Coming from my Nexus S to the Galaxy Note, the PC to Phone file transfering experience is a lot different. I do not like what Samsung (or ATT) did to it.
It constantly asks me if I am sure if I want to transfer files to my phone. "Do you want to copy XYZ.xyz to your device? Your device might not be able to play or view this file." It's quite annoying when I'm trying to copy over files that are not all the same file type. Any way to get around this?
I'm on Windows 7 and I prefer to view all my files in the "Details" view type. However all the directories (that I haven't changed) on the phone are defaulted to something different and there is no way to change this but go into EVERY folder and modify them. There has to be an easier way. Is there?
On my Nexus S I had about 1100 music files. Prior to switching phones I copied all the information from my Nexus to my PC so I can transfer to my Note. When I copied the files from my PC to my Note I only had 750 songs and a good amount of my albums were missing 50% of the songs. Is this a limitation of file types supported with the Note?
Can these issues be resolved if I use a microSDHC card reader to put my files on the card?
These issues baffle me because they're both made by Samsung. Only thing I can think of is that the Nexus was Google's baby and they didn't want limitations put on it, but the Note wasn't.
Thanks for reading.
-Chris
Hey !
I've searched the web as well as the forum but i didn't find any solution and it seems i'm not the only one wanting to do that.
Is it possible to see hidden folders of internal sdcard through MTP ?
I really talk about hidden folder like ".android_secure", not the photos that aren't yet scanned by the media scanner service.
In my windows environment i already set the view all hidden files/folders as well as view system files.
If i have to change folders permissions through terminal what are the correct permissions i should put ?
Thanks for the help !!
Am i the only having that problem ?
Do you guys see the hidden folders through mtp connexion ?
If you'd bother reading a bit before asking questions, you might have the answer already.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol
MTP and PTP specifically overcome this issue by making the unit of managed storage a local file rather than an entire (possibly very large) unit of mass storage at the block level. In this way, MTP works like a transactional file system - either the entire file is written/read or nothing.
More or less, it is designed to keep hidden what should be hidden stick to USB storage or FTP/SCP.
PS: can't believe we're using a transfer protocol designed by Microsoft in a Linux-based system mastered by Google. The horror, the pain... no wonder it doesn't work on my Mac!
VAXXi said:
If you'd bother reading a bit before asking questions, you might have the answer already.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol
MTP and PTP specifically overcome this issue by making the unit of managed storage a local file rather than an entire (possibly very large) unit of mass storage at the block level. In this way, MTP works like a transactional file system - either the entire file is written/read or nothing.
More or less, it is designed to keep hidden what should be hidden stick to USB storage or FTP/SCP.
PS: can't believe we're using a transfer protocol designed by Microsoft in a Linux-based system mastered by Google. The horror, the pain... no wonder it doesn't work on my Mac!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thx for the link ! I knew what mtp is but its always good to refresh things up
I read the whole article and unfortunately it doesn't answer my question.
I understood that its the same for all of us meaning that we are not able to see hidden folders.
But the main question is if there is a way to bypass this behavior ? Where is this defined exactly ?
It seems according to the article that its not on the file permission layer ? Should it be at partition level ? How can mtp know what to share with the host ?
It's not a "behaviour" per se, but more/less a database. Remember that media scanner program which wakes up every time you change something on your SD card, be it internal or external ? it simply keeps a "database" of files which are presented to the MTP client (your computer) and hides away the phone's internal folders which are not supposed to be seen by the end-user.
Theoretically, this is done in order to have the iPhone-like behaviour: seeing the entire device memory as one big unified storage which you can fill as you want (no more of those partition size limitations which brought us the app2sd hacks). In my opinion, it's more or less just a small step done in order to "secure" phones for DRM protected content.
Studios and media companies require devices to have such measures of protection in order to allow you to sell media content (like movies, books, etc) and since Google wants to push its business further with the Play Store, it needs to cave in to the studios' demands. In the future, it will probably even become illegal (DMCA-style) for me to give you the information below
Back to the technical part of our show now.
