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My trusty old 16GB micro SD card that has been with me through 4 phones is finally full. So I figured no biggie; I'll just buy a new (64GB) card, copy all the files down to my PC (which has no card reader, just USB ports), then up to the new card.

The issue I'm having is that copy step. I have the card in a Note4, connected to a Windows 8 PC via USB. I can see the card, but if I just try to drag-and-drop copy folders to my PC, it invariably ends with a dialog saying:

"A device attached to the system is not functioning".

I'm guessing its on largeish files, as I've noticed .mp4's in particular will just cause Windows explorer to go out to lunch and never come back when I try to copy them individually.

It seems like this ought to be the simplest thing in the world to do. What am I missing?

T.E.D.
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2 Answers2

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Sometimes you can not move files like this using USB. I have faced this issue there are two solutions for this:

1.You can use external card reader and then make copy.

  1. Instead of Drag and Drop open your sd-card window and location where you want to put the files. Then Select folders->copy them and without closing the window paste on the destination.
Dalvik
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As pointed out in my comment on the question: Copying the SD card while it's mounted in your device might cause you some "data loss". So e.g. the .android_secure directory is "locked down" and won't be exposed to your computer; if you have apps installed on your card, they would "break".

I understand a card reader is not the preferred option for you. So before pointing out possible alternatives, let's take precautions:

if you have apps installed on your card, first move them back to internal storage

There might be other places dealt with similarly – but I am not aware of them. If there seem to be "strange problems" after having finally switched your cards, you can always revert back to your "old card" while figuring out what might have gone wrong.

Now the approaches:

Using ADB via USB

can be quite a universal tool (please check our adb tag-wiki for some details and hints, if you don't know it). Might require a little installation (the tag-wiki has hints on keeping that minimal), but it's worth it – not only for this case!

  • turn on on your device
  • connect it to your PC with the USB cable
  • assuming your device runs Android >= 4.3: at first connect, on your device confirm the "authorization" of your computer
  • on your PC, open a command prompt – and change to the directory you have the ADB executable placed (unless it's in your PATH)
  • adb pull /sdcard \path\to\target now would pull all files from your device's SD card

Using something "wireless"

Multiple choices here:

All in all, to much to elaborate in a single answer here :)

Community
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Izzy
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