How to remove Local Disk (under DCIM)

jpiszcz · Aug 13, 2012

Hello,

I have two files of type "Local Disk" on my iPhone in one of the picture directories, when I copy all and paste (to copy the pics off the phone) it only copies some of them because when it hits those Local Disk files it stops the copy.

Any way to get rid of them without jailbreaking?
You cannot delete them from Windows explorer.

This has been asked elsewhere but no answers.

Justin.

jpiszcz · Aug 15, 2012

I went through a lot of the old photos I took and deleted the bad ones, those local disk files disappeared after that.

CSMchris376 · Aug 15, 2012

The easiest way to handle pictures on a Windows computer (and it appears you are using Windows 7) is to just use the Import command. It would help prevent some of the issues you are experiencing in copying and pasting photos. I would assume that you are deleting the pictures in the camera roll after moving them to the computer? This way you can also delete them after the import and let Windows take care of that as well. With Import, you just have a couple of clicks and it will only import those photos that you have not imported in the past, thus eliminating duplicates.

To each his own, and I am not saying you are doing it wrong, it is just a little easier the other way. You can have Auto Run configured since the phone is recognized as a digital camera and have it open Import automatically.

redhotcujo · Mar 23, 2013

Getting rid of multiple folders/local disks

Old thread but I think I found a solution. Had four local disks showing up under my DCIM folder and also having multiple folders in there. It was a pain in the ass but I deleted all the photos I didn't want any more, saved the rest onto my pc and any ones I wanted to keep on the iphone I imported with picture safe (im sure you could use similar apps to accomplish the same thing). Any way after deleting everything out of my camera roll I now am back to one folder and no local disks showing up. Awesome.
hope this helps someone

cbdave · Nov 5, 2014

local disc safari settings

I went into settings, safari (my phone browser), selected advanced, then website data, then remove all website data (at the bottom) and the discs went away, I don't think I lost any of my saved passwords or anything that I wanted to keep probably just cached pages to help sites load faster, but the discs annoyed me so I was happy they went away.

PRINCESSLINDA · Nov 27, 2014

Local disk icons in iphone image folder

I too found so many local disk folders in the images folder in my iphone, want to know how to delete them without deleting the entire folder, and want to know the reason why are they being created?

HPlovecraft · Dec 12, 2014

Two things:
Thing one: I think those "local disk" files are caused by burst photo collections. They most be in some strange format that windows doesn't recognize. If you change all your burst photos (on phone) into standard ones, they may go away. They probably need to be converted anyway to transfer properly to windows.

Thing two: The solution by CSMchris376 is probably the easiest. It works great and gets rid of the uncertainty and issues with copy+pasting. Not sure what it does with "local disk" though.

jpiszcz · Feb 21, 2015

Result: Tried removing all my burst photos, I still had Local Disk showing up.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/ques...al-disk-entries-in-dcim-sub-folders-in-iphone
=> If you don't want to remove all website data then do as follows: Settings > Safari > Advanced > Website Data > then Edit and proceed to erase each entry looking similar to this "a####.phobos.apple.com" . No more "Local Disk" and even erased the empty folders. It worked for me.

Result: Did this, still there.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6585223
https://discussions.apple.com/message/27223670#27223670
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6585223?start=15&tstart=0

>> Any photos that are altered (cropped, photo filters applied, etc.) result in one of these phantom "local disk" files appearing under the camera folder. I'd guess that the iPhone is saving off some sort of config file describing the edits that were made. I verified that either reverting the edit or deleting the edited photo entirely causes the corresponding "local disk" file to disappear.

>> Unfortunately, there appears to be no way to determine which photos each of these "edit" files applies to. In addition, they seem to cause major problems for Windows Explorer if you try to copy the entire folders; under Windows 7, it caused Explorer to crash every time for me.

--

Is there an app (like Screeny) that would scan the photo roll and find pictures that have been altered so I could delete those ones?

jpiszcz · Mar 8, 2015

So I have been looking for a workaround since I posted this thread in 2012. I copy the pictures and videos off the iPhone and use fdupes (Linux) (it compares MD5SUMS) of the previous images so I can delete the duplicate ones and ensure I do not "miss" anything.

When you use Windows Import (click -> import) it appends Microsoft EXIF data into the images and changes the MD5SUM. Now, you might be able to strip out the Microsoft EXIF data and get it back to the original state but when I checked the what Microsoft adds in it was pretty nasty so I decided to look at another solution.