At the first boot in the life of the device, Media Scanner will look under /system/media and index everything there. After that, it will scan everything under /mnt/sdcard (hence your external SD card too, if you have one, as it's mounted under /mnt/sdcard/external_sd). On some devices, you have an "internal.db" file and one "external-123xyz.db" file; that's a unique ID of the SD card which was scanned. The idea here is you might have 2-3 SD cards which you swap often, and it's not nice to do a full rescan each time you change the SD card. These databases are in /dbdata/databases/com.android.providers.media (on my phone, there is only one "external.db" for example).
So what you're looking for is a way to populate this database with all the files found by the Media Scanner. But Media Scanner doesn't want you to see the hidden folders you mentioned above. So, you get an application which doesn't ignore them, like Rescan SD Card! or SDrescan.
Happy now ?
Thank you very much i really enjoyed reading the explanation as it answers completely my questions and it makes sense !
Ill give a try to the apps but i'm also curious to investigate on those files
Cheers
PS. Is this a disguised way to support non open source protocols ?
Well, you could poke around inside the database with sqlite if you want. But don't really see what's so interesting about them.
It is just another protocol which is supported, which happens to be designed by Microsoft (and probably licensed/paid by Google to be used in Android). I understand the technical explanation behind this decision, but I'm also wary that someday UMS will be disabled by default and enabling it will disable content purchasing for that device (just like having a rooted phone now disables some "sensitive" apps, like banking and online TV).
As a system admin its interesting to know whats happening on my system
As a hobby its interesting for my personal knowledge
And from a development point of view it gives me some ideas for maybe future apps
You say that its just another protocol which is supported but to my understanding there are not so many of them ! So i would say that Google was kind of forced to use the MTP method, first from a hardware point of view and second to be compliant with the rest of the world.
Is there any other protocol that could suite their needs ? Since USB mass storage is not usable on some devices and MTP is well spead.
.HiddenAndroid folders in Win - Here Yesterday, Gone Tomorrow
<Win 7 and GN2>
What's curious and a bit frustrating to me is that, yesterday, when I mounted my device ALL of the hidden (.folders and .files) were visible and searchable. Today, when I went to explore some more, all are gone. I understand that I can use a 3rd party app, just can't figure out why it was visible yesterday and not today.
Hmmph
Did you ever resolve this issue? I really hate MTP for several reasons but this is one of the reasons why! I need to back up all my directories on the SDCard because some apps store them as hidden files in hidden directories. Furthermore, I came across the Play Store bug that requires me to delete a "temp.asec" file in the ".android_secure" directory, but of course it is not visible.
In a post further up it was suggested to use a "Rescan" app to force the DB to include hidden files/directories, but I have tried no less than 4 of these apps, and all they do is trigger the built-in android media scan, which is the problem in the first place!
So has anyone ever been able to access hidden files and directories using MTP?
EDIT: I have an HTC phone that actually shows hidden files and directories, so they have obviously implemented their own media scan. The problem I am currently having is on a Samsung phone (Epic 4G touch)
It may depend on the implementation. For example, using stock rom for the phone doesn't show some files and folders, for example folders starting with dot. But if you use Neatrom Lite it will show all files and folders.
Flash forward about 6 years and Samsung still does not show hidden folders/files when viewing the phone contents in Windows File Explorer, but HTC does.
The reason this is still a problem for me, is that I want to backup the contents of a particular directory (WhatsApp) which contains some hidden folders, so I can restore it anytime on a new phone or the same phone.
I recently switched from HTC to Samsung and alas, it seems the problem with this implementation still exists. Anyone found a workaround to this to allow File Explorer to see the hidden folders?
Update: It appears that hidden .nomedia files (and probably others) appear under regular folders, so the problem is limited to hidden folders themselves
Hi, I was digging through my external mem on my SGS2 and it is quite a mess. Folders like sounds, pictures, application folders, burstlyImageCache (whatever that is, i got the cache part) scattered all over the place. In windows I can choose where to install applications so in my /Program Files folder i have things like Multimedia, OfficePRogs, Tools and then install things like imaging/video editing software under multimedia, various system tools under Tools etc.
My question is, can i do something similar with Android? Can i organize the folders a bit by putting them in sub-folders to tidy things up a bit?
Any suggestions would really be appreciated!
Cheers,
-Davidson
Oops, seem to have cross posted due to having two tabs open, cant make sense of the changed layout!
Mods please feel free to delete this thread if no one has answered!
Hi all!
An oldie but a goldie!
I've changed from S6 32g, to S6Eedge 64g since I was running out of space.
