Question Can I Back up my Samsung S24 to a desktop or external drive?

[mboessen]

Hi, All:
71 year old new owner of a Samsung Galaxy S24. My antique Galaxy Sol2 had an SD card, so I could keep all my personal stuff on that and it was easy to backup to a folder on my Desktop. Sadly, the S24 doesn't have that. Is there any way to back my S24 up to my Desktop PC? I have people saying to just "back it up to the cloud". 1: I have no idea how to do that. 2: It worries me what the "cloud" is getting when I do this. I'm sure they aren't providing this service from the goodness of their heart. I worry about what they are doing with my data, and the risk of it getting hacked there.
Thanks!
Mike

 

[SyCoREAPER]

HI, Laura: Thanks for hanging in there with me. I don't know how far back you read, but earlier in the thread I reported that I can connect the phone to the desktop using the cable that came with the SSD, press "allow" and I can see all the files on the S24. I can copy the folders (which I have done) from the internal storage to the desktop, and they are there. I also have a brand new, very expensive USB3 to USBC cable that I ran from both the blue jacks and white jacks on the desktop to the phone. In all cases the computer can see the phone, but when I try to do a backup to the desktop, the phone reports that there is no storage device connected. I need to find a different brand SSD to try on the phone.

Again, thanks. I'm pretty sure we just have a compatibility issue between Samsung/Android and the T-Force SSD.

Best

Mike

Are you backing up to the aforementioned drive from your phone or to your local drive? Backup to the internal drive and just move it manually.

 

[mboessen]

Hi, Sycoreaper:

I'm sorry, I don't quite understand the question. I'm trying to backup to a T-Force SSD plugged into the USBC port on the phone. Internal drive? Are you saying I can create a backup on the phone's internal storage? I can't find that option in the backup and restore menu.
Another question, though: When the S24 reports that there is no device detected there is another line that says: "To back up or restore, insert an SD card or connect a USB storage device, then try again". "Insert an SD card? " Is there some way to insert an SD card? I have micro-SD cards, but I can't find any way to insert one, unless I remove the SIM card. There is a small slot on the bottom of the phone, but a micro SD won't fit in there. Is there some new, smaller SD card that I am not aware of?

My 2 biggest regrets on this new phone: No headphone jack, and no external micro-SD card slot.

Best

Mike

 

[mustang7757]

Hi, Sycoreaper:

I'm sorry, I don't quite understand the question. I'm trying to backup to a T-Force SSD plugged into the USBC port on the phone. Internal drive? Are you saying I can create a backup on the phone's internal storage? I can't find that option in the backup and restore menu.
Another question, though: When the S24 reports that there is no device detected there is another line that says: "To back up or restore, insert an SD card or connect a USB storage device, then try again". "Insert an SD card? " Is there some way to insert an SD card? I have micro-SD cards, but I can't find any way to insert one, unless I remove the SIM card. There is a small slot on the bottom of the phone, but a micro SD won't fit in there. Is there some new, smaller SD card that I am not aware of?

My 2 biggest regrets on this new phone: No headphone jack, and no external micro-SD card slot.

Best

Mike

No SD card on the s24 so when you connect your SSD to your phone and go to accounts and backups in settings >external storage and from there you make backup for your phone

 

[mboessen]

Hmm. Again, I'm not sure I understand this post. Most of this thread has been about that very thing. I connect my T-Force SSD to the phone, start the backup, it goes fine up to anywhere from 25 to 50% and then says "the usb device has been disconnected". I'm heading into town Friday. I'll go by Best Buy and look for a solution there. I'll report back here what my findings are.

 

[mustang7757]

Hmm. Again, I'm not sure I understand this post. Most of this thread has been about that very thing. I connect my T-Force SSD to the phone, start the backup, it goes fine up to anywhere from 25 to 50% and then says "the usb device has been disconnected". I'm heading into town Friday. I'll go by Best Buy and look for a solution there. I'll report back here what my findings are.

Ok sounds good

 

[winmod21]

No SD card on the s24 so when you connect your SSD to your phone and go to accounts and backups in settings >external storage and from there you make backup for your phone

Hmm. Again, I'm not sure I understand this post. Most of this thread has been about that very thing. I connect my T-Force SSD to the phone, start the backup, it goes fine up to anywhere from 25 to 50% and then says "the usb device has been disconnected". I'm heading into town Friday. I'll go by Best Buy and look for a solution there. I'll report back here what my findings are.

