Photo Downloader stopping, with error message "Files were not obtained from device"

Report · Nov 04, 2021

Hope someone can advise - I'm trying to copy off photos and videos from my iPhone 7 Plus onto my PC (Windows 10). I'm using the latest version of Bridge. The first time I tried, it stalled 60% through processing, giving me the error message seen above.

I came to the community to see others had a similar problem so tried the suggestions of resetting preferences/clearing caches etc. Rebooted the PC and had another go and it stalled at exactly the same place, on the 7946th file processed.

Can anyone suggest what the issue might be?

My iPhone is connected properly, so it's charging at the same time. My PC refuses to recognise my iPhone as a device to download the files through Windows' Photo Downloader or pull them out through File Explorer, so I thought Bridge was going to be my saviour....

And in a related issue, Bridge refuses to recognise my husband's iPhone 7 when it's plugged in. Why might that be when it recognises mine?

Any help/advice would be appreciated.

Report · Nov 04, 2021

Just to add - the 7945 files it manages to process equate to 87.2GB, if that's significant.

Report · Nov 04, 2021

Wow, that's some boat load of files you're trying to download at once.

I know I've never tried to download a 1/4 of that many files and I doubt too many of those on these forums have as well. As far as your husbands issue, again, I do not know. I've never had an issue accessing my image via PhotoDownloader but I have a friend, also on a Mac, who's always having problems.

I can think of two things I'd recommend to bypass the problem (since I have no idea what's specifically causing the problem in the first place).

#1 try to download (say) 4-500 at a time, maybe even less. See if that works. Yes, this is more tedious than trying to get them all in one gulp, but getting them done can often be more important than getting them done the "right way!"

#2 FWIW I almost never ever download images from my iPhone via PhotoDownloader, I always use DropBox. If you need me to create a tutorial for you I can but it's mostly kinda sorta self obvious. Simply, what's taking place here is that you move them from your phone to your DropBox folder. This does require a DropBox account (free with limited storage capacity but more than enough for what you're doing) and a copy of DropBox application on your iPhone.

Oh, just realized one more: On the Mac I can backup my entire iPhone onto my computer as a backup if I should happen to toss my phone off a cliff, or it's stolen, or whatever. I just looked this up on google and it gave me this:

Back up your device

Connect your device to the computer you normally sync with. You can connect your device using a USB or USB-C cable or a Wi-Fi connection. ...
In the iTunes app on your PC, click the Device button near the top left of the iTunes window.
Click Summary.
Click Back Up Now (below Backups).

hint: if you create a password for this, write it down, no one, even Apple, can break into your iPhone or the backup.

Good luck!

Report · Nov 05, 2021

Thanks Gary. Yeah, it is a lot of content...!

I don't have a Mac and my PC has never been able to see my iPhone as a device (as is Apple's intention I gather so as to force you into buying iCloud storage or a Mac...) so I haven't ever been able to pull content off or back it up via iTunes for 3 years. I use Google Photos so there is a back up of sorts, but at a lower resolution.

I also considered whether it might be a volume issue, given it stopped at exactly the same point each time. I'll try it in smaller batches and see if it makes a difference. The only issue I can see is that there doesn't seem to be any order in which it's retrieving the images from the iPhone. It's not in date order or sorted by name, and because there's 13k thumbnails, it may be a bit tricky to figure out where each batch stops and starts...

I've used Dropbox before as a means to getting content off an old iPhone - the free account only offers 2GB of space and with 20GB to pull off I bit the bullet. I could handle checking off 2GB of images/video 10 times... but the terribly slow upload speed to Dropbox was the worst.

Will have a go downloading fewer images at a time and see how it goes.