I found one product that seems to work. I have 40+ folders on my iPhone and every time I want to make a full backup I spend an hour+ manually creating the folders and copying the files (I have a lot of photos/videos), this a waste of my time. I found this, and after the drive is mapped, I can robocopy the data and presto-- I am done! Finally, I no longer have to waste time copying pictures/videos!

http://www.mtpdrive.com/purchase.html

I mapped the drive to Z: and then a robocopy command and voila I have a full copy of my pictures and videos AND the MD5SUM is the same as if you are copying them from Windows Explorer!

Proof in the attached picture. I can confirm in my camera roll I have "9394" images/videos so this is perfect! Much faster than doing it manually!

...

If you have a lot of time, manually copying the files and/or finding the edited photos that create these files in the first place to get rid of the Local Disk files might be worth it for you-- however, if you don't have a lot of free time, this is the best option I have found so far.

CrazyRoadBiker · Mar 14, 2015

Get rid of Local Disk icons - iPhone photos - iOS 8

It's a combination of things, mostly related to editing and some of the new camera formats in iOS 8. The "local disk" files contain metadata about some of the special formats.

1. Go in to Settings, Safari, Advanced, Website Data, Remove All (many of the "local disk" files will go away)
2. Browse the DCIM subfolders and identify the folders that have "local disk" files in them. The folders with one or more "local disk" files have one or more of the following:

Edited photos
Time Lapse or Slo-Mo videos
Burst photos

For Edited Photos, you need to find them in the folders (you can compare edited date to created date), then edit the photo on the iPhone and REVERT to the original photo. Note that you must unplug the iPhone (haven't tried an iPad) from the computer and plug it back in before the "local disk" files actually disappear - refreshing the folder with F5 doesn't get rid of them.

For Time Lapse or Slo-Mo videos, the only solution I've found is to manually copy them off of the iPhone and then delete the .MOV file(s), then unplug/re-plug.

For Burst photos, open the Burst package and select all of the photos in the Burst (or delete the ones you don't want, selecting the rest). And, unplug/re-plug.

After doing these 4 things, all of my "local disk" files were gone.

(PS - I managed to look inside of some of the "local disk" files and they seem to contain a modified XML structure. Why Apple doesn't just put an XML file in the folder that is standard and able to be recognized by Windows, I have no idea. . .)

Good luck!

vuon3 · Jun 11, 2015

its easy just follow these steps
Settings > Safari > Advanced > Website Data > Remove All Website Data

Then Disconnect and again reconnect the phone to the PC and whoaa all the local disk are gone.
Let me know if any.

bacdj · Jul 2, 2015

vuon3 said:
its easy just follow these steps
Settings > Safari > Advanced > Website Data > Remove All Website Data

Then Disconnect and again reconnect the phone to the PC and whoaa all the local disk are gone.
Let me know if any.

Sadly it didn't work for me, also tried all the other hints on the other threads but all folders still there. Brian DJ

bacdj · Jul 2, 2015

Sadly it didn't work for me, all folders still there. Brian DJ

FrostByteVA · Sep 3, 2015

bacdj said:
Sadly it didn't work for me, all folders still there. Brian DJ

For what it's worth, I'm having the same problem iPhone 6, IOS 8.4.1. I've delete every photo on the phone and there are still 226 items in the last DCIM folder. Half are photos visible to Windows, the other half have a drive icon on them.

bacdj · Sep 24, 2015

bacdj · Sep 24, 2015

After experimenting with this problem for some time I decided to wait for the next ios upgrade to the operating system and after installing the new V.9 yesterday, I have found that the problem no longer exists. The photos are in 3 large folders and I can now delete the unwanted folders etc. from my computer. Great improvement to the system. Brian DJ

jpiszcz · Sep 25, 2015

Confirmed, very cool! They appear to all be prefixed with: (NUM)APPLE

e.g.,:

100APPLE/ 105APPLE/ 110APPLE/ 115APPLE/ 120APPLE/ 125APPLE/
101APPLE/ 106APPLE/ 111APPLE/ 116APPLE/ 121APPLE/ 126APPLE/
102APPLE/ 107APPLE/ 112APPLE/ 117APPLE/ 122APPLE/ 127APPLE/
103APPLE/ 108APPLE/ 113APPLE/ 118APPLE/ 123APPLE/ 128APPLE/
104APPLE/ 109APPLE/ 114APPLE/ 119APPLE/ 124APPLE/

AlexFromVirginia · Nov 6, 2015

bacdj said:
After experimenting with this problem for some time I decided to wait for the next ios upgrade to the operating system and after installing the new V.9 yesterday, I have found that the problem no longer exists. The photos are in 3 large folders and I can now delete the unwanted folders etc. from my computer. Great improvement to the system. Brian DJ

Thanks. Now I finally WANT to upgrade something (for a change).

How to remove Local Disk (under DCIM)

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