[Android Central Question]

I am downloading the pictures and files from my Samsung S6 active onto PC via USB. The download goes okay, but during the erase it gets hung up and will not complete. Any idea of why or how I can fix this? I need to get space cleared.

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! How did you move the files -- using Windows Explorer? Is the phone completely frozen? If the files transferred successfully to the PC, can you reboot the phone and use My Files (or Windows Explorer) to delete those files on the phone?

[DGraefen]

I plugged the phone into my PC using a USB; found the phone in files; right clicked and selected import; usually, I just import everything and use the option to delete files from the phone after downloading. What happens now is that it downloads but while it is going through the erase, it stops and won't finish. I end up having to cancel the download.

[B. Diddy]

Not sure if it's a problem with how Windows is interacting with the phone. I personally never use the Import All Photos/Videos option in Windows Explorer, because that feature indiscriminately imports every single image file, including those cached by apps, as well as thumbnails. I prefer to manually select photos (or folders) and use the Copy command.

[DGraefen]

That is exactly why I do it that way. It deletes thousands of items that accumulate from different apps and such that I don't even know are there. I regularly get my photos off my phone so it's easier to save those and get rid of the garbage in one fell swoop.

[Rukbat]

Deleting a file through the USB connection from Windows actually does work - if you wait long enough. Try copying everything first, then disconnecting the phone.Run My Files and delete the files. That should delete them in less than a second each. (You can long-press a file, then tap a lot more [even all of them], then delete [I think My files uses a trash can at the top for delete].)

I don't know how you'd delete a file if you don't know it's there, though. You have to find the files - in Windows or in My files, it makes no difference.

The problem is deleting via USB - I don't know whether that's a Samsung problem or a USB problem, but files just don't seem to delete that way unless you go do something else for a long time. Deleting them in My Files (or Total Commander or ES File Explorer or ...) deletes them immediately. (I suspect that they actually get deleted via USB, but Windows Explorer isn't getting updated very quickly. I never cared enough to do an engineering-type study to see what the actual problem is, though, since using an installed app is just as easy.)

[DGraefen]

I'm not addicted to my phone. I use it for phone calls, texting, photos and game playing. Are My Files, Total Commander and ES File Explorer apps? What do they do? The files I'm referring to are from games. When I download my photos to my PC, all sorts of photos appear from the different games. It was always so simple to just delete everything off the phone while downloading and deleting later off PC.

[B. Diddy]

Those images are either cached by the games/apps, or related to ad networks that are associated with the games. That's what I was saying about the Import Pictures/Videos command in Windows Explorer -- it's indiscriminate. It doesn't know or care if the image it's importing is a photo you took or some random image used by an app. Those images typically won't show up in your phone's gallery app, since the app developer creates a file called ".nomedia" in the directory where those images are cached (although sometimes they don't, which is a reason why users often ask here about unfamiliar photos that suddenly appear in their photo galleries). And since those images are generated by the app, deleting them often won't get rid of them forever, since the app will generate them again.