Now I need to transfer 4000 photos (sorted by date) to the new phone. A direct copy from PC converts all the created dates to the current date (ie when transfer is done) which as you can imagine screws everything up royally!
Ive tried and failed in many many many ways including:
Samsung Smart Switch
FTP
Syncing programs from pc to phone
ADB push
WEBdav
Hail marys, and praying to every god out there
They all bugger up the dates...........
The ONLY ONLY way Ive found out that works is by zipping up the original files, transferring to new phone, and unzipping locally with Total Commander. ONLY Total Commander seems to be able to unzip and preserve the dates, all the other file managers and extracting programs (I tried 10-15) out there can NOT manage this. Total Commander probably works cuz im rooted, and it can use this.
HOWEVER this only worked with smaller directories, but my main pics folder is a 8 gig compressed zip, and when I try the same way Total Commander only manages to unzip the same 700 files and stops (anyone else come across this limitation?). So the only way I can manage is to zip up the original files in 7-8 different zip files and unzip locally individually, which is a big hassle.
Ive googled many threads on this problem, most of them were unresolved and some solutions refer to previous android versions or software and dont work anymore.
I'm hoping that you all dont spend four days setting up a new phone everytime ( home screen and app settings is a whole different drama! Thank you Titanium backup! iOS really has the jump on Andoird when it comes to changing phones...)
The only thing I can think of which I havent tried yet is USB OTG, since I dont have the cable. Anyone can confirm whether this method keeps the dates unchnaged?
So in your experience, whats the best way of doing this? How do you guys do it?
To be honest for 4 thousand photos swapping back and forth between devices you are better off using a could storage. Especially if you want to minimise the risk of loosing them all if something goes wrong. All zip folders will extract with the original date it. You could try and torrent you DCIM folder and language download it to your computer. Torrents download with their file dates intact.
Thanks for your reply!
IMHO this cloud thing is actually whats causing so many of the problems in hardware design these days in general.
Why is it so hard for companies to realise that when you are two floors underground, or roaming or even in middle of central london, net connection is not guaranteed......
Let alone the speed, convenience, security issues etc etc etc
As to the loss risk, I back them up on my home pcs regularly with a sync application, which ironically enough works perfectly well thank god!
So for me cloud is a no go....
As to your other suggestion, sounds great
Can I torrent just on the local net? ie direct from phone to pc?
Any apps you can reccomend? will save me trawling through a hundred crap apps in GPlay.
Thanks again for your time, its appreciated!
PS re what you said about all zips extracting correctly. Can you try on your device? Zip up a few small old files on your pc, transfer the zip to phone, extract there, and check the dates.
All except one of the ones I have tried do it, as mentioned above.
PPS Gave your torrent suggestion a go, no joy. All the transferred files had the new date ;-(.
I tried the the utorrent android app...
Update and for future help for people who will come across this issue.
I managed it!
I used Total Commander on the phone through the LAN plugin function, to access my backup folder on the pc, select all files and copy to local phone directory.
You need to initiate the copy from the PHONE on Total Commander, ie pull the files onto the phone, dont copy them by drag and drop from PC.
It took a while but it was done!
Dates and timestamps all preserved and correct!
Hello all, I have received a TON of false positives in my search for whether this is even possible.
In windows, a shortcut to a file or folder can be stored in any folder.
So far in Android, a shortcut can only be placed on the home screen, and AFAIK does not have a corresponding file that can be found in the root browser.
I am trying to trick Handshaker into giving me access to my EXTERNAL SD, and the only way I can think of is to create a shortcut somewhere on the internal SD that zips on over to the card where all my media (100Gb+) is stored.
I'm on a OPX, so internal storage BARELY COVERS apps. No switcheroo action is reasonably doable.
As an aside, is this whole Mac incompatibility thing a vestigial grudge? It must take a lot of effort to KEEP usb from working as it should. Are there other apps besides the "works when it feels like it" Android File Transfer or "installs weird **** on your phone" HandShaker that allow you to move around YOUR OWN FILES without using the cloud? The amount of web silence and lack of development is stunning to me. Maybe I need to refine my search terms?? Unlikely. I've tried many tens of iterations.
The search for answers here results in a mountain of false-positives as well.
Thanks for taking the time to at least read this.
Cheers.