Trying to copy Date Created data directly from iPhone DCIM folder

[breative_brad]

Low on iPhone storage space, I've been looking to delete most of my pictures, but not before having a proper backup, of course. Via FreeFileSync, I've verified that every file has been copied over to my pc. However, there is one major issue that prevents me from finally getting my space back: the dates on many PNG and video files my pc are incorrect. I know "Date Created" refers to when a file was created on the system, but it would seem that even the "Date Modified" on many images is frequently weeks or months later than the correct date. These modified dates are copied correctly from the iPhone--they were simply modified (I don't know why; I don't edit hardly anything directly on the phone) before I copied them over to the computer.

There is one correct set of dates: those on the iPhone, in the "Date Created" field. These obviously get updated to the current (incorrect) date by copying them directly to the computer.

Unless anyone knows of a way to just copy images over while maintaining the dates created info somehow, I'd like to copy the Date Created field from each file in the Internal Storage\DCIM\[100Apple, etc.] folders on the iPhone over to the Date Taken field of the corresponding files on my pc.

The problem is that exiftool doesn't seem to be able to access the iPhone files directly. It's my understanding that this is because the iPhone isn't mounted as a disk. There's no drive letter to include when specifying a file; the location in File Explorer is, "Computer\iPhone\Internal Storage\DCIM\[etc]". When trying to exiftool a file in this way, I get the message, "Error: File not found - Computer/iPhone/Internal Storage/DCIM/[etc]"


Anyone know how to copy the creation dates directly from an iPhone? How to mount it as a disk or access it with exiftool otherwise?


Thanks in advance!

[StarGeek]

Exiftool can only read files on a local file system (or streamed through stdin).  You'll have to google search for a way to mount the iphone as a drive. You'll probably have to include your OS in the search because the answer is different depending upon the OS.

[breative_brad]

Appreciate the response! OS is Windows 7, and a search for how to mount the iPhone as a hard drive yields little aside from iExplorer, which, as of yet, I have not been able to get working.

[Alan Clifford]

Have you checked all the dates in the file metadata?

exiftool -a -G -s filename -*date*

[breative_brad]

Thanks for the suggestion. I have, and the correct dates are not anywhere on the files I've checked. The only correct dates I can find are the original iPhone dates created mentioned earlier :\

[Phil Harvey]

I think you need to do this with an app on the iPhone.  Problem is, I don't know if such an app exists.

- Phil

[breative_brad]

Finally found a solution. Exporting photos with iMazing successfully retains the original date created fields. For some reason, videos exported through iMazing do not seem to retain their original names (typically an 8-digit series of numbers and letters for .mp4s), but the dates were the important part for me. Now to figure out how to copy the names to the correct files...

Thanks to everyone who replied!