Are your photos lost during transfer from Android internal memory to SD card? If so, you may ask: how can I recover my lost photos after transfer? Take it easy! MiniTool Android data recