Android phone photo download not showing thumbnails

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[LHiggins]

Hello,

I have a Moto G6 phone and I am preparing to upgrade to a MotoG  5G Stylus. I have been trying to get all of my pictures off the phone and stored on my laptop, but I keep running into a weird issue.

When I hook up the phone to my laptop and choose transfer Photos, I can see my Camera folder and the phone starts to open the file where all of those photos are stored. It will get about halfway through with thumbnails of each photo showing so that I can see what they are – but then it stops showing the thumbnails, just the photo icon, for the rest. The images will open individually if I click on them, but I can’t see them unless I open them one by one.

This makes it very difficult to save photos onto the laptop since I can’t see what each is a photo of and there’s no easy way to move them into folders on the laptop.

A screenshot of what it looks like is attached:

From the arrow, all images are just the photo icons – not the thumbnails as the first are.

I believe I have a 32 GB microSD card – and the photos take up about 4 1/2 GB – so it isn’t that the card is running out of space.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks!

• This topic was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by LHiggins.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by LHiggins.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by LHiggins.

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Just a quick update so that I can check off the replies via email.

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[Phil F]

Do you have an SD card slot on your laptop? If so and if you have saved the microSD to SD adapter usually present when you bought the memory card, you could remove the card from the phone and read it directly.

You appear to be using File Explorer to view your photos. My (infrequent) experience in downloading photos from the phone is that it is slow, cumbersome and error prone. The free  FastStone Image Viewer is an interesting tool for viewing, organizing and editing your photos.

HTH. Regards, Phil

Update: I had been using FastStone for organizing photos already downloaded. I just tried it out on downloading from my Pixel 6a phone with about 300 photos on its Camera file. It’s a lot friendlier than File Explorer.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Phil F. Reason: Added testing info

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wavy

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Hi Phil and thanks for those suggestions! Putting the micro SD card directly into the laptop sounds like a good idea – and I have a USB card reader that has a micro SD card slot, so I may give that a try.

Just wondering why this happens though – can File Explorer only read a limited number of files? Seems that if I drag the unviewable files over to the laptop, they then do have the thumbnails. But that does make it harder to actually download into separate folders since I can’t see them till they are off of the phone.

I’ll also look into  FastStone Image Viewer as an alternative.

Thanks for the reply – hopefully one of these suggestions will work!

LH

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LHiggins wrote:

I believe I have a 32 GB microSD card

Formatted to FAT32 or NTFS ?

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To be honest – I really have no idea. It’s an old card that I moved from my previous phone to this one about 3 years ago – so I can’t really say which it is. Is there a way to tell without removing it?

Would the formatting cause this issue?

And getting a new card for my new phone – which way should that be formatted?

Thanks!

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LHiggins wrote:

Would the formatting cause this issue?

My bad. I though the microSD card is inserted in your PC.
Have no idea what format is used by Android.

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Alex5723 wrote:

Have no idea what format is used by Android.

Whew – good – LOL! I was starting to worry that I wouldn’t use the “right” formatting for the new card on the new phone. The only “format” I remember is either internal or portable storage.

Thanks for the help!!

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Have you tried downloading from your Android directly to your PC ?

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LHiggins

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Alex5723 wrote:

Have you tried downloading from your Android directly to your PC ?

Not sure what you mean – what I do is connect my phone to my PC and then look at the photos folder on the phone and attempt to move pictures from there to the PC. The problem is, I can’t “see” what some of them are since the thumbnails aren’t showing.

I haven’t tried to remove the card from the phone and put it directly into the PC.

Thanks!

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This may not solve your problem but your old phone (the Moto G6) probably has a 12 MP (megapixel)camera. If you look at the first table here:

https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/35132/~/what-is-the-picture-storage-capacity-for-memory-cards%3F

under the 12MP and 4GB entry you’ll see 953 photos. You’ve got 4.5 GB of photos so let’s say that’s 1000 photos. That’s 1000 thumbnail images the phone is trying to load in on your screen shot. That’s a lot and it may just take some time for your phone to do that. The specs for the G6

https://www.phonearena.com/phones/Motorola-Moto-G6_id10788#:~:text=The%20Motorola%20Moto%20G6%20is,32GB%20or%2064GB%20internal%20memory.

indicate it may come with as little as 3 GB of memory and if your phone has that little memory you might just be taxing the phone’s capabilities.

Also, in your screen shot the naming system changes right where the thumbnails stop and the generic photo icons begin. I don’t know what, if anything, that means but do you ever see thumbnails of the pictures with the new naming system?

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LHiggins

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Thanks for the detailed info. I’ll take a look and post back, but yes, the smaller RAM is one of the reasons I am getting a new phone – will have 4GB. Not a huge difference, but should be a little more breathing room!

Thanks – will take a look and post back.

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DrBonzo

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LH,

Have you considered just copying your entire Camera folder to your laptop, then culling out the photos that you don’t want. If you use FastStone, you can import the photos from your phone and select or organize them by date.

Did you perchance move your memory card from your old phone to your Moto G6 without formatting it on the newer phone? The changing of the naming formats suggests a change in the Camera app being used. When I had phones that supported SD cards, I always formatted the card on the new phone and usually bought a new card for a new phone, preferring problem avoidance over problem-solving.

Also, you may find this WD article on memory cards  useful.

HTH. Regards, Phil

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Thanks to everyone for the help!

PhilF – I think you nailed the problem of why some are visible and some not:

Phil F wrote:

Did you perchance move your memory card from your old phone to your Moto G6 without formatting it on the newer phone? The changing of the naming formats suggests a change in the Camera app being used.

It seems that this conundrum IS due to the fact that I used the same SD card in my new MotoG6 as I did in my old LG L33. That seems to be where the file naming issue comes into play.

And Dr. Bonzo,I think you are also right about the number of photos:

DrBonzo wrote:

You’ve got 4.5 GB of photos so let’s say that’s 1000 photos. That’s 1000 thumbnail images the phone is trying to load in on your screen shot. That’s a lot and it may just take some time for your phone to do that.

What I finally did was to make 2 folders on my PC – one named “All the Photos from Moto that I can see thumbnails” and one called “All the Photos from Moto that I can’s see thumbnails”. I could copy them all, and once I pasted the ones that were just icons on the phone into the folder on the PC – I could then see the thumbnails, so I can sort them now that I know what they are.

As to the size – between the two folders, there are nearly 1400 photos, so that is a lot for the phone to process, and the fact that some were taken with the new camera and stored on the old SD card seems to have led to the issue.

Interesting that I can view them all on my phone – it is just when I try to hook up the phone to the PC to download – that file name comes into play.

And also interesting – it seems that ALL of the photos that I could see when the phone is connected to the PC were taken on my old LG – since I guess the card was formatted for that phone. None of the ones I’ve taken with the Moto show as thumbnails when the phone is connected.

But thankfully – I can see them all when they have been copied into a folder on the PC. Pretty convoluted explanation, but I believe you both nailed it, and now at least I can try to sort them all into folders on the PC.

Thanks, too, for the SD card link – interesting especially the Do’s and Don’ts.

And – I do have a new SD card for the new phone – no more trying to use the same one!

Phil F wrote:

When I had phones that supported SD cards, I always formatted the card on the new phone and usually bought a new card for a new phone, preferring problem avoidance over problem-solving.

Couldn’t agree more – and thanks again for all of the help figuring this out! Very much appreciated, everyone!

LH

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DrBonzo, Phil F

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You could also try sorting in reverse. May be first come first see if the limitation is from memory.

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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LHiggins

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OK – thought I had posted a reply, but got the “are you sure you want to do that” warning! So I’ll try again – LOL!

Thanks for the suggestion – and yes, I did try sorting in the other order – same result. I think it really has to do with using the card in two different phones and the card not being “formatted” for the newer one.

Thanks again for the help!

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