Moving pictures to micro SD card

[Quack Me Up]

I just added a 16gb micro SD card to my turbo 2 to add memory as I was getting warnings that I was less than 1 gb of internal memory left. I want to move all my pictures and videos to the SD card and these are the instructions that I was given from Motorola customer service on how to do it.
To perform the steps below, a memory card must be installed.
From a Home screen, navigate: Apps > Settings > Storage .
From the Portable storage section, select the name of the SD / Memory Card. ...
Tap the Menu icon (located in the upper-right).
Tap Settings.
Tap Move Media.
Select any of the following: ...
Tap MOVE.

I did this but it only moved 191 pictures and 1 video to the card when I actually have 1128 pictures and 33 videos in my gallery. Why didn't it move everything?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you.

 

[Scott337]

I think that process only moves what's in the Camera - DCIM folder. But could be wrong? What folder / folders are the pics in that didn't move?

 

[B. Diddy]

Re: Moving pictures to SD card in Droid Turbo 2

I would recommend using a good file manager app instead. I use Total Commander, but you could also use Files by Google. You can manually select the photos you want to copy, or you can copy an entire folder over to the SD card. Be sure to use the Copy command, and not the Move command, since this gives you some protection in case anything goes wrong with the file operation. If you use Move, then the source file will get deleted after the file operation is done, even if there was a problem with the destination.

 

[Quack Me Up]

I have a total of 52 picture folders in my Gallery.

 

[B. Diddy]

Duplicate threads merged.

 

[Quack Me Up]

I do have the app ES File Explorer also. Can I move/copy files from this app? When I have the original Gallery app and ES File Explorer, is this taking up twice the storage space in the internal memory since the pictures are in two locations?

 

[Scott337]

I do have the app ES File Explorer also. Can I move/copy files from this app? When I have the original Gallery app and ES File Explorer, is this taking up twice the storage space in the internal memory since the pictures are in two locations?

No. Each app just displays what is there. The files are only "stored" once. But any app that is coded to display pics will display them

 

[Quack Me Up]

In a nutshell, is there a way to move all my current photos/videos to the SD card and also have all future photos go directly to the SD card when I take the picture? I see in the phones camera app, you can choose the storage location as either phone or SD card. I don't want to end up with having to look for pictures in two different locations unless they are just copies if that makes sense.

 

[B. Diddy]

If you set the Camera's default save location to be the SD card, it will save photos to the /DCIM/Camera directory on the SD card. Just remember that SD cards are inherently less reliable than Internal Storage -- they can corrupt more easily, and have a much shorter lifespan than onboard memory. Don't rely on an SD card as the sole storage for important data. Make sure you keep your photos and other data backed up or synced somewhere safe, like your computer's hard drive or a cloud storage service.

 

[methodman89]

In a nutshell, is there a way to move all my current photos/videos to the SD card and also have all future photos go directly to the SD card when I take the picture? I see in the phones camera app, you can choose the storage location as either phone or SD card. I don't want to end up with having to look for pictures in two different locations unless they are just copies if that makes sense.

I don't see a os way to do this, but you could save everything you want to the cloud, then switch to the SD card and pull it off the cloud to it.
You could also connect to a pc, copy the pics, then restore them to the SD card.
Good luck

 

[Quack Me Up]

If you set the Camera's default save location to be the SD card, it will save photos to the /DCIM/Camera directory on the SD card. Just remember that SD cards are inherently less reliable than Internal Storage -- they can corrupt more easily, and have a much shorter lifespan than onboard memory. Don't rely on an SD card as the sole storage for important data. Make sure you keep your photos and other data backed up or synced somewhere safe, like your computer's hard drive or a cloud storage service.

I do back up the photos to my PC. I guess my whole reason for adding the SD card was to free up internal memory and I thought the easiest way to do this would be to move my photos to the SD card since I don't assume there's much else that I can move there to free up space?
Thanks.

 

[Scott337]

If you are already doing a backup to your PC, why not use it to move all pictures to the SD card? Using normal Windows cut / copy & paste functionality. Make a new folder on your SD card called Pictures and move everything from Internal memory to the SD Card with your PC. Then set the camera app to save all future pics & video to the SD Card. And as stated above, SD cards do fail from time to time, so make sure you continue to manually back up data on the SD card or have an automatic backup like Google Photos or similar.

Also, the Turbo 2 has a built-in File Manager app, no need to install any other file manager type apps. I have a Turbo 2 as my company paid work phone. Here is an example of me using the built-in File Manager app in my Turbo 2, navigating to a folder that has pictures > select one > then tap the 1 selected menu > tap select all > then tap the 3 dot menu > and there is a Move To option. There are many different ways to do this, but the Turbo 2 did come with a nice File Manager app, and that's just another example.

 

[B. Diddy]

I do back up the photos to my PC. I guess my whole reason for adding the SD card was to free up internal memory and I thought the easiest way to do this would be to move my photos to the SD card since I don't assume there's much else that I can move there to free up space?
Thanks.

The SD card is best used to save media files (photos, videos, music), as well as any document files. So yes, it is one of the best ways of freeing up Internal Storage space and still having those files readily available on the phone.

If you go to Settings>Apps, you can see if the phone allows you to "Move to SD" -- i.e., move a portion of an app to the SD card. This can save a little space, but it can contribute to somewhat decreased performance of the app (since SD read-write speeds are slower than onboard memory) as well as the risk of the app crashing if the card gets corrupted.

 

[Rukbat]

1. If the photos are backed up, you probably have only thumbnails on the phone, not the full size pictures, so you may not free up as much space as you're expecting to.

2. Using Total Commander, if you turn the phone into Landscape mode, you get 2 windows - Go to the SD card in the right window, then go to the folder the pictures are in on the left side. Long-press a picture to mark it, then tap each on the other pictures, then press and drag one of them to the right side and they'll all copy. If that goes without a problem, they're still marked, and you can delete them all.

(Or you can just mark the folder the pictures are in, and drag the folder to the SD card. I'd try to keep some kind of folder structure on the card - a DCIM folder [Digital Camera IMages] for your pictures, then folders in there for dates, holidays, people, however you want to group them.)