. Can someone verify their image number ranges in the old and new folders?

P.S.- I absolutely agree with you on the bullying culture that seems all too prevalent on multiple threads. In fairness, I think it's a very small percentage of the higher level contributors, but the good ones rarely seem willing to stand up to the bad ones. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

mdrolle,

Thanks for taking the time to do the test. I'm glad you brought this up....

Re: You cannot copy back to the iPhone so far as I've found. I have to do that with iTunes (which I don't like, but deal with)

Here's the major problem I am trying to solve. I have pictures on my iPhone that I want to keep there. I also have some pictures that I have already moved off of my iPhone and store on my PC. Now I want to move those pictures back to the iPhone. Is it possible to move them back to the iPhone without first moving all of the new pictures to the same folder on the PC? Everything I have read and when I talked to Apple Support, they have said by doing a Sync, I would lose all of the pictures on the iPhone because they would be replaced by the pictures that are in the folder that I Sync.

How do you do it?

Thanks!

tab1075,

Well said. Thank you for understanding. You nailed it on why I didn't want to do the test myself. If I had an extra iPhone lying around, I would have done the test. My bet is that some on this thread have extras and even use them for testing. I only started reading this thread a few days ago. When I noticed the DCIM change, I posted the info about the change in folder names because I knew it would be of great interest. I will take a look at my 22 folders to try to figure out why some only have a couple of pictures and others have hundreds. Thanks again.

gail from maine,

Thanks for the response. I was afraid that was the only way to do it. When the photos sync back to the iPhone, are they kept in the original order by date taken in the Photos App on the iPhone?

You're most welcome!

Pretty easy thing for me to do because I seldom leave things on the iPhone that I have to manage there. I usually move them to the PC for editing, saving, and such. Actually doubly easy because I have several iPhone 5's I stocked up on cheaply since I'm not into the new form factor.

I'm not positive that I understand your question, but here is my experience.

I move pics off the phone, leaving some that I haven't decided what to do with yet (or for whatever reason), which leaves the DCIM folder, and so far, leaves the "100Apple" folder below that with its pictures. I assume this will increment to 101Apple at some point.

Then say I have pics that I want to move from the pc to the phone for one reason or another. I add them to my pics sync folder (which for me is in a completely different location that iTunes likes it to be in so I won't add paths here), and sync the phone. Have to mention, I do not leave pics in that sync folder that I don't want on the phone, so it is "active management" on my part.

When I go to view the pics on the phone I now see 4 folders, Selfies, Videos, Screenshots, Recently Deleted, and Pics (which is the name of the sync folder in windows). In this last folder (Pics) are all the images I have synced from the pc. I can't edit them or delete them from the phone. The only way I am able to manage these images is via windows and the sync folder. Also need to add that my sync folder is essentially a "throw away" folder used only as a workaround for the inability to bi-directionally manage things. Actually, I never leave anything to apple/iPhone. Even my music is in a redundant/throw away folder. This is in order to be CERTAIN I ALWAYS have my files and that no other software is in a management position for them.

Hope this helps in some way.

Mike

Awesome. Thank you. EVERYONE, USE THIS METHOD BY MONTYPYTHON911, WITH THE ADDITIONAL INFO BY ME BELOW (INSTRUCTION 5-8):

In Windows Explorer:

1) Open up the DCIM folder, so that all the subfolders with the funny names are showing.

2) In the search box in the top right of the screen, type in * and hit enter.

3) All the pictures on the phone will be listed below the folders. '

4) Search for the pics you want to copy (sort by date).

5) On one of the pictures you want to copy, right click, and click on properties.

6) The properties line will show you which subfolder the most recent photos are in.

7) Then open the subfolder, and copy from that subfolder.

NOTE, YOU CAN'T COPY AFTER INSTRUCTION 3 ABOVE. YOU NEED TO OPEN THE ACTUAL SUBFOLDER TO COPY THE PICS.

Memargolis, have you updated to iOS 9 yet? Our discussion has been knocked back a few pages, people might have missed it. iOS 9 has most definitely improved the issue. Within the main DCIM folder, the sub-folders are now divided into fewer folders that no longer have randomized names. They start with "100APPLE, 101APPLE, 102APPLE..." and so on. And the photos are now ordered chronologically, so your most recent photos will be in the last folder.

I was very happy when I see that the folders were now with a new organization.

