Saving Pictures from a Samsung Android Smartphone to an SD Card

Wondering how to save your pictures and videos from your android phone onto a memory card? These step by step instructions will show you how to copy all of the pictures from a Samsung Smartphone running on the Android Operating System and how to successfully paste those pictures and videos onto your memory card so they will be nice and safe from any resets or phone issues. It will also allow you to easily transport your pictures from one phone to another if you ever get a replacement.

This article will go over what you need to know for a successful backup of your Samsungs content and I recommend you look over it. If however you would like to skip right to the transfer process and procedure then you can click here to go to that section of the article.

First let’s start with the basics and go from there:

Do you have a memory card?

If you don’t have a memory card then you won’t be able to save your information to one, simple as that. If you don’t have one then you should do some research as to what memory card would be right for you and get one, they are usually pretty affordable and make your life so much easier.

If you’re not sure if you have a memory card, here is how you can check.

Quick Instructions:

Settings > Storage > Unmount SD = You have a Memory Card, Mount SD = No Memory card

Detailed Instructions:

1. Go to your home page,the screen you see when you first turn on your phone (tap the home key, it’s one of the 4 physical buttons on the bottom underneath the phones display, usually looks like a house)
2. Tap on your menu key,(it’s one of the four buttons too, usually on the far left.)
3. Tap settings, (once you tap on the menu key, the phone should show a few options on its screen, one of those options is settings, select settings.)
4. Scroll to and select Storage, (It should give you a list of options to choose from. Scroll down and select the option that has the word storage in it. This option will be different depending on what type of phone you have; it will say either “Storage” or “SD and Phone Storage”, etc. click on that storage option.)**UPDATE: If your phone is running onAndroid version 4.0 or later then after tapping on Settings you might have to then select the Moreoption in the upper right hand corner of the screen in order to see thisStorage option.**
5. Look for an option that says “Mount SD card” or “Unmount SD card”, if the phone is reading a memory card then it will say “Unmount SD card”, the phones basically saying I see a memory card in me, do you want me to unmount it so you can take it out without having to power me off first? If it says “mount”, then the phone is not reading a memory card and it will probably be grayed out not even letting you click it.
6. Don’t click it! If you clicked it, don’t worry it won’t hurt it, just click it again. It needs to read unmount if you want to save stuff to your memory card.

Mount SD = No Memory card

Unmount SD = You have a Memory Card

If that’s too complicated, didn’t make sense, or the issue on your phone won’t let you do that than just look for a physical chip that plugs into your phone, different phones have them in different places, sometimes you have to pull the battery out of the phone to get to it, sometimes it plugs into the side or the bottom, it just depends on the phone. Remember it’s NOT your SIM card that you’re looking for. SD or Memory cards usually say SanDisk on them and often a size like 2GB (two gigabytes) 4GB, 6GB, 8GB, 16GB and up. Some phones come with them some don’t.

If you have a memory card then proceed to the next part of the article, if not click here. If you need to know other methods to save your pictures you can check here. Other methods include computer, Bluetooth, online backups etc.

Is your phone Samsung?

How the phone will allow you to save transfer and manage information will depend on what manufacture made the device. These instructions are for an android Smartphone manufactured by Samsung. If you need instructions on how to backup your android phone and it’s not made by Samsung than you can check out this page. Your device should show “Samsung” branded somewhere onto the phones exterior and should also show the Samsung logo when powering on the phone.

What is your OS?

The Android OS (Operating System) that you’re using will also affect how you manage your information. As newer versions of OS are released it should become easier to transfer and save information. The basic procedure of these instructions should work for most current operating systems 2.3 (Gingerbread) and higher. If you ever want to check your OS on an Android Smartphone then all you need to do is go into your “settings” and click “about phone”. Once you’re in “about phone” then scroll down to where you can see the Android Version… 1.5 is called Cupcake, 1.6 is the Donut, 2.0 and 2.1 are Éclair, 2.2 Froyo, 2.3.x Gingerbread, 3.x.x Honeycomb, 4.0.x Ice Cream Sandwich, 4.1.x and 4.2.x Jelly Bean, etc. I love computer nerds, look at the version release names, there all alphabetical.

