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hajime

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
7,921
1,310
Hi, I went to Photos in an attempt to copy all photo and video files to an external drive and then delete all these files from my iPad. However, there is no Select All option. Only the Select option. It seems that I have to click on hundreds of files manually. Where is the Select All option?
 
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darngooddesign

macrumors P6
Jul 4, 2007
18,362
10,114
Atlanta, GA
Hi, I went to Photos in an attempt to copy all photo and video files to an external drive and then delete all these files from my iPad. However, there is no Select All option. Only the Select option. It seems that I have to click on hundreds of files manually. Where is the Select All option?
There is no select all, but there is a drag gesture.
1. Click Select
2. Tap the top left photo
3. Tap on the photo to the right of the first and then start dragging to the right and downward; the screen will scroll automatically so you just have to keep dragging until the last one at the bottom right of the screen.
 
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Richard8655

macrumors 68000
Mar 11, 2009
1,925
1,373
Chicago suburbs
Hi, I went to Photos in an attempt to copy all photo and video files to an external drive and then delete all these files from my iPad. However, there is no Select All option. Only the Select option. It seems that I have to click on hundreds of files manually. Where is the Select All option?
I've been looking to do similar. All my photos are in iCloud so as to share between Apple devices. But I'd like to offload them (to save iCloud space) and store them on my Mac in my wifi network.

But it doesn't look possible to share photos from the Mac's hard drive among all Apple devices in the network via the Photos app. Only from iCloud. Nor, as mentioned, does Apple provide an easy way to move all photos as a group to a separate drive instead of individually. Perhaps only with an external utility as mentioned.

Basically, Apple wants you to stay in the Apple universe.
 
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ItsMeMicke

macrumors regular
May 4, 2022
136
495
I have the same problem. Want to copy all photos and videos from my iPad to an external drive.
 

hajime

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
7,921
1,310
There is no select all, but there is a drag gesture.
1. Click Select
2. Tap the top left photo
3. Tap on the photo to the right of the first and then start dragging to the right and downward; the screen will scroll automatically so you just have to keep dragging until the last one at the bottom right of the screen.

One problem with such dragging is that quite often, somehow some photos are not selected.
 

hajime

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
7,921
1,310
Never noticed that. I use FileBrowser Pro to do this and it has a Select All option in its Photo Library interface.

Has there been much change in this app? I tried it 2-3 years ago when you mentioned it but I did not find it intuitive to use.
 
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hajime

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
7,921
1,310
I've been looking to do similar. All my photos are in iCloud so as to share between Apple devices. But I'd like to offload them (to save iCloud space) and store them on my Mac in my wifi network.

But it doesn't look possible to share photos from the Mac's hard drive among all Apple devices in the network. Only from iCloud. Nor, as mentioned, does Apple provide an easy way to move all photos as a group to a separate drive instead of individually. Perhaps only with an external utility as mentioned.

Basically, Apple wants you to stay in the Apple universe.

It is crazy that they have no Select All and Eject functions built-in.
 

sparksd

macrumors G3
Jun 7, 2015
9,989
34,245
Seattle WA
One problem with such dragging is that quite often, somehow some photos are not selected.

Not sure but I haven't had issues. One of my most used apps on my M1 12.9 & Mini 6. I use it for local storage, external storage, and SMB-connected devices (laptop, desktop, NAS).
 
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twdawson

macrumors 6502a
I done this in stages, I searched for a particular year, selected those and exported them to my external drive. Repeated for all of the rest of the years.

Its not the ideal solution but it’s easier that trying to export all at once.
 

winxmac

macrumors 68000
Sep 1, 2021
1,560
1,823
One problem with such dragging is that quite often, somehow some photos are not selected.
You can first check the total number of photos and videos then see if the highlighted ones are less than the total... You can either do the transfer first then transfer the missing ones later or start over then make sure that everything is selected...
 

trerep

macrumors 6502
Aug 9, 2008
312
85
Venice, ITALY
in which format are photos transfered? hevc? maximum quality? original or modified version?

or for the maximum quality you need always to copy the photo library downloaded on a mac?
 

hajime

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
7,921
1,310
Never noticed that. I use FileBrowser Pro to do this and it has a Select All option in its Photo Library interface.

Hi @sparksd and current FileBrowser users,

In case of buying FileBrowser, is the Pro version the one to get?

Have you tried the "Automatic Photo and File Backup" function? Does it work well?
I am not a fan of cloud storage nor subscription software. I would just use an external SSD to backup the photos and videos.

