Transferring photos/videos before a factory reset?

kinger8938

kinger8938

kinger8938

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I've been trying to do this with my S8. I decided to keep the phone for another year and go sim only so I fancy making it feel as fresh as possible as I keep getting low space warnings etc and it can feel less snappy at times.

I tried plugging it in to our laptop but the windows 10 photo app doesnt seem to find any pictures.

The only way i can seem to do it is locate the files manually via my computer etc and then just drag the folder and drop, is that the best way? I dont want to risk losing anything as it includes lots of early photos of our boy etc, she would kill me :D

It suggested like 4 hours to transfer which seemed really long, but theres quite a lot I suppose.
 
I'm wondering if it's been doing this already, they all seem to be there on the Google photo app and it says I can clear up 32gb of storage by deleting these items.

Can I sign in to my account on a PC and download them all first? Just to be double sure!
 
It might suggest a long time if the internal memory is slow. Although I've always found transfer estimates vary widely.

Drag and drop works well, if they're important photos they should be backed up too ;). But at least you can double check they've all copied over before you wipe the phone.
 
Semple said:
It might suggest a long time if the internal memory is slow. Although I've always found transfer estimates vary widely.

Drag and drop works well, if they're important photos they should be backed up too ;). But at least you can double check they've all copied over before you wipe the phone.
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Yeah I think I'll double check the Google thing and also drag and drop them.

How much space do we get with Google then? Is it backed up in full quality etc?

Not sure if its backed up because my Google account says I have 15gb free of which I have only used like 0.6gb?
 
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kinger8938 said:
Not sure if its backed up because my Google account says I have 15gb free of which I have only used like 0.6gb?
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If you upload in original quality it will go against the 15GB that most free accounts get, however, if it's in compressed high quality then storage is unlimited.

Easiest way to double check it's in there is to just log into the Google Photos from a desktop/laptop/tablet.

I backup the old fashioned way and just use Smart Switch for my S7 Edge, never taken too long and definitely nowhere near 4 hours to back up the whole phone but depends on your capacity and if you have an SD card as well.
 
Phone photos are stored in the DCIM folder, just like on any digital camera. If it's on SD, then it will be located in the DCIM folder on the SD drive. Then just CTRL-X / CTRL-V the lot to your local PC via Explorer. I thought that how everyone did it with Android phones. Using an external photo app over-complicates things.

The same goes with an MP3 player or a phone with MP3 capability. Again using an external app like iTunes over-complicates things when you can just copy the folders across. As long as you organise your photos e.g. holidays, weddings, Christmas, camping, gardening, DIY etc, then your photos will already be in folders and likewise your MP3s will already be in folders e.g. metal, trance, house, indie, pop, film music. Then just copy the folder structure across.
 
Yeah I just dragged and dropped in the end. Once it got going the timer changed from 3-4 hours to like 30minutes tops I would say.

Skimmed through and it all seems fine so have now reset my phone to factory and it feels quicker for it :) can confirm it's all still on my Google account too so that's good to know
 
Just in case you haven't found it yet, you can check with this link: https://photos.google.com/

Storage is unlimited but photos get resized to 16MP and videos to 1080p. You can change this to original quality but then it will start to use your 15gb Google Drive storage.
 
Being pedantic here, but it's 17GB not 15GB as my Gmail / Drive is saying that I'm using 13.1GB of my 17GB.

pTz8D45.png
 
Mine says 15GB - I think there are 1 and 2GB bonuses you can get for certain stuff.

EDIT: Yeah certain things give/gave you an extra 2GB free (some used to be 1GB earlier).

If you have important pictures like baby stuff, etc. I'd recommend getting something like the RAVPower Filehub (and an SD card) as it makes it easy to backup from phone and easy to have an additional backup.
 
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