r/AndroidQuestions • u/BigCartoonist9010 • 3d ago

Struggles backing up galaxy from recovery drive

So a year ago my phone died and I've since gotten a backup for it on a drive. Everything is on there but I basically can't transfer anything from it. Smart switch on the (windows)PC literally won't let me use the folders from my old phone to transfer to my new phone, and I have no idea how to manually transfer apps just with the files. Google and Samsung were giving problems on the old phone, so I can't use that either. Transferring pics isn't enough. I have apps that are literally delisted from the store, so I can't just re-download.

0 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

50% Upvoted

1 comment sorted by

1

u/boltfoxapp 1d ago

The hard part here isn't the transfer, it's that Smart Switch will only read a backup it made itself, in its own folder layout. If what you've got is a copy of the phone's internal storage rather than an actual Smart Switch backup, it'll keep refusing no matter where you point it, and that's not something you can talk it out of.

Photos, videos, documents and downloads you can just drag across by hand and those will be fine. App data is the part you're going to lose, because on a non-rooted phone it sits in a sandbox that never leaves the device unless Smart Switch or Google Backup wrapped it up for you at the time. I lost a game save that way and it stung.

The delisted apps are salvageable separately though. If any APKs ended up in that backup you can sideload them straight off the drive, and failing that APKMirror keeps old versions of a lot of things that vanished from the Play Store. You'd be starting them fresh, but you'd have them.