what are iPhone "local disk" files?

Most of the selections on my Windows 7 screen for this do not relate to iPhone.  The ones that do are:

1. Import camera roll to computer (Pictures and Videos)
2. Import using Windows photo gallery (I do not use this)
3. Zip from camera (because I have WinZip)
4. Import into Drop Box (because I have Drop Box)
5 and on. Microsoft stuff.

Only the first item is on any interest to me.

A local disk drive is a data storage device inside a computer that holds the operating system; software; and files, such as images, music, movies and documents.  As far as I can tell, Apple is just labeling the files as such 'local disk'.

I would advise against trying to manually remove them.  There may be a quick trick that will solve this if you're interested in removing those files.
Backup your phone in iTunes.
Go to:
Settings > Safari > Advanced > Website Data > Remove All Website Data
Disconnect then reconnect the phone to the PC and it should clear that up.

Also, I'm curious, do you have 'view hidden files' enabled?

o/

John Hurst: I'm just using Windows Explorer and opening the DCIM folder.

Kyle Santos: Well, yes, I have edited photos, but it seems like there are a lot more of these "local disk" files than photos I edited. But then again, I really didn't pay attention at the time.

In addition, they seem to cause major problems for Windows Explorer if you try to copy the entire folders; under Windows 7, it caused Explorer to crash every time for me.

This is where I noticed the problem. I tried copying entire folders and the copy would simply stop after one or two files (is that what you mean by "crash"?). I had to to into each folder and select the image files and copy time. Strangely, when I accidentally selected some of these "local disk" files along with images, the images copied OK -- but not the "local disk" files.

Do you know if the image that ends up getting copied is post-edit (to which the "local files" have been applied) or pre-edit? If pre-edit, there would be no sense in doing edits on the iPhone. Again, I've not paid attention up to this point.

Folder options were set to view hidden files.

Do you know if the image that ends up getting copied is post-edit (to which the "local files" have been applied) or pre-edit? If pre-edit

The copy to Windows from the phone is just a copy: What is on the phone goes to Windows. There is no pre or post edit concept. Just a copy.

I'm going on Kyle Santos' comment in post ID: 40871646, "Any photos that are altered (cropped, photo filters applied, etc.) result in one of these phantom "local disk" files appearing under the camera folder.  I'd guess that the iPhone is saving off some sort of config file describing the edits that were made.  I verified that either reverting the edit or deleting the edited photo entirely causes the corresponding "local disk" file to disappear."

My assumption based on this statement is that the "config file describing the edits that were made" describe edits to the original image and that the original image is still intact. Otherwise Mr. Santos would not be able to "revert the edit". Given that the iPhone is just mounted as a folder under Windows, it seems reasonable that edits in the iPhone-specific "local files" would not be applied and that the .jpg file is the actual "original". I guess Mr. Santos' theory on config/edits needs to be tested.

You might be much better off to use Drop Box and put your photos and local files there. I use Drop Box in addition to copying my camera roll to the computer. Drop Box syncs your changes to all devices and so that will work well for you here.

Yes, there would be some testing involved.  There are several other comments in that discussion that described how users went about investigating those instances.

I'll do more experimenting when I have another batch of photos to download, and I'll try to pay attention to the image that ends up on the PC version possibly edited images on the iPhone. THX

Go to Settings , Safari, Advance and remove Website Data.  They are just links to the difference locations you downloaded pictures from.  Once you backup your pictures you can perform this website data removal and restart your phone and the icons will be gone,.  Unless you saved some pictures the location icon will remain.