@mboessen — That Settings path that mustang referenced is: Settings > Accounts and backups > External storage transfer.
Where, on my S23+, I get the same: "To back up or restore, insert an SD card or connect a USB storage device, then try again" . . as you get.

But I'll connect later today to a laptop & SSD ... and check it out to see what happens.

 

[mboessen]

I will be interested to hear the results. Mine wont back up to the desk top via any USB port. If yours works to a SSD, I would like to know what brand and size.

 

[winmod21]

I will be interested to hear the results. Mine wont back up to the desk top via any USB port. If yours works to a SSD, I would like to know what brand and size.

Okay. I should be getting back to my home office to try it by 1600~1630 hrs EDT

 

[winmod21]

I will be interested to hear the results. Mine wont back up to the desk top via any USB port. If yours works to a SSD, I would like to know what brand and size.

Well, after connecting my S23+ to my laptop, when I go to: Settings > Accounts and backups > and tap on: External storage transfer . . . I only get the same screen you were seeing, that shows:
'Backup and restore' - 'No external storage device detected' - 'To back up or restore, insert an SD card or connect a USB storage device, then try again' . . . and nothing happens! Even though I disconnect & reconnect the USB-C cable several times to my:
Lenovo YOGA 720-15IKB - 3840x2160 4K UHD Notebook w/ 512GD PCIe SSD
. . . there's nothing to click on. And my phones' also not detecting a storage device!

. . . and same result when I connect to a Seagate Free Agent external SSD . . . nothing!

. . . until we figure-out how to make the 'backup to external storage device' work . . it'd probably be good for you to do the Google Drive backup, as you can always 'manage' your backups, and delete parts or all of them at a later date (via either your phone or PC).

I've backed-up mine to Google Drive (Google's cloud storage service), and the worst part of it, to me, are the confusing multiple screen views—depending on what you tap on, on your GD phone screens—of the same basic backup info, though in different layouts. As some views/screens, once clicked off of...seem nearly impossible to find again (if that makes any sense).
Moreover, I couldn't tell when the backup was done! . . i.e. — As, again, there was one screen view that showed the backup progress—w/files moving into backup—but once clicked off of . . I could never find that screen again.

A few other gripes I have w/Google Drive . . .
— After first showing that I had 100GB of Google One (which is the additional storage by 'subscription' service . . of Google Drive) storage available (due to my wife's sharing of her 100GB Google One subscription with me), once the Google Drive backup started, it only showed (the standard, free) 15GB available, with no trace or notice of the 100GB of shared Google One storage space (from my wifes' account) — ever shown again!

— And upon starting the Google Drive backup, it showed that I had "About 4 years of storage left" . . . but then, after only 1.5GB (of my free 15GB) of storage space was filled with the backup, the 'Manage storage' screen changed to "About 2 years of storage left" . . . then, after only 3GB (of my free 15GB) of storage space was filled with the backup, the 'Manage storage' screen changed to: "About 11 months of storage left" . . which doesn't make any sense, to me.

— Notwithstanding, on one positive side . . the Windows/PC view of your Google Drive and /or Google One (which is the additional storage by 'subscription' service . . of Google Drive), shows all your Google Drive/Google One backup details, where you can review them and keep or delete them as you wish.

 

[mboessen]

Hi, Winmod21
Thank you for taking the time to do that, and especially the stuff about Google, as you have confirmed my suspicion that it is no place for a Luddite such as myself.

All:
At least once in all this I mentioned the possibility that the phone was simply not able to power the T-Force external SSD. I finally stumbled upon a guy at Best Buy who really has a grip on this whole thing. He whipped out a cable/adapter that was powered by an AC phone charger. Plug in the charger, and there are USBC jacks on the adapter to plug in the phone and SSD. Worked perfectly. But it was over a hundred bucks, so I passed. What I did was buy a $45, 512 GB USBC thumb drive. Worked perfectly on that. Then just copied the backup folder to both my desktop and SSD.

Concerning backing up to the desktop, the guy immediately knew about that, I'm not going to be able to tell you how he navigated to this, but he created another option under "settings-developer options-I don't know what. In there he checked something, I couldn't keep up, but maybe "default usb port setting" which was set to "charge only". He changed it to "file transfer" and was confident that would make it work to the desktop. Unfortunately, that didn't work. When connected to the desktop it still just says "no usb device detected".

So, that's the latest. Gotta mow the lawn.

Best

Mike