Importing Footage from iPhone onto SSD Thumb Drive Drive instead of Portable SSD.

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Level 1

5 points

Importing Footage from iPhone onto SSD Thumb Drive Drive instead of Portable SSD.

Hello Everyone. Hope You All are Well. I am a Travel Vlogger. I use FCP. I use my iPhone 14 Pro Max for my videos (1920 X 1080 60p). I was using Image Capture and Photos on my MacBook Pro M1 Max, but both have been unreliable. Air Drop also does not work well. I found the most reliable method to transfer videos/photos from my iPhone was to use the Files app on the iPhone, and transfer the videos/photos to a SanDisk SSD Thumb Drive, which I can later transfer to an external hard drive. Sometimes there are issues (like with permissions), but mostly it is reliable.

I also have a SanDisk Portable SSD. Does it make a difference whether I use the Thumb Drive or Portable SSD to save the videos/photos (both are SanDisk and SSDs)? I prefer the thumb drives. I do not want to lose quality.

I understand it’s not a good idea to edit right off the thumb drives, though, and the Portable SSD is better for that particular purpose.

I would appreciate any assistance.

Thank You.

Posted on Dec 7, 2025 3:58 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 7, 2025 7:38 AM in response to pjanveja

Either way, it should work.

I would reserve these drives for use with the mac, and make sure they are formatted as APFS.

Other than that, it should not matter whether you transfer via a (reasonably fast) thumb drive or ssd - though in generally the ssd will be much faster.

For editing, an external ssd is best.

Make sure that any drives you use are properly formatted for the mac. Use MacOS Extended for rotating hard drives, APFS for the rest.

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Answer 2

BenB

Level 6

13,178 points

Dec 8, 2025 7:44 AM in response to pjanveja

As for formatting, in the early days of APFS it did slow down performance on some specific HDD drives. But it's matured and you can use it on all drives now. In fact, Apple's TimeMachine now forces ALL TM drives too be APFS now. I've got two RAIDs and an external single drive, all HHDs, all APFS, all work extremely well. MacOS Extended will fade away eventually. I'd not even bother with it any longer. I built someone a new RAID with HHDs a few weeks ago, Disk Utility insisted we format it APFS, and it works great in a TV station edit bay right now.

APFS has better data management and protection than macOS extended, could actually (in theory) extend the life of a spinning HHD.

And yes, thumb drives are notoriously much slower than regular drives (for lack of better term). Great for transporting data, s**k for editing video.

[Edited by Moderator]

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Answer 3

Dec 7, 2025 8:29 AM in response to pjanveja

My thumb drives are all incredibly slow (writing) compared with a normal HDD or SSD and I wouldn't dream of using them unless it was an emergency where time didn't matter.

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