Help Help Please: Photos Being Stored on Phone instead of SD Card

[3guesses]

Hi,

I have a Doogee X5 Pro handset running Android 5.1 with a 64GB microSD card. Until today it has been storing photos taken with the camera on the SD card, but for some reason it is now storing them in the phone's internal storage. I haven't changed anything. If I go into Camera->Settings it shows "Store location" set to I. If I go into File Manager->SD card->DCIM->Camera I can see all of the photos I took previously. If I go into File Manager->Phone storage->DCIM->Camera I can see the photos I took today, but I can't seem to find any way to move them to the SD card.

Can anybody help? Obviously I would like the phone to use the SD card for photo storage again, and I want to move the photos in the phone's storage to the SD card.

TIA.

 

[svim]

Try re-seating your microSD card just to make sure it's mounted properly into its card slot. Then go into your phone's Settings >> Application manager, find the Camera app and tap the 'Force stop' button and then the 'Clear cache' button. Start up the Camera app again and in its Settings check if the default save location is still to your card. It might not hurt to restart your Doogee if you haven't in a while, maybe the whole problem is just a glitch and a simple reboot often clears up a lot of miscellaneous issues.

 

[3guesses]

Thanks for the suggestions. Here are my findings:

• I couldn't actually find the Camera app. It wasn't listed in Settings->Apps->Running or even in Settings->Apps->All
• In Settings->Storage I changed the "Default write disk" to SD Card (it was set to Phone storage) and then the Camera started using the SD card. I'm not quite sure what could have changed this back to Phone storage as it certainly wasn't me.
• Using File Manager I still couldn't move the image files from the camera storage to the SD card. The best I could do was copy them from the phone storage and then paste them into the SD card. On my old phone (LG L20) I could move files from the (very limited) phone storage to the SD card using File Manager.

One strange thing was that when I went back into Settings->Storage just now it had once more reverted to Phone storage. I have no idea how this had again happened. Is this perhaps because the SD card needs re-seating?

Also, can you really not move files using File Manger under Android 5.1???

 

[3guesses]

OK, so I've found that the storage gets switched back to Phone when I connect the handset to my laptop via USB (to copy files from the SD card). Very annoying - I'll have to remember to switch it back every time.

Also I discovered that a couple of apps are intalled partly on the phone's memory and partly on the SD card - I want all apps on the phone and all data on the SD card. Is it possible to move those two app so that they are enitrely on the phone (without uninstalling and re-installing)?

 

[sheifa_mes]

Hi,

I have a Doogee X5 Pro handset running Android 5.1 with a 64GB microSD card. Until today it has been storing photos taken with the camera on the SD card, but for some reason it is now storing them in the phone's internal storage. I haven't changed anything. If I go into Camera->Settings it shows "Store location" set to I. If I go into File Manager->SD card->DCIM->Camera I can see all of the photos I took previously. If I go into File Manager->Phone storage->DCIM->Camera I can see the photos I took today, but I can't seem to find any way to move them to the SD card.

Can anybody help? Obviously I would like the phone to use the SD card for photo storage again, and I want to move the photos in the phone's storage to the SD card.

TIA.

You can take help of third party apps like App2SD, Move App to SD card and Link2SD. However ,please keep in mind about the size of the apps you need to transfer to internal memory.

 

[Hadron]

OK, so I've found that the storage gets switched back to Phone when I connect the handset to my laptop via USB (to copy files from the SD card). Very annoying - I'll have to remember to switch it back every time.

Curious: unmounting the sd to copy over USB is Android 2.x behaviour. Does this phone still use USB mass storage rather than MTP (which has been what Android uses since 4.0)? Either way it's a foul up on the manufacturer's part that it doesn't revert after you disconnect USB, but it's strange that it does it in the first place these days.

Also I discovered that a couple of apps are intalled partly on the phone's memory and partly on the SD card - I want all apps on the phone and all data on the SD card. Is it possible to move those two app so that they are enitrely on the phone (without uninstalling and re-installing)?

See whether the app has the option to choose where the data are stored. Or see whether you have the option to move apps to SD, in which case can you move these two back to phone?

(I'm not sure what exactly you mean by partly on phone and partly on sd, so it's hard to be more precise. The old "move to sd" moves apps partially, but without root you can't usually see what parts are moved and what isn't, so I'm not sure it's that you are talking about).

 

[3guesses]

You can take help of third party apps like App2SD, Move App to SD card and Link2SD. However ,please keep in mind about the size of the apps you need to transfer to internal memory.

