I want a hard copy of all 40GB of my photos from iCloud, but "Always keep on this device." does not work.

Hi,

I've tried everything I could find online and nothing works.

What I need: I have 40GB of photos in my iphone SE 2020, synced and uploaded to my iCloud. I want to download all of them to save them to my external hard drive.

My issue: download does not work!

What I tried:

1. iCloud.com permits me to download at max of 1000 images so this is a no go. Even when I wanted to, after a couple of zipped packages, the page would not provide another zip but would start looping in a 'preparing your items for download' state.

2.Connect iphone by cable, but it disconnects after downloading maybe 300 photos.

2. Set up iCloud Photos on Windows: Set up and use iCloud Photos on your Windows PC - Apple Support

Tried to keep my photos downloaded on my PC with these steps:

Open File Explorer.

In the Navigation pane, click iCloud Photos.

Select the images you want to keep on your PC.

Right-click the selection and choose "Always keep on this device."

Does not work!

Right click > Properties shows:

Size: 104 GB

Size on disk: 1.36GB

Contains: 17914 files

How can size be 104GB, when I only have 50GB on iCloud?

I have waited for a couple of hours and the folder keeps showing the green loading bar.

I've tried to select all items in the iCloud Photos folder, copied them and pasted them on my PC.

The message I receive is:

Copying 17751 items from ICloud Photos to myFolder

Items remaining: 17751 (204GB)

I has taken 4 hours already and I'm on 192GB remaining items, speed is 386KB/s.

Again, where does the 204GB of data come from? I only have 50GB on my iCloud.

My machine has:

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10750H CPU @ 2.60GHz 2.59 GHz

RAM: 32'0 GB (31'8 GB usable)

Windows 11

I've also tried it on friends computers. Same result.

REAL HELP would be greatly appreciated as this is an extremely annoying issue.

I'm asking to not be reffered to any official 'how to download photos to your computer' apple guide as they do not work!

Thank you in advance <3