How To Transfer Photos From iPhone To USB Flash Drive & Free Up Space On Your Phone – No Cloud Necessary
Quickly Transfer Your Photos To A Flash Drive To Free Up Space On Your iPhone – No Cloud Needed – For Tech Novices
If you don’t have “cloud” storage or are running low, this scenario has likely happened to you. You go to capture that once in a lifetime photo… maybe your cat or dog is just being extra cute. Suddenly, instead of capturing the fleeting, magical moment, you are greeted with the message, “iPhone storage is full.” Even worse, if you don’t have cloud storage enabled, your phone is no longer updating. Without updates, your apps no longer work, and you may even find that you are not receiving some messages as that seems to be another consequence of not updating your device. Now that your state-of-the-art smart phone has been rendered about as useful as a 1970’s rotary, what is one to do? Well, keep reading to find out how to transfer photos from an iPhone to USB flash drive to finally free up space on your phone. All in a few easy steps that even a novice can master…
Plus, while no cloud storage is needed, you will still have easy access to your photos on your portable flash or “zip” drive, which you can then share with friends.
**For any advanced users, these steps may seem elementary. However, this post is really for all those tech novices out there who could benefit from written step-by-step instructions to make the whole process as easy as possible…
If you find the following steps helpful, don’t forget to bookmark & share this page. Then, anytime the need arises, you will have these simple, handy instructions ready. After all, you never know when that dreaded “storage full” pop-up may appear on your phone…
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How To Transfer Your Photos (& Videos) From Your iPhone To A USB Flash Drive Step-By-Step
Follow the steps below to manually copy your photos and videos from your phone over to a USB flash drive inserted into your computer. To begin, you will need the following…
What You Will Need:
- A USB Flash (“zip”) drive
- A USB cord
- A computer (laptop or desktop)
- Your iPhone, of course
**For reference, I used a Windows 10 operating system to complete these steps…
First, Open The “This PC” Window:
- On your computer “home” screen, you will need to access the “Devices & Drives” window. To locate it, click on the “This PC” icon on your home screen. If you don’t have the “This PC” icon, proceed to the next steps… If you already have it, skip to the section below titled, “Plug In Your Devices.”
How To Get The “This PC” Icon If You Don’t Have It
The following initial steps are to make sure you have easy access to the “This PC” icon, which you will need to have open in order to perform the photo and video file transfer…
- If you don’t have an icon that says “This PC” on your home screen, to get it, simply go to any empty area on your home screen, right click and select the “Personalize” option.
- When a new window opens, from the options on the left side, choose “Themes.” Once the “Themes” box opens, look to the right and click the option, “Desktop icon settings.” When that little dialog box opens, under “Desktop icons,” make sure the option for “Computer” is checked. Then click “Apply” and “OK.” Now when you look at your home screen, you should have an icon that says, “This PC.”
Plug In Your Phone
- Take your USB cable and plug it into your iPhone and then plug the other end into one of your computer’s USB ports. You may or may not get a notification to trust the device, but another box should definitely pop up under “This PC” that says “Apple iPhone.” If it doesn’t, it should appear under “This PC,” “Devices & Drives.”
- Once you see “Apple iPhone,” double-click on it to open. Once open, hopefully you see something that says, “Internal Storage.” Frequently, nothing will immediately appear in this box and you will just see a blank space even when you know you have a lot of stuff on your phone…
What If “Apple iPhone” Shows Empty?
The secret is that sometimes you have to wait a few minutes for the data to populate. Walk away for a little bit and then check on it. After a few minutes, it should show “Internal Storage” under “Apple iPhone.”
- Click on “Internal Storage” and a folder marked “DCIM” should appear. Then double-click on “DCIM” and you should see a folder called “100APPLE.”
- Double-click “100APPLE” and it should display all of the photos and videos from your phone.
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Open A Second “This PC” Window & Plug In Your Flash Drive
- At this point, you will need to click on the “This PC” icon to open a second window to perform the transfer.
- Once this window is open, go ahead and plug your USB flash drive into another USB port on your computer.
- Once the flash drive is plugged in, you should notice it shows up as a new device under “Devices and drives.”
How To Select Your Photos (& Videos) To Manually Transfer (Copy) Them
- Now that you have both windows open, you can choose to transfer (copy) all photos by clicking on the “Home” tab above the photos and choosing the “Select all” option. Or you could also simply left click your mouse anywhere in the white space surrounding your photos and hold and drag the blue highlight box to highlight all the pictures you want to copy and transfer to your flash drive.
- When all your photos are selected (highlighted) with the blue box, then right click on the blue highlighted area and choose the “Copy” option.
- Go to your second open window, under “Devices and drives” and click on the drive that represents your USB flash drive (it may be “drive G:,” for example) and double-click it to see its contents. If it is a brand new flash drive, the folder should be empty, which means more space to store your photos and videos.
- Place your mouse anywhere in the white space of this folder and right click. Choose the “Paste” option from the menu. Now you should see a dialog box that says “Copying” and shows a progress bar to indicate the images and videos you selected are now being copied onto your flash drive.
Success! Manual Transfer (Copying) Of Your Photos (& Videos) To Your Flash Drive Is Complete
The folder should populate with your images and/or videos. When all selected files have been copied over to your USB flash drive, you should see all your photos and videos showing in the USB flash drive folder. This indicates they are now stored on your flash drive.
Your files will now be viewable and, of course, easily sharable using the flash drive. If you have any pictures, videos or movies that will not open up, you may have compatibility issues that stem from some of your iPhone’s settings. You may be able to resolve these by downloading software that can convert the media into a format that makes them viewable.
How To Transfer Photos From iPhone To USB Flash Drive Easily Using These Simple Steps
I hope these quick step-by-step instructions made transferring your photos and videos to a portable flash drive easy and painless. Hopefully, no matter how much of a tech neophyte you are, you are now able to delete files from your phone knowing they are safely stored on a portable drive. This should open up plenty of storage to update your phone and allow you to take lots of new photos of new memories.
If these instructions helped you, don’t forget to bookmark this page for future reference, and share them with friends and family who may also find them helpful.
How do you manage your iPhone or smart phone photo collection? Share your tips in the comments…