Checking your media

If your information is already saved onto your memory card then you won’t need to save or move anything, the works done. Here is how you can check the information saved onto an SD card.

Quick Instructions:

Applications > My Files > External SD > DCIM > Camera, then check and make sure you can see all your pictures there. If not proceed to the next step.

Detailed Instructions:

1. Go to your home page –go to your home page. You can get there by pressing your home key.
2. Go to Applications – tap on and go into your applications. If you see a list of options like manage apps etc then you’re in the wrong applications. You need to go to the applications that show a bunch of icons. For example it’s where you would go to access your picture gallery, downloaded apps, camera etc.
3. Select My Files – look for the icon that says “My Files”, it might even just say “Files”, and then click and open it. Sometimes it likes to hide out in the open. It’s there under your applications though, so find it and open it.
4. Select External SD – you might have to scroll down a bit to select External SD. Once you have it open it will show the files and information currently saved to your memory card. If your pictures are saved to the memory card already then you might be able to see them on that window, if not then you might have to go deeper into the files. Sometimes it will show a DCIM folder. This is usually where pictures and videos are saved.
5. If you see a DCIM folder click it – the DCIM folder might show your pictures directly but often just contains a camera folder and sometimes a thumbnails folder.
6. Tap Camera – here’s what you’re looking for, your pictures should be shown here in the camera folder.

If you don’t see your pictures saved in your External SD then they are going to be saved on your phone. The pictures are most likely going to be on your phone because that is the default storage location on most Samsung phones, but we’ll get to that later in this article.

Locating and copying your media

Alright here is the meat and potatoes, how to backup your pictures and videos to your memory card.

**UPDATE: If you have a Samsung phone running on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, or greater, then How to move pictures and videos to an SD card on a Samsung Android 4.2 smartphone is also a great guide, with pictures, on how to backup files from a Samsung phone to its memory card. If the Android version on your Samsung phone is before the Jelly Bean then feel free to keep reading and enjoy the guide.**

Quick Instructions:

Applications > My Files > DCIM > Camera > Menu key > More > Copy > Select All > Copy > External SD > Paste… Processing… Done.

Detailed Instructions:

1. Select Applications – just like you did when you were checking to see if your information was already saved to the memory card. You’re going to want to go in to the applications in which you see a bunch of icons. It’s usually found on an androids default home page, but can sometimes be moved.
2. Tap My Files – again just like you did in the previous step, and it too might just say “Files” instead of “My Files”.
3. Select DCIM – don’t go into your SD card again, this time you’re looking for the DCIM folder that’s on your phone, not your memory card. So “My Files” then directly to “DCIM”.
4. Tap Camera – Now you should see all the pictures and videos that you have taken.
5. Press the Menu Key – usually the physical key below the phones display. On Samsung phones it’s often the far left key that looks like a partial box with a couple horizontal lines in it. Once you press the menu key some options should pop up.
6. Tap More – this is one of the options that is shown once tapping the menu key. Go ahead and click more.
7. Tap Copy - just select the option that says copy to let your phone know that you want to copy files from this location.
8. Tap Select All – A very important step is making sure that all the photos you want to copy are actually selected. You can go through one at a time and make single selections but if you have a lot of pictures, which many people do, I would just select them all. If you don’t see the “Select All” option then you might have to tap on your menu key again. I have yet to see a Samsung phone that didn’t allow the user to select all in one way shape or form.
9. Hit Copy – once all the media files are selected then tap on copy again, to let the phone know that these are the files you wish to copy. Once you tap on copy the second time the phone should present you with the option to select where you want to actually copy these files to.
10. Select External SD – you might have to scroll down to see the option to select External SD. Once you do select it.
11. Paste – once you have selected your External SD you should have the option to “Paste” or “Paste Here” click that. The phone will then start transferring your media files to your external SD card. It might take a few minutes depending on how many pictures and videos you have on your phone. Note: If you don’t see a Paste option then you might have to click the DCIM folder on the External SD page then hit paste. Maybe even External SD then DCIM then Camera, probably not though it should let you paste directly into External SD.

