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You are here: Home / Computer Tips / How to speed up the transfer of photos from your camera or phone to your computer

How to speed up the transfer of photos from your camera or phone to your computer

Posted on March 21, 2017

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holding-camera-phoneDo you take lots of pictures? If so, you know how frustrating it can be when it takes forever to transfer your photos from your camera or mobile device to your computer.

The good news is there are ways to speed up the transfer process and get your photos onto your computer faster. Here are just a few of them: 

1 – The first thing you should do is quickly scan through all the photos you have taken and delete the obvious duds right in the camera or mobile device.

The images captured with modern high-megapixel sensors are absolutely huge in terms of file size, so every photo you can delete will speed up the transfer process, often by a noticeable amount. Just be careful not to delete any photos that you might want to keep.

2 – If your camera or mobile device stores the images it captures on a removable memory card, remove the card from the device and insert it directly into your computer’s built-in media card reader.

Once inserted into your card reader, the memory card becomes just another “drive” in File Explorer. That makes it fast and easy to copy the photos directly from the memory card to your computer’s hard drive without having to transfer the images over a slow USB 2.0 connection.

3 – If your computer doesn’t have a built-in media card reader, you can use a stand-alone card reader that connects to one of your computer’s USB 3.0 ports.

If you’d like a recommendation for a good USB 3.0 card reader, I really like the popular (and dirt cheap) Transcend TS-RDF5K. (#ad)

This little gem is one of the best card readers on the market, and it’s dirt cheap!

Of course you’ll need to plug your card reader into a USB 3.0 port in order to take advantage of the super-fast USB 3.0 data transfer speeds. If your computer doesn’t have USB 3.0 ports, you can easily add them for about the cost of a pizza.

Bottom line: Connecting your camera or mobile device to one of your computer’s USB 2.0 ports is the slowest way to transfer your photos.

If possible, plug the memory card directly into your computer’s media card reader. If not, get yourself a USB 3.0 card reader and plug it into a USB 3.0 port on your PC. Either way, you’ll notice a HUGE decrease in the amount of time it takes to transfer your photos.

Notes: Image credit: Eric Gross

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