Anyone know of an automatic file copy program?

[TabGuy]

In the past I always stored my photos and videos on the 256gb chip because it's where I had a lot of space. But now with 512gb of storage I can just keep photos and videos internally.

Being anal I'd like to make automatic copies of those internal files onto the SD card. Yeah, I know, they automatically get uploaded to the cloud. But those aren't in full resolution. So, if I had automatic file copy I'd have them on the SD card alongside of those I've taken for years.

Does any automatic copy software exist?

 

[Rukbat]

Nope. Not in the almost 50 years I've been in the computer business.

There are tons of "manual file copy software" - called file manager apps. But nothing that will automatically all files from location A to location B as soon as they appear in A. (In fact, I wrote one back about 15 years ago to do just that for one specific situation. There's even an API in Windows a developer can use to make it a bot easier (at the cost of slowing the CPU down a fraction of a percent.)

But nothing out there that you can point to a folder and say "if any new files appear here or in any of it's subfolders, copy them to the equivalent folder over there". You might be able to do it in Tasker, but I don't think you'd appreciate how much it will slow the phone down.

 

[TabGuy]

I use Second Copy on my PC. It's a shame there's nothing similar on the phone. I can't imagine there would be much lag as Google Photos is doing it now, just to the cloud.

 

[Rukbat]

Backup to the cloud is done in the background. Most app "developers" don't even know what that means, programmatically. (Remember, most Windows developers actually understand programming, most Android "developers" just know how to use an app-making app to make an app.

The lag comes in from an app constantly watching a folder to see if there are any writes being done to the folder. That takes a bit of CPU. (Which is why Windows does it faster - if a folder is marked as one to notify you if it's being updated, writing to the drive checks the list of marked folders and if it's on the list, triggers the notification for the API to be able to pick up. Writing takes a relatively long time, checking 2 or 3 folders takes nothing by comparison.) I looked and the best I could find was a timed backup to SD - set it for midnight and it will back up your pictures to the SD card at midnight, but what you really want is a sort of "save to both of these folders at the same time" function. Which I haven't seen and am too busy to start developing.