where are my iphone 4s photos - IOS 9.3 ?

I

iMore Question

My iPhone contains 13GB+ of photos & vids and is almost full. The phone says I have 5000+ photos. When I look for them by plugging the 4S into my W10 PC with Windows File Explorer, I can see the 4S's DCIM folder that contains about 5 sub-folders - like "100apple". Those sub-folders contain only about 500 photos and no videos (where are my videos?). I cannot find the 4000-5000 photos that are supposedly on the phone. Where are they - so that I can copy them to my PC where I want to? I know that all of them or most of them are in the iCloud - but where are they on my phone?? What folder or folders on the phone? Further, what I read says that photos on my phone will be mini photos (because I set iCloud to get my synced full sized photos), but the few photos that I did find in those iPhone folders are not mini-photos. I'm so confused.
 

Just_Me_D

Ambassador Team Leader, Senior Moderator
Moderator
Jan 8, 2012
59,707
632
113
Visit site
If your iPhone's available storage is less than the amount needed to contain all of your pics then you will not be able to sync those pics to the iPhone.
 

cwr64

Member
Jul 26, 2016
21
0
0
Visit site
I do not understand your reply at all. I have had no problem with sync that I know of. I've had no error messages sync-ing. I have had no phone error messages. I did not say that sync was a problem. I backed up the phone to iTunes and iCloud. Please look at my question - I want to know where on the phone those 5000+ pics and 50+ videos are located so that I can use my W10 PC and the copy/paste function of Windows to copy the 5000+ photos to a folder on my PC's hard drive. Where are my photos and videos on my iPhone 4S - what folder? As I said, I can only find about 500 of the pics and none of the videos in 4-5 sub-folders of the the phone's DCIM folder. Please - if you don't know the answer I understand, but please don't complicate this with sync issues I don't have.
 

iCricket

Well-known member
Jul 24, 2016
49
0
0
Visit site
Try restarting the device as well as your computer. Are you using iTunes to view the pics or just the USB transfer that pops up when you plug in a device to your computer?
 

cwr64

Member
Jul 26, 2016
21
0
0
Visit site
iPhone was restarted but I can't see (using Windows File Explorer) the 5000+ pics in any of the DCIM sub-folders (only the 500 or so I mentioned initially). PC was rebooted as part of normal iTunes PC software upgrade yesterday. The iPhone itself says it has 5000+ photos and 52 videos. If I click to look at the photos or videos on the phone itself I can see and play them just fine. FYI - iPhone transfers the photos to iCloud automatically when connected to wi-fi. The phone itself says that there are 5000+ pics, and 52 vids. That would seem to be confirmed in that about 14GB of the phone's storage is used. I barely know anything about iTunes. When iTunes is already up and then I plug in the 4S, iTunes sees the phone and it syncs. And I can click to manually back up the 4S to iTunes. And then at the top of the iTunes screen it shows a progress bar that says it is backing up the phone. And that runs for several minutes and seems to complete OK - and then an apple appears where the progress bar was. And then the iTunes page shows that a backup was done just seconds ago. As to photos in iTunes - I don't see them anywhere in iTunes so I don't really know where iTunes has them or even whether I can use iTunes to view photos that iTunes has copied from the phone into iTunes.
But - if the 5000 photos were transferred to iCloud, why are not the 5000+ pics simply mini's that would not add up to 14GB? But my question still is - where can I find those 5000+ pics in some folder(s) on the iPhone using Windows File Explorer? Where the heck are they? Some hidden folder?
I'm really surprised that this is a problem. With millions of iPhone users taking pics - I would have thought that most of them (except me) would know the answer about this.
And one more question - if iCloud deletes a pic when a user deletes the same pic from their iPhone, how do iPhone users develop a permanent library of the pics they no longer need on their phone but do want kept "forever" in a backup?

5PM CST 7/26/2016 - nobody has a solution or answers?
9AM CST 7/27/2016 - nobody has a solution or answers?
 