Now I notice that the new photos weren't been added to the last folder. In my experience, new photos were included at the folder 101APPLE and I have folders until 105APPLE. So, the chronological organization worked only for the photos that were at the Iphone when it made the migration.

So, we have less and more organized folders, but we don't have the new photos organized to make easier to do new back-up!

I have switched from an iPhone 6 to a 6s with iOS 9.1. And now I have the same problem. 228 DCIM folders.. I have reported this via a feedback to Apple. So my guess is, that this bug is still present, since I have the latest iOS version. I there any known setting or any workaround that can help with this? In most of my folders, there is only 1 photo! Huge issue, and definitely not a feature 😟

It's strange that you're still seeing this old problem even with the most recent version of iOS. When iOS 9 was released, it completely reorganized the way we viewed DCIM folders using Windows Explorer. It took care of just about every issue brought up in this thread. That's why hardly anyone has posted in so long.

The old workaround might still help you. Open your iPhone in Windows Explorer until you reach all of the folders containing your photos. In the upper right corner of the Explorer window, in the Search bar, type an asterisk ( * ). This should give you a view with all your folders on top and the photos inside them below.

By using Windows Explorer to transfer photos from the iPhone to your computer, just be aware that if you have used the built in photo editor on your iPhone, Windows Explorer will not transfer the edited copy of the photo, only the original. This is because Explorer doesn't transfer the edit data that goes along with each photo you've edited. To transfer these photos, you'll need to use the photo import tool, as described in the last post. Or a third party photo transfer tool.

You're seeing only one photo in some of those folders because, with the way it handled it before iOS 9, it organized photos according to the month they were taken. If you only take one photo in a particular month, it created a folder for that month.

Windows Explorer is not the "wrong tool," as a few have come to this thread to state over & over again. Apple proved that by completely revamping the way Windows Explorer handles photos on our iPhones. I'm just not sure why yours hasn't updated with iOS 9 like the rest of ours has.

This has been an interesting journey through the minds of some helpful and some troubled individuals. The latest post says this issue has been resolved with the latest IOS update. I must beg to differ, at least in my case. I did have my number of "apple" folders decrease, however I still have 282 folders. As has been beaten to a dead horse, some with only one image. I found the "work around" of *.* helpful, however I now want to pull my 1100 images off of my phone and reinstall them into one folder. Is this possible?

Maybe. I wouldn't however. iOS has it's own filesystem and uses a database to manage where all the photos are.

Although it seems illogical, there is a system in use. The iOS files are not meant to be accessed directly. If you mess with them , this may cause your Photos database to be come unstable.

Thank you. I was afraid of that. If I didn't need the pictures on the phone for my business, I would delete and start over.

Thank you for the polite reply, it seems so many people in here want to get into heated name calling debates.... we are getting enough of that in the political arena.

It is amazing to me that after 22 pages no one has seemed to be able to answer the question posed in the original post.

I have two iOS devices one running 8.1 and the other 8.3. Both devices have 3000+ photos on them. on the iOS 8.1 device, when I plug it into my PC and navigate down into the DCIM folder, there is only one folder there and all 3000+ photos are in there.

As the original poster mentioned it is just a pain in the butt to find a particular photo you are looking for in Windows. Yes the * search recommendation workaround is helpful but should not be needed. I don't need to do that on my iOS 8.1 device. I just navigate to the DCIM folder and I only have to search in one folder, by date to find any photo I want.

On the iOS 8.3 device, I navigate to the same location with the DCIM folder in Wiindows 7 and I see 54 folders. At one point in time, there was only 1 folder. I believe someone made the comment that some app caused the iOS device to partition the photos into multiple folders but no one has said which app is the culprit. I also beleive that to be the reason why my DCIM folders have different file structures on both devices.

On the iOS 8.1 device, the only photo/camera app is the default ones. On the iOS8.3 device there are multiple camera-style apps. If I could figure out which app caused the multiple folders to occur, I would gladly delete it in the hopes that the single photo folder would return.

The fact that for many of us there are multiple photo folders in DCIM in Windows is not a foregone conclusion, because I have that situation on my iOS 8.1 device, and it WAS that way on my iOS 8.3 device until something changed. I just don't know what it was.

David

No problem. There is always a group who dislike Apple for the level of "control" they exert over things like this.

Sadly some want the openness of a Linux-y OS with the look and feel of Apple. Pick a battle I say. If Apple wants to store my photos in 1000 different folders, go ahead. As long as I can simply access them, I could care less. That I don't need to futz around in a file manager is OK by me.