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Android Central Question My computer reads that it sees 85gb in the external SD card and that it sees 30gb in the internal memory. But when I click around, almost all of the folders that lie within each have 0mb of data in them.
Because most of what's in them is hidden (system files).
When using the search function on my computer I can locate the DCIM file with all the media in but when I try to copy and paste or move the files, after about 1 hour of trying the computer always says that an unexpected error occurred and it cancels out of the upload and only some of the photos and videos make it over.
That's typical of USB, when you use it for a massive file transfer. Try copying one folder worth of files at a time (and, if you want to maintain the folder structure, create a DCIM folder on the computer, then folders inside that one, so you have the same structure on the computer that you do on the phone).
When taking the SD card and putting it directly into my computer, same thing.
Same problem - the card is connected to the computer via an internal (or external, if you're using an adapter) USB connection. They're not designed to transfer tens of GB at once.
I cannot afford to let any of these photos and videos go. Suggestions or walk-throughs to get all of this data moved? I want all of it to be in one massive file that I can make several copies of to avoid losing anything ever.
As I said, one DCIM folder. Then in that, a Camera folder. (And so on.) Copy the DCIM folder to a huge cloud account, or to another computer, and all the folders and files in it get transferred. (DCIM stands for
Digital
Camera
IMages.) (It's all in one massive
folder, not in one massive
file. Folders are structurally different than files, just like Manila folders are different than the papers inside them (which is where the idea of naming directories "folders" comes from - that, and the icon used for them is a folder).