Moving video and pictures from a Android phone to a USB stick and back

One of the scenarios I hear from people frequently is regarding their phones storage filling up. The phone call or discussion goes something like this:

They are getting messages from the phone that they can no longer take any photos because there is no storage space left… Usually at this point there is also a message suggesting that they pay for more online storage as well.

These two messages totally confuse the issue for most people that are not technically savvy. If they buy more online storage, the problem on the phone seems to go away for only ever will complete short amount of time and then there is another message asking them to upgrade.

So my purpose in this article and the accompanying video is to attempt to untangle this mess of running out of room on the phone for photos.

First off let's make clear what online storage is and why the phone is using it. When you take a photograph with your phone it is stored in two places. 1) Inside your phone as you would expect, and this does take up physical storage space. 2) The phone also sends a copy of the photograph to online storage. So you have a backup of the photograph. Great, except unless you're paying extra the amount of photos which can be stored online is rather limited. So you start getting messages about running low on storage pretty quickly after sitting up your new phone.

This behaviour of automatically backing up photographs is pretty much the default configuration for phones now days. Some components however are configured a little bit differently and they will not display this message about running low on storage until both the online storage and the phones physical built in storage are full. If this is the situation a phone is in then it's a real mess because usually the phone cannot do software updates Because there is no room to actually put the update.

So what do you do?

Answer: Transfer your photos from the phone's physical memory to another device usually a USB stick or an external hard drive for safekeeping. This does mean that you won't be able to look at all your photos on your phone, but because you now have the photos stored somewhere else you can use other devices to look at them. And if you really want to you can transfer them back to the phone at any time.

The video goes into greater detail of the transfer process but here in brief are the steps just so you get some idea of what is going on and how to do it. These steps are specific To the Android Operating system for phones. IPhones with iPhones the procedure is considerably different. If I can get my hands on a current iPhone I will make a video and article for those as well.

Before proceeding… Phones and anything related to the Internet changes frequently. It is quite possible that the procedures outlined below no longer match your phone. These instructions are specifically geared toward android-based operating system phones and tablets. Use them at your own risk. When in doubt Do Not guess. Take your device to a professional who can provide specific guidance.

1. Buy a USB stick with a Type "C" as shown in the picture below. The USB stick will plug into your phone using the same connection as the one used for charging. If the phone does not have this style of USB connector take the phone to the store when you are purchasing the USB stick and see if you can get a compatible USB stick or an adapter. (In the video I recommend a USB stick with at least 32 gigabytes (GB) of storage. But after thinking about it if you can get 64 GB that would be preferable. Pictures and videos can be quite large now days.)
   
   

   

   A suitable USB stick with a "Type C" connection on the end.
   This represents 90% of all new cell phones. 
   
   

2. Plug the USB stick into the phone. If you get a message indicating that the stick must be "formatted", click "yes" to proceed. This will only occur the first time you use the stick and may not occur at all. The aware though that this formatting process will erase anything previously put on the USB stick. So when in doubt always use a empty stick. However once the initial format is complete the next time you use the same stick the phone will not go through this process and you can add more photos to a partially filled stick.
   
   
3. Now login your phone as you normally would. This is usually the screen you see after initially see right after logging in.
   
   

   

   Example of a phone's 
   "Home Screen" .



4. Swipe up on the home screen so that you reveal all the apps contained in the phone. 
   
   
   
   


5. Find the one named "My Files". Tap on it to open the app.
   
   

   

   Tape on the "My Files"
   app to open it.

   
   
6. We will now copy a few pictures from the phone to your USB stick.
   
   
    a). You should see a "Categories" section under which you will see "Images". Tap on it.
   
   

   

   Tap on "Images " category

   
   
   b) This will display the photos you have in your phone. You should see a small checkmark in a circle at the top of the list of photos. Tap on it to start selecting images. This will automatically select all the images in the phone to be copied to the USB stick. If there is a photo you don't want to copy, tap on the photo in order to clear its checkmark. 
   
   

   

   Tap the checkmark to
   select images.

    
   c) Now, with the pictures selected you want to copy to the USB stick, tap on the three vertical dots located in the upper right corner of your phone. This will display a menu from which you can choose "copy to".
   
   

   

   The 3 dot menu

   
   
   
   d) Choose the USB drive, then tap on the small "copy here" button that appears and your photos will start copying to USB stick.
   
   

   

   Tap the USB stick
   (a.k.a. USB Flash drive)

   
   
   
   

   

   Tap "Copy here"

   
   

   
   

   Photos being copied to
   the USB stick.

    
   e) Now we want to remove USB stick but do not physically pull it out of the phone yet. On most android phones, the safest way to disconnect a USB device from the phone, is to go through a process called "ejecting" or 'un-mounting'. This ensures that there is no corruption when you pull the stick physically out of the phone. On most phones, you go back to your home screen, swipe down and long press on the message that indicates your USB stick has been inserted. This should give you the option to eject the stick, at which point you can safely pull it out of the phone. 
    

   

   At the phone's Home Screen swipe down to
   reveal the option to disconnect
    the USB drive from the phone.

   
   
   

   

   Tap on "Eject" to properly
   disconnect the USB stick
   from the phone.

   
   

   

   A Message will briefly appear
   indicating that it is safe to
   remove the USB stick.

   
   
   7. Now that the USB stick is safely disconnected and stored somewhere else you can go into your phone and delete pictures as you normally would. This process varies a fair bit by phone, but I simply use the same app "My Files" which we used to transfer the pictures to the USB stick to select the checkmark on each picture you want to delete and then it tapping  on the Trashcan, it appears in the upper right-hand corner of the phone.
   
   

   

   Moving photos to the "Trashcan"
   on the phone.

   8. Placing the photos in the phone's trashcan removes them from view but it does not actually delete them. For most android phones you must take one more step, that will actually free up the storage in the phone. You must empty the trashcan. The procedure varies quite a bit amongst android devices. Here is how you do it on Google Pixel4a phone.

a)  Once items are in the phone's Trashcan, they can be permanently deleted by going to the "Hamburger menu". Options will appear on the left side of the phone,



Tap on the "Hamburger menu"
in upper right corner, 





b)  Tap on the word "Trash".





Step 1, Permanently Removing 
files from the phone.





b) Step 2: You will be given the option to delete all the files in the trashcan or alternatively, to select only a few.





Step 2. Confirming the permanent
deletion of files in the Trashcan.




There will be no way to retrieve the files after this final warning. They will be gone permanently. Additionally if you have online back up enabled on your phone these files will also be removed from the online backup service. Being very certain that your files have been successfully copied to the USB stick before this step.
 



Step 3. Final Deletion. Once you tap
  on "Delete" the files are permanently 
removed.If you have online backups
enabled it may be removed as well.

The same process outlined above also works for removing video clips from your phone. Just choose the "videos" category instead of images. This will save you a great deal of space as videos take up a lot more storage.

 It is also possible to copy photos from a USB stick to phone. In that case reverse the above procedure. See the video for more information approximately 15 minutes from the start of the video.


I highly recommend that you watch the entire video since it goes into much more detail then the article can.



Have a great day and take care!
Patrick Clark

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