 

hajime

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
7,921
1,310
Thanks.

Just to be sure, to copy all the photos and videos from my iPad to an external drive, I click on FileBrowser Pro. Then, Photo Library. There are tones of folders there such as Albums, All Photos, Animated, Camera Roll, Events, etc. Am I correct that all I need to do is to click on All Photos. Then, hit Select All and choose Copy?

After clicking Copy, it asked me to "Browse to the local or remote folder you would like to copy these files to and select Paste". I added my external drive and chose Paste to paste all. Even with direct connection to an external SSD, it is very slow.

I have two problems:

1. After copying a few files, I got the "Copy Failed Failed to copy file 'IMG_0022.MOV' with error: 'Could not read data from source file, because "Export session not available.".'. After pressing OK, the copy job terminated. What is mean by this error? How can I fix and prevent this from happening again? I have over 1K files to copy. Now the job is terminated in the middle. Imagine I copy 800 files and this happens again.

2. During the copy, I see the date of those files is the date and time when the copy was made. Can I make it the original creation dates and times?
 

sparksd

macrumors G3
Jun 7, 2015
9,989
34,245
Seattle WA
Thanks.

Just to be sure, to copy all the photos and videos from my iPad to an external drive, I click on FileBrowser Pro. Then, Photo Library. There are tones of folders there such as Albums, All Photos, Animated, Camera Roll, Events, etc. Am I correct that all I need to do is to click on All Photos. Then, hit Select All and choose Copy?

After clicking Copy, it asked me to "Browse to the local or remote folder you would like to copy these files to and select Paste". I added my external drive and chose Paste to paste all. Even with direct connection to an external SSD, it is very slow.

I have two problems:

1. After copying a few files, I got the "Copy Failed Failed to copy file 'IMG_0022.MOV' with error: 'Could not read data from source file, because "Export session not available.".'. After pressing OK, the copy job terminated. What is mean by this error? How can I fix and prevent this from happening again? I have over 1K files to copy. Now the job is terminated in the middle. Imagine I copy 800 files and this happens again.

2. During the copy, I see the date of those files is the date and time when the copy was made. Can I make it the original creation dates and times?

Best advice I can give is to contact their support - support@stratospherix.com. I ran into an issue some time back and contacted them and they got back to me the same day and were extremely helpful & responsive.
 
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hajime

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
7,921
1,310
Although I have not sorted out the issue, when copying a few video files, I noticed that it was much much faster using FileBrowser Pro than Apple's stock Files app. It was like at least 20 times faster. How come?
 

darngooddesign

macrumors P6
Jul 4, 2007
18,362
10,114
Atlanta, GA
You can also select a bunch of photos, copy, and then paste them into the Files app (and probably other files apps as well). Since they will remain selected, you can just delete them.
 
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sparksd

macrumors G3
Jun 7, 2015
9,989
34,245
Seattle WA
Although I have not sorted out the issue, when copying a few video files, I noticed that it was much much faster using FileBrowser Pro than Apple's stock Files app. It was like at least 20 times faster. How come?

I don't know. When I talked to them in the past, they said they were likely using the same methods but something is clearly different.
 
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hajime

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
7,921
1,310
I am waiting for their follow-up. We are still communicating back and forth as we don't know the exact cause and solution. If any of you know, please let me know.

A suggestion is that I should leave iCloud disconnected, fix the issues on the iPad by moving all the files to an external storage and then delete them from the iPad to make some space as both my iPad and iCloud are full. I need to confirm with them some other issues before doing it. One strange thing is that when I tried to copy a few files from the iPad to an external SSD, I got a message saying duplication of files and asked me what to do with it. I just asked the system to keep both. After completion of copying, although some files have the same name, some of them have different contents but some of them are actually the same. What is wrong here? If I recall correctly, I tried that via Files and FileBrowser Pro. Both had this strange issue.
 
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hajime

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
7,921
1,310
I have copied the majority of the files to an external drive and deleted the corresponding ones from my iPad. Now, it has nine video files left. Under File Browser Pro, the file size are not shown. Only the length in seconds. These are the files that caused errors during the copying mentioned in the original post.

What will happen if I turn on iCloud now? With free storage on the iPad, will the original full version of these files alone with the rest of the files on iCloud get copied to my iPad or these problematic 9 files on my iPad will overwrite their full version on iCloud (assuming they are there)?

The goal is to move all the files from my iPad and iCoud to the external drive.
 
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