iTunes iPod Photo cache - how does it work?

fwor

I've been trying to help someone backup the photos on their iPhone onto their Win7 laptop, so that if the phone gets lost/broken they aren't lost for good.

I'm probably the worst supposedly techie person to be doing this, as I've never used an iPhone nor do I use iTunes.

However, other MSE genuine techies advised me to use iTunes to backup the photos, and I've done that (I think). But... where are the photos on the laptop?

I asked iTunes to sync the photos on the phone with an empty directory on the laptop, and all that does is create a new folder called "iPod Photo Cache" in that directory, with a Photo database file in it which Windows has no associated app to open with. And the database file is far too small to contain the photos (it and the whole iPod photo cache folder is only about 10 MB in size).

So if it has backed up the photos, where are they?

WilliamO

The photos should be in your iTunes folder inside the main MUSIC folder. Do a search on the laptop for iTunes Media or the actual song titles just in case the iTunes program has redirected the media folder.

searchlight123

Just connect the phone to the laptop. Don't open up iTunes, the phone will show as a drive in my computer. Double click it and it will open to the photos folder on the phone and just select all and copy the photos to a newly created folder on your laptop desktop.

fwor

tonygold wrote: »

Just connect the phone to the laptop. Don't open up iTunes, the phone will show as a drive in my computer. Double click it and it will open to the photos folder on the phone and just select all and copy the photos to a newly created folder on your laptop desktop.

Thanks - we discovered this after shutting down iTunes, and finding the Windows photo transfer dialogue box underneath.

The advantage of using iTunes is that it automatically backs up everything else on the phone, but it is a lot more complex and difficult to figure out what's going on.

Anyway, we've used both, so she has two backups now.