Thank, but it's no the storage of the apps that's the issue but the storage of the photos.

 

[3guesses]

Curious: unmounting the sd to copy over USB is Android 2.x behaviour. Does this phone still use USB mass storage rather than MTP (which has been what Android uses since 4.0)? Either way it's a foul up on the manufacturer's part that it doesn't revert after you disconnect USB, but it's strange that it does it in the first place these days.

When I connect my phone to my laptop I get two options: "Connected as USB Storage. Touch for other USB options." and "USB connected. Touch to copy files to/from your computer." I select the latter and then the SD card is accessible via Explorer in Windows.

See whether the app has the option to choose where the data are stored. Or see whether you have the option to move apps to SD, in which case can you move these two back to phone?

(I'm not sure what exactly you mean by partly on phone and partly on sd, so it's hard to be more precise. The old "move to sd" moves apps partially, but without root you can't usually see what parts are moved and what isn't, so I'm not sure it's that you are talking about).

I've just been into Settings->Apps and checked a few of the apps and now I can't find any that are stored partially on the SD card - I guess those affected were sorted out when I updated them?

I'd still like to know how to move my photos from internal storage to the SD card (rather than having to copy and paste them, then manally delete them from internal storage).

 

[Hadron]

Copy then delete after the copy is successful is the safest way, though if you are confident that there are no problems with copying then a "move" would do it all in one go. You don't even need to use a computer to do this:

If you use a file explorer app that supports 2 tabs this can be very simple to do. The most efficient I've found is X-Plore file manager: view the source directory in one tab & the directory you want to move to in the other, select the files you want to move and click the "move" action icon - it asks you whether you want to move them to the directory you have selected in the other tab, and that's it. The interface is a bit businer than most file explorers, but once you learn how it works (and maybe customise it a little to your tastes) it is extremely efficient for tasks like this.

As for the USB connection, it's not easy to tell USB Mass Storage from MTP just from how it looks to Windows, because either way you see the files in Windows Explorer. But if you can't access the SD card from the phone while the computer is accessing it then that's USB Mass Storage. It has the advantage that you can run file recovery software from the computer if you need to, but the disadvantage that the phone can't use the card at the same time as the computer. I'm just a bit surprised because MTP has been the norm for about 4-5 years now.

 

[3guesses]

Copy then delete after the copy is successful is the safest way, though if you are confident that there are no problems with copying then a "move" would do it all in one go. You don't even need to use a computer to do this:

If you use a file explorer app that supports 2 tabs this can be very simple to do. The most efficient I've found is X-Plore file manager: view the source directory in one tab & the directory you want to move to in the other, select the files you want to move and click the "move" action icon - it asks you whether you want to move them to the directory you have selected in the other tab, and that's it. The interface is a bit businer than most file explorers, but once you learn how it works (and maybe customise it a little to your tastes) it is extremely efficient for tasks like this.

As for the USB connection, it's not easy to tell USB Mass Storage from MTP just from how it looks to Windows, because either way you see the files in Windows Explorer. But if you can't access the SD card from the phone while the computer is accessing it then that's USB Mass Storage. It has the advantage that you can run file recovery software from the computer if you need to, but the disadvantage that the phone can't use the card at the same time as the computer. I'm just a bit surprised because MTP has been the norm for about 4-5 years now.

OK, so I tried it again last night. When I connect the phone I have the choice of behaviour: if I select "USB Storage" then I have the problem as previously described; if I choose "MTP" then it doesn't change the storage behaviour on the handset. However, MTP does not work on my XP laptop (it does work on my Win7 laptop). Also, MTP doesn't assign a drive letter in Windows and generally seems a bit more flaky.

 

[Hadron]

I can imagine it doesn't assign a drive letter, because it's not the same as USB mass storage (I don't use Windows much myself, hence the "imagine"). Flaky is funny though, because MTP is actually a Microsoft protocol!

But for just moving things within the phone, a file browser/explorer app should be able to do that without needing a computer.

 

[Slug]

However, MTP does not work on my XP laptop (it does work on my Win7 laptop).

Is your WinXP patched to-date i.e. both SP1 & SP2 installed?

Also, MTP doesn't assign a drive letter in Windows and generally seems a bit more flaky.

No drive letter is assigned because the device is recognised as a discrete entity with its own storage volumes e.g. internal & external storage. This is expected behaviour with MTP.