Re: Transferring contents of a large folder (eg 3000 photos) from Android to Windows 10

NY, 2025-07-19 12:05:

My mother has a lot of photos (both taken on her Android phone's camera
and received as attachments in WhatsApp) which she wants to transfer to
her Windows PC for permanent storage and backup to a USB HDD.
 
The phone is Android 14, Samsung Galaxy A13 SM-A137F/DSN. The PC is Win
10 Pro.
 
The obvious way would be by USB cable, such that the phone appears as a
"pseudo disk drive" in Windows Explorer and files can be selected for
copying/moving. I know about the various USB modes: "Transferring
files/Android AUto", "USB tethering", "MIDI", "Transferring images",
"Charging phone only". Of these, only the two "Transferring" options
would seem to be relevant. "Transferring photo" only shows the DCIM
folder; "Transferring files" also shows
Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Media/Whatsapp Images.
 
However Windows 10 (unlike Windows 7) seems to crash Explorer as it is
gradually transferring the list of files (not the files themselves) in a
selected folder (eg DCIM) order to populate the Explorer window so files
can be selected.
 
On Win 7, even a folder with a large number of files (photos), as seen
by Windows Explorer, gradually (slowly!) populates with filenames/icons
and then allows them to be selected and copied.
 
Unfortunately this phone only has internal storage, so it's not even
possible to copy files to Micro SD card in the phone and then remove it
and put it in a card reader on the PC.
 
Is there is way around this?

You can try using an USB stick with an USB adapter and a file manager.
Once you have all images on the USB stick, it should be no problem to
copy them to the PC from there.

Or try Cx File Explorer and copy the images using WiFi to a shared
folder on the PC. First share a folder on the Windows PC and then add
this folder as "network" folder in Cx File Explorer, then you can just
copy files from the internal storage to that network folder - that may
be slow depending on the WiFi you have, but more stable:

<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cxinventor.file.explorer>


--
Arno Welzel
https://arnowelzel.de