Last edited:

Tartarus

Ambassador
Feb 20, 2014
17,442
20
38
Visit site
There is no shame in being confused in this case.
Because you opted for optimized storage for photos they have been deleted on your phone and replaced by shortcuts to their location on your iCloud account.
If you browse to iCloud.com and tap photos, you will see all your photos there.
You can then save them to your computer if you want to.
 

Ledsteplin

Ambassador
Oct 2, 2013
50,164
694
108
Visit site
Also, iCloud is not a storage option for photos like Dropbox. It's a back up option. It backs up what is currently on your device. If you want pure storage, upload them to your computer or to Box or Dropbox.
 

cwr64

Member
Jul 26, 2016
21
0
0
Visit site
I understood that iCloud was both a backup location and also a location that provided access to the photos from all my devices and maybe a place to share from to other people. Is that wrong?

OK - I signed into iCloud.com on my W10 PC and clicked on Photos. The web page says I have 5028 photos.
Where are the videos?

Say I want to download all 5028 photos to my PC to some folder for permanent backup - how do I do that? I see nothing to click on to select all of the photos (and videos?).
 
Last edited:

Tartarus

Ambassador
Feb 20, 2014
17,442
20
38
Visit site
I'm not sure, don't use iCloud Photo Library, but I'm afraid Apple lost an opportunity here and you will have no choice than to save them one by one. Also, your videos are most likely counted as photos in the 5028. Photos
 

cwr64

Member
Jul 26, 2016
21
0
0
Visit site
I wonder whether your "most likely" is an answer I can bank on....
If those videos get gone my wife will more than hurt me.
 

cwr64

Member
Jul 26, 2016
21
0
0
Visit site
Your best option is to scroll down those photos to see if there are any videos among them.

I think the videos are there in iCloud Photo. But I cannot find them on the 4s. They are not in the iPhone's DCIM sub-folders. And the 4500+ photos are also not there.
Even though the iPhone says that 13GB is in use.
 

Tartarus

Ambassador
Feb 20, 2014
17,442
20
38
Visit site
As I don't have iCloud Photo Library enabled I am out of options to look for a solution to help you get your photos on your computer.

I sincerely hope someone will come along and help you retrieve all of them soon.

Good luck.
 

cwr64

Member
Jul 26, 2016
21
0
0
Visit site
Apple Store tech was no help. Called Apple Support - tech couldn't help. Tech transferred call to Apple Senior advisor and she had us launch iCloud (on the PC) and within that clicked on Photos, and within that turned on iCloud Photo Library. I think maybe that changed what I see when I click on the little iCloud icon that's located way on the right side of the Windows Launch/Status Bar (at the bottom right of the Window). So now when I launch iCloud for PC from there it shows additional options/boxes you can click on:
1. iCloud Photos (view on iCloud.com)
2. Download Photos
3. Upload Photos
Then we launched Windows File Explorer which showed iCloud Photos under category "Devices and Drives"
I clicked on iCloud Photos which launched a full window with 3 additional boxes to click on:
1. Downloads
2. Uploads
3. Shared
In upper left corner of the screen there was text that said "Download photos and videos" I clicked on that and a little window popped open that said something like "preparing photo library". The "preparing" went on for more than an hour. The Apple advisor said she would call me again today to see how it ended up. After "preparing" finished it popped a different little window that contained several check boxes of what I might want to download (ALL, 2016, 2015, 2014). To the right of each of the 4 names it showed me a count of the photos and videos within that check box.
ALL, for example said 4900 photos, 55 videos). I selected "All" which added a checkmark in all of the check boxes and then clicked "Download"
The download ran for 2-3 hours, but it did not tell me to where on my PC the items were being downloaded to. So maybe it worked. I hope to learn more when the advisor call me back today.
 

Trending Posts

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
260,007
Messages
1,765,297
Members
441,220
Latest member
waeriyadh