where are the all the photos?

farmkid

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Apr 7, 2006
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We have an iPad that the kids use for the most part (iPad Air, iOS 8). The storage is getting close to full, so I tried to clear off some stuff. Under Settings>About it says that there are ~2500 photos and 170 videos totalling about 9 GB. Most of those are just random things the kids take pictures of when they're screwing around with it-not worth keeping. So, I go into the Photos app to start deleting, but there are only 170 photos and 37 videos there. Any idea where all the others are and how I can delete them?
 

farmkid

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Apr 7, 2006
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Someone else suggested that, so I gave it a try. No photos at all (or anything else, for that matter) shows up in iTunes.

When I plugged it in, iTunes tried to automatically back up everything on the iPad. I don't want to transfer anything from one to the other, though, so I stopped that. Does iTunes need to back everything up in order to show me what's there? I really don't want that taking up a bunch of space on my hard drive.
 


iTunes should show you what is on the iPad not just what is on the computer. But why do you want to NOT have a backup of the iPad? What if it dies and you lose the files? I'd just let it run the backup and sync and then go through and see if the pictures are on the computer.
 

farmkid

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Apr 7, 2006
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I downloaded and installed iMazing, which allows me to browse the file system on the iPad. It turns out that all of the photos in question are ones that were deleted already. A while ago my wife went through it and deleted a bunch. They disappeared from the Photos app, but are still there in the file system. Apparently my wife deleted them more than 30 days ago because they are no longer in the recently deleted album, but they haven't been deleted. Unfortunately, I can only see them, but not delete them, with iMazing.

As for the backup, I don't have a particularly large hard drive, and I don't want to lose another ~30 GB every time I plug in the iPad. There isn't really anything on the iPad I would be upset to lose, so the cost of doing backups is greater than the reward. Now, if letting it backup would enable me to get rid of all these pictures, I would do it. If I make a backup, can I browse the backup? If so, I can back it up and see if those pictures are included in the backup. If not, then I can fix the problem by just resetting the iPad and restoring from the backup. If those pictures are included, then doing that won't help. However, I need to be able to see what is included in the backup first.