IPhone – How to move photos from iPhone to the local disk

backupiphoneitunesphotoswindows

This has me stumped. I have nearly 4GB of photos and videos on my phone, and I want to put them into my computer's pictures folder.

  • I have opened Windows Explorer and found the photos in the weird location Computer\Torbens iPhone 4\Internal Storage\DCIM\800AAAAA, but I cannot copy or move the files from here to a local folder. When I try, Windows says "Error copying file or folder. The parameter is incorrect."

  • I have synced with iTunes but don't see where iTunes would have made a backup copy of the photos.

This is immensely frustrating. I can't believe it has to be this difficult and I must be missing something, but I don't see what that is.

1) How do I get my pictures off the phone and onto my local disk?

Also, it would be so much simpler if Windows would just assign a drive letter to the device, just like it does for my digital camera and any other USB storage I connect. Is there any way to make Windows do this, or is Apple being restrictive again?

2) How can I get a drive letter assigned to the phone? (Less important but mighty annoying.)

Details:
iPhone4, iOS 4.1.2, iTunes 10.5.1.42, Windows 7.

Update:
Am I understanding correctly that neither of the sync nor backup functions in iTunes backs up the photos?

Best Answer

I have the same problem you have: I can copy the items one by one, but I cannot bulk copy 10 more items. To solve the problem, I use Picasa to import my iPhone photos, instead of using Windows Explorer copy. It works.