Check the OS

If the steps mentioned above didn’t look quite right for your phone then you might be on a more recent Operating System like the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich as opposed to the 2.3 Gingerbread (as mentioned earlier in the article) and the process of moving media will be a little different. To backup pictures on a Samsung Android 4.0 smartphone try this instead:

Applications > My Files > SD card > DCIM > Camera > Menu> Select All > Copy/Move (I myself prefer the copy option when it’s available) > EXT SD card (going to be selecting the external SD card) > DCIM(there is usually a DCIM folder on the memory card as well as the phone) > Camera >Paste (you might have to create a folder to paste or move your content to, but typically you can paste just your pictures if they were all selected from the Camera folder located on the phone itself).

Double checking your information

Once your information is copied onto your memory card you might want to make sure that everything transferred correctly. It’s fairly easy to do because you’ve already done it. Just go back to “Checking your media” in the beginning of the article, and follow the steps.

Once you have checked your files here is how you can make sure they are saved without a doubt.

Go and tap on the “Unmount SD card” (also mentioned earlier when we were checking to see if you even had a memory card). Once the SD card is unmounted it will often give you a confirmation screen stating SD card safe to remove, or the option would have changed from “Unmount SD card” to “Mount SD card”. In any case, once it’s unmounted go back and check your pictures on the SD card again. You should not be able to see them after unmounting the SD.

What you’re basically doing is tricking your phone into not being able to see the memory card, therefore once its unmounted all your pictures stored on the memory card should vanish. Along with any other files on your memory card for that matter.

AND YOU’RE DONE

You have successfully saved all of your pictures and videos to your memory card. Congratulations now they are nice and safe, should you ever need to reset your phone, or if something unexpected happens to your phone and it malfunctions, or if you just get a new phone and want to transfer your stuff over to it. Just pull the SD card out of the phone and put it into the replacement. The new phone should automatically recognize the files and put them on your new phone.

Setting up the phone for the future

Now that you have your files saved from your phone to your memory card you should setup your phone so that when you take a picture or record a video it saves directly to your memory card. Then you don’t have to worry about transferring the information again, it will just get automatically saved to you SD card, which should make your life a bit easier.

The exact process varies from phone to phone but here is the process on the typical android Smartphone.

Quick Instructions:

Camera > Settings > Storage > Memory Card

Detailed Instructions:

1. Go into Camera – as though you would I you were going to take a picture or record a video.
2. Tap Settings – it’s often an icon that looks like a little gear.
3. Tap Storage – to set the location you want your pictures and videos to save to.
4. Select Memory Card – the phone option is probably the one selected. You don’t want your pictures saved to your phone any more; you want to select SD card or Memory card that way they get saved to it instead.

Then you’re done and you won’t have to worry about your personal media files any more.

Moving other files the same way

The same process we used to backup your pictures can be used to backup other information from the phone onto your memory card. Just copy the file from the phone and paste it onto the memory card. For example if you have a music folder you want to copy over, you can copy and paste it in the same fashion.

Note: you can save contacts to your memory card as well as your SIM card. If you’re doing a full backup on your phone and need to know how to do that as well you can read the article How to Save Contacts on a Samsung Android Phone.

Other Methods of Managing Files

If you want another way to save your files to a memory card you can download an app to help you. The best one I have seen thus far is the ASTRO File Manager application. Just go to the Play Store and do a search for “File Manager” and you can see many free apps to choose from. And free is always in my price range.

Enjoy

I hope you enjoyed the article and the new found knowledge that your information is now safe on your SD card. If you have any questions or comments or suggestions don’t hesitate to leave them down below. I look forward to reading what you have to say, otherwise enjoy.