Why SO many random DCIM Folders? I want ONE!

I have this same issue. Don't understand why no one has answered this question! It's ridiculous that we have to open every single DCIM folder to find out what is in it. There is no method to what is stored there. There are not full, not in numerical or date sequence. Impossible to sort out photos so you can download older photos to free up space. TJBUSMC1973 does not get it!

Knyght wrote:

Lisa you issue is valid. I have the same one. TJBUSMC1973 has no reason to be a jerk. Great yeah we can copy all the folders to our computer and organize from there. It used to not be that much of a hassle. I just tried to find a picture I took today and it was in its own folder by itself. The folder creation really has no rhyme or reason to it. Last time I plugged in my phone to download a picture I had one folder. What changed and why?

Where, exactly, was I a jerk? Please, show me.

raySaginaw wrote:

I have this same issue. Don't understand why no one has answered this question! It's ridiculous that we have to open every single DCIM folder to find out what is in it. There is no method to what is stored there. There are not full, not in numerical or date sequence. Impossible to sort out photos so you can download older photos to free up space. TJBUSMC1973 does not get it!

I do get it. There's a very simple solution.

1) You import all the photos to your computer.

2) You delete the photos from the iPhone. This frees up plenty of space.

3) Then, if you want specific photos back on your iPhone, use iTunes to sync them.

@TJ

That would work if it wasn't creating ghost files in all of these folders that I am unable to view, much less delete. They are not visie on my phone, but in the files when viewing on my computer. Thank you for your answer, though, as it may help people who haven't already tried that.

@Tminator - the files have no extension - they just say file and can't be opened by any app other than notepad, which just spits out a bunch of ninsensical symbols. Also tried that 😟. My husband is having a ball with this though, because it's the first time he can throw his droid in my face with relative success.

@TJ

I can see them when i'm viewinf from my computer, trying to delete all my files and folders - same as everyone else, I assume. Family obligations taking me on a tour of DC, so hopefully I'll come back to a helpful reply!

THanks!

I'm with Desmadona. All I want to do is plug in my iPhone, grab a few pictures, and be on my way.

Why in the heck would I want to open iTunes (takes forever to open) sync up my iPhone to my computer (which takes 4 times forever to do), then again have to go search for the picture that I want. (my iPhone is a 5S with 64G of storage). I have a lot of pictures, songs, videos, etc. I want to be able to keep the pictures I want on my phone, get rid of the ones I don't want and be on to the next task in less than 45 minutes. If I need something off my laptop (Toshiba), I can get it in less than a minute.

I guess you have lots more time on your hands than the rest of us. At work, I'm used to handling thousands of files and I like to be able to go get what I need when I need it. I'm on a PC now, I have a PC at work, and I guess I'm just used to having things at my fingertips without having to open up applications (like iTunes) and go through the time consuming process of syncing things up just to get one picture (that should be readily available).

I used to like Apple, but they've gotten too fancy with their operating systems to make things easy for those of us that just want to "Get the job done" and go on with our lives.

One week ago, I had 4 folders in the DCIM folder. Now after upgrading to version 8.1.2 just 4 days ago, I have 34 folders. All of them with random names and random numbers of pictures. And why do all of them have the same creation date? I can't even tell which folder is the latest folder.

And again, neither me or the others on here with the same concern want to go through the sync method when we should be able to open, grab and copy. Less than a minute should do!

An alternative to syncing photos back via iTunes is to create a Shared Photo Stream (which is not the same as your "My Photo Stream"). For pictures you want to keep on your phone you send them to the Shared Stream, where they remain with no time limit. After sending photos or videos to the shared stream, you can archive the ones you want to keep on your computer using whatever photo manager software you prefer, and/or delete them from Camera Roll. The Shared Stream will always be on your device(s).

It is really easy to set up the Shared Stream and add photos and videos to it right from your iPhone, and you don't have to actually share the stream with anyone if you don't want to.

MacPC13 wrote:

Why in the heck would I want to open iTunes (takes forever to open) sync up my iPhone to my computer (which takes 4 times forever to do), then again have to go search for the picture that I want. (my iPhone is a 5S with 64G of storage). I have a lot of pictures, songs, videos, etc. I want to be able to keep the pictures I want on my phone, get rid of the ones I don't want and be on to the next task in less than 45 minutes. If I need something off my laptop (Toshiba), I can get it in less than a minute.

I have no issues with getting iTunes to fully launch on my Windows laptop in about 2-3 seconds, it takes about 2-3 seconds for my iPhone to be recognized, and then within a few more seconds I've navigated to the Photos Sync tab, selected the folder that I've already pre-made and saved to my desktop, and then sync. Last time I synced about 250 photos to my iPhone, it took all of about 5 minutes, and that was from booting up my laptop to disconnecting my iPhone and walking away.

TJBUSMC1973

Listen man, I have had the same problem.

This is my scenario, I use my phone to take photos all the time at work.

My boss wants to see the photos I just took on the computer. I have somewhat 10000+ photos place nicely and randomly in 57 different folders.

I don't want to have to install iTunes, or import all the photos onto the computer.

I simply want to browse the folder which has the latest 1000 photos, like I used to be able to do. Same with all the other guys here who have the same problem. Do you have a solution for that?

Use the solution we do here at our work (although all of our computers have iTunes installed) - iCloud. Pictures taken on our company iPhones appear almost immediately on our company computers using the iCloud PhotoStream option.

That is a nice work around,T-Minator, Thank You for your help, but this a problem and needs to be addressed by Apple.

Why do all my DCIM files show the same "last Modified date" of last month and why do the names need to be so random ?

why would it not be better to have DCIM101 , DCIM102 etc.

I have the same concern as others here. When you have many random folders created on your phone, all with the same date (4 July 2014 for me), you don't know where the latest photo is.

Windows Explorer can see the files and delete them, but not the "hard disk" icon sub-sub folders that have appeared lately, nor can it delete a folder. I have moved every photo to my PC but I'd like a clean, empty DCIM folder so that I can find the next photo I take. When one is on a month-long trip without a computer, one likes to share photos on Facebook (for example) and one doesn't like to check every folder one by one.

The older 1,000 files-per-folder limit was better.

Yeah, same issue here.....used to be one or two DCIM folders.

Was in a client meeting....took a photo of something important...I wanted to mark up the photo in Photoshop real quick in the meeting so everyone would agree on the mark up...then e-mail it off...NOT

When I went to go find the one photo using file explorer, I noticed 29 DCIM folders. Ok fine, let's just open the last one created...NOT..all have same created date....Ok fine, I will just sort the folders by alpha-numeric order and hope they are in some type of order...NOT...

I ended up just emailing myself the photo from the iPhone and then pulling it into Photoshop...

No iTunes on computer...need Admin rights to install.

I have over 2000 photos....It's been 23 minutes using the import function to find all the pictures...now I'm actually importing them one at a time...I'm on number 102...LOL...going to be a long night.

Just sayin.....

Instead of importing all the photos just to find the most recent one, why not let Explorer find it for you? Takes seconds for it to locate all .jpg files within the DCIM folder, then sort the results by date to find the most recent ... a very simple workaround.