Best Method for Collcting and Sharing Deceased Relative's Digital Images?

Community Discussion Shoot the Breeze
1

Have a deceased relative who was really into photography and took tons of digital images.

I was sent their iPhone (still active with a cellular plan) and an external HDD (Western Digital “MyCloud” networked HDD) that relatives believes holds the majority of decedent’s images.

I have the lock code for the iPhone so I can access it directly, but do NOT have the decedent’s icloud password, so I can’t access icloud outside of the phone.

I’m planning to copy the images from the iPhone and “MyCloud” HDD to 3 external portable SSD’s, one to send to each of two relatives and one as a backup:

So, questions:

1 - Is there a better method, generally, to do this other than copying all the images through my PC to SSD drives?

2 - Any applications/programs I should be considering to help do this?

3 - Any recommended methods for organizing photos on the SSD’s? I was planning to just organize with directory structure based on photo dates (Main folders - Years, sub-folders - Months) but would be cool if I could present them with something more easily searched/browsed.

4 - One relative has a Mac, other relative has a PC. Is there one format/organization I can use for the SSD’s that will allow them to be read by everyone?

2
  1. Copying all the images to 1 PC and then replicate to 3 drives seems the most efficient path.
  2. Just use Windows Explorer.
  3. Year/Month (or event) is how I normally organize pictures.
  4. Format with exFAT can be read by both (not NTFS).

You should be able to reset the Apple ID password from the phone: If you forgot your Apple Account password - Apple Support

Once you’ve done that, you can login and download the entire collection.

1 Like
3

Question, I’ve done that when copying photos from an old laptop to a new laptop. Copied them to a Passport type external drive, then copied them to the new HD on the new laptop.

Problem I experienced, when accessing the photos on the new laptop later, the “date” of the image became the date they were copied, not the original date they were taken. So searching for a photo by past date, was no longer possible.

How does he prevent that?

4

Super valid concern.

Partially solved by actually putting into a directory structure: 2025[Folder]->June[Sub-Folder]->Image123456.jpg[Image file]

Can also be solved by looking at EXIF data that’s embedded in the image with some kind of application, but usually not just with directory viewing alone:

5

You really can’t as it all depends where/how you copy. But there is a workaround…

In File Explorer, switch to Details view, right-click the column header row, choose ‘more’ and check on ‘Date Taken’:
image

Regardless of the Date Modified, the ‘Date Taken’ should remain and can be sorted/searched.

*Edit: This only works on actual photo files that have EXIF data embedded so will not work on screenshots/downloaded images.

6

Right. I can look at the Details, to see date taken. But Windows Explorer uses the Date Created (which is the date it was copied), to organize the photos. So, how do you get Explorer to search using “Date Taken” in the Details, instead of Created, to organize/search photos?

7

Use ‘datetaken:’ in the seachbox. In File Explorer type:
datetaken:2026
datetaken:1/1/2025-1/1/2026
datetaken:July2026
datetaken:>=1/1/2025 (everything from that date forward)

You can search for a year, a range, a month, etc.

The first search may take a while. You can optimize for pictures in your indexing settings if you do a lot of this.