Problems With Backing-up A Large Amount of Photos

I have a iXpand 128GB and transferred over a large amount of photos/videos over to it from my iPhone 7plus, somewhere around 21,000 files. When I plugged the iXpand into my laptop to try and trasfer the files over I see files named “IMG_0001~photo” in both HEIC and JPG formats going all the way up to “IMG_9999~photo” but also there are the occasional times where there is “IMG_3667~photo(1)” Some problems I’m having here:

i) obviously the number of files I had exceeded the 9999 mark, so the either my iPhone or the iXpand resorted to adding a (1) to the end of the file names to try and compensate however it seems randomly done in a way that doesn’t make any sense as the photo most recent taken picture back-up was named: “IMG_6792~photo” so sorting through my pictures is a mess.

ii) there are most definitely pictures taken after the picture “IMG_6792~photo” that were missed. Makes me concerened if any other files are missing?

iii) it was nice that some of the pictures got converted to .jpg after plugging in the iXpand to my Windows laptop, but why weren’t all of them converted? Again it’s just a mess right now of HEIC’s and jpg’s, where onlysome HEIC’s were converted, others werent’ 

Has anyone else had any of these issues after transferring large amounts of files at once? Is there a better way of doing this? From what I remember it’s not like I can indicate how many files to move at a certain time, I’d have to individually pick what to back-up to the iXpand if i’m being selective and it just isn’t reasonable to do around 20,000 taps of pictures…

Would appreciate the help!!

with this many pictures it is likely you have icloud photos enabled and many of the photos may not be stored on your iphone 7 plus. If this is the case and many of the photos are on icloud you may have photos with the same name hence the (1) being added to the file name. to check this go to iOS settings > Photos > and see if iCloud photos is enabled. if it is photos can be stored locally on your iphone 7 plus, on iCloud, or on other iOS devices you may have or have had. to see what is actually stored locally to your iPhone 7 plus turn off iCloud photos and give it time to desync. Then check the native photos app and see haw many pictures are actually stored locally in the camera roll. 

the ixpand drive app does not convert any picture. If it was shot in jpg it will transfer a jpg. if the photo was shot in heic it will transfer heic. No conversion takes place in the ixpand app. the mix would either come due to the photo being taken before iOS 11 which added heic or the setting was changed from default heic to jpeg. 

Actually my iCloud photos is disabled, I actually have that many pictures. I’ve had a busy last couple of years in terms of travel, getting married and such. The odd thing was, that the file names with (1) at the end are completely different pictures. They weren’t copies.

That’s good to know the ixpand doesn’t do any kind of conversion from HEIC to JPG. But I’m still not sure why some photos were in HEIC with an associated JPG version too and some aren’t…