Importing tens of thousands of photos and videos from an iPhone #

via USB generally fails using the native Windows (Import Pictures and Videos wizard, File Explorer) and macOS (Image Capture, Photos) tools with errors like "Error Copying File or Folder - The device is unreachable" or "The operation couldn't be completed." In a recent case, these MTP-compatible Windows apps did not avail either:

SafeCopy Free imported only zero byte files.
Beyond Compare 4.3.5, despite a promising pitch ("Beyond Compare 4 for Windows can access files and folders on Apple iPhones, Android phones and tablets, Windows Phone devices, and some media players using the Media Transfer Protocol (MTP). These devices are displayed in Windows Explorer but do not have drive letters."), imported only zero byte files.
MTPdrive showed the mapped drive as having no files.

nor did iMazing under macOS ("Operation Failed - foo.JPG is locked by iOS." within the first few minutes). Happily, iExplorer did the trick, successfully importing close to 40,000 photos and videos (though the batch delete process failed, necessitating a workaround).

/misc | Aug 13, 2020

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