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Android and PC connection for file transfer

mkdabra

I've always connected my phone by cable and selected the "transfer files" option, but today my sister called me complaining about it: she had been over an hour trying to transfer pictures to her PC but when she got into the pictures folder the thing would just be stuck loading for ages and report a different number of files every time. I've seen this behaviour before, so I wanted to know... what gives? I figure Windows tries to load every picture to make thumbnails or something and the emmc or the sd on the phone just can't keep up, or maybe it's something about not reading a storage unit but instead communicating with another device... but I don't really know.
 

We have Xiaomi/Redmi phones so I told her to fire up ShareMe instead, use the "connect to PC" option (ftp over LAN). The weird thing is, this way the navigation is instantaneous, but the transfer speed is way slower than over cable.
 

So... how can I make it to get the responsiveness and reliability of the FTP approach over cable for higher speeds?

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38 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

use a OTG cable with a usb stick, its much faster!

That's fine and good... if you want the files on a USB stick. If you want them on your pc then you'll have to copy them again, which is redundant and slows the whole process. If you want to use an external hard drive, sometimes it won't work through OTG.

14 minutes ago, RageTester said:

How about https://web.whatsapp.com/ though you must share images with someone 1st

https://airmore.com/transfer-whatsapp-media-pc.html

How about no. In what universe would be sending your entire library to Zucc's servers, having them compressed in the process and being limited by the speed of your connection better than using ShareMe?

 


I appreciate the intention but I'm asking on the Windows subforum about how to connect Android phones to Windows, directly if at all possible; how to improve responsiveness when you connect your phone to PC via usb cable. I don't want workarounds, I want exactly this.

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1 minute ago, mkdabra said:

That's fine and good... if you want the files on a USB stick. If you want them on your pc then you'll have to copy them again, which is redundant and slows the whole process. If you want to use an external hard drive, sometimes it won't work through OTG.

Copying them twice is the fastest method ive found.

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I don't know why it's so slow for you...we are talking pictures after all... Maybe PC has low RAM?

Save files on micro SD card instead of built-in memory, remove it and use micro SD to USB adapter when you want to copy files to PC...

Saves phones battery.

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1 hour ago, TrigrH said:

Copying them twice is the fastest method ive found.

... damn.

 

1 hour ago, RageTester said:

I don't know why it's so slow for you...we are talking pictures after all... Maybe PC has low RAM?

Save files on micro SD card instead of built-in memory, remove it and use micro SD to USB adapter when you want to copy files to PC...

Saves phones battery.

I don't know why either, it was slow sometimes for me, and for my sister in a different PC. Thing is, it loads instantly through FTP, so it must have something to do with MTP or how Windows does things by default and how that intersects with MTP's limitations.

 

I did suggest taking the SD out but she didn't have a microsd adapter, and probably didn't have a card reader either, so back to square one. But sometimes you just need to tinker with files on the internal memory, so it would be interesting to fix that MTP problem rather than circumvent it.

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I personally use Resilio Sync over wifi for moving videos and documents between tablet and PC. For phone I use Google Drive.

 

I only move audiobooks with cable. The thing here is that connection is iffy. On newest Android versions it's better, to the point where it doesn't disconnect with screenlock. So if phone uses Android 7 or older, you will have issues.

 

Slowness is due connection being USB2 and it can only do one file at a time. Besides that, connection cannot do large amounts of files (limit is something like 100 at a time). Older (pre-Pie) versions required screen to be unlocked to make phone visible and locking screen would cut connection. Even if it was only for power saving purposes.

 

This meant at one point that I rather used SD card reader rather than USB connection. And like the wifi option more for larger transfers.

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  • 2 months later...

I had to do some video recording with my phone for a vocal performance tonight.  I had eight usable files of about 400Mb each.  I copied them all over from my Android ver. 10 phone to my Win10 workstation.  I just hooked it up via USB cable and using file explorer it was a pretty painless project.  The hardest thing was finding the Android directory where the movies were located.  I tried one transfer via Google drive and it took more time to transfer one file than using the file transfer via USB cable.

Workstation PC Specs: CPU - i7 8700K; MoBo - ASUS TUF Z390; RAM - 32GB Crucial; GPU - Gigabyte RTX 1660 Super; PSU - SeaSonic Focus GX 650; Storage - 500GB Samsung EVO, 3x2TB WD HDD;  Case - Fractal Designs R6; OS - Win10

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Did you try simply using the Photos app?

Connect your phone, and just open it and pick "Import" at the top right. 

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  • 2 months later...

I tried starting a http server on the phone. Seems to work pretty good. You can access files through any other device that has a web browser then. Speed is gonna be limited by SD cards read rate anyway, but at least you don't have to remove it from the phone.

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