Unable to import photos and videos from iPhone13 to External HDD using MacBook Air M1

srinivazs wrote:

a brand new Seagate External HDD One Touch 5TB disk which is formatted in ExFAT

That is your problem. Storing Photos libraries is NOT supported on non-Mac formats like exFAT, FAT, network shares, Time Machine volumes.

APFS and MacOS Extended are supported and it is always recommended to erase a new disk as such (APFS (select GUID partition scheme first) for SSD and MacOS Extended for old spinning HDDs).

Have you tried using Image Capture, in your Applications folder. That's one if it's purposes.

srinivazs wrote:

I was able to Import photos, videos from iPhone to external drive using Image Capture. However, after importing 90%, i got an error saying Phone disconnected. Now, is there any way to import only remaining photos and videos to avoid duplicate?

I'd try to move the old import to another folder. Then try to import again all. If that succeeds, fine, and delete the old import. (You can optionally avoid duplicates by putting all images in the same folder and let Finder replace images with duplicate file names).

But if it repeatedly fails, import in smaller batches. Also make sure that neither the iPhone nor the Mac go to sleep during the import and do nothing else during the import.

It seems you are trying to copy from the Photos.app import dialog's list (I tried to replicate that in the screenshot below), right? That does not work.

You can import the images via the "Import All New Photos" (or something similar) button on the top right. Then the proper way is to use File > Export > to export selected images to some other location (drag'n drop is NOT recommended because that might output only a tiny thumbnail. Copy & paste seems to work but I'd not use that either because it uses the internal database name like F199D1C5-FF07-4BA7-807E-07E392255905.heic and might also output unexpected results).

But if your goal is to copy iPhone images to an external disk skip Photos.app and use /Applications/Image Capture.app instead. By default it saves to ~/Pictures -- either change that or start by copying the imported images from there to the external disk.

Please describe your workflow in more detail because I still can't quite follow what you are doing.

An EtreCheck report from the Mac would eliminate much guesswork about possible reasons for the issue:

How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

Resetting iPhone settings (at the bottom of the General menu, just the settings, NOT to the factory settings) might also help.

srinivazs wrote:

In Finder when my iPhone was connected, I went to Photos and Clicked on Sync. This created several duplicate copies of photos and videos in my phone. Is there any way I can remove those duplicates? The problem is, I don't have an option to delete the Synced picture in my gallery. I've added a picture for example.

I presume you synced imported images back to the iPhone by accident, right? At least the missing Trash hints at that way.

Images synced via the Finder via USB to the iPhone are "owned" by the Mac so they can't be deleted in iPhone Photos and the Trash for them is missing unlike for the images shot with the iPhone to its "camera roll".

To delete such images you can a) sync an empty folder from the Mac to the iPhone (see screenshot below) or b) in the iPhone enable iCloud Photos so they (if any) are synced to replace the images synced from the Mac.

srinivazs wrote:

I just deleted all the Imports from Mac. However, if you look at the storage

Just ignore that unreliable eye candy Storage view.

Disk Utility's "Free" space is the most reliable way to check available disk space.

Remember to empty Photos and Finder Trash when checking freed disk space. Sometimes macOS takes some time to settle down and do some housekeeping and to delete old snapshots etc.

APFS filesystem disk space calculations need fuzzy logic. For example, duplicating a huge file is very fast and takes no space -- more disk space is needed only after you start to edit the duplicate.

Matti, there's no mention of the OP using Photos on the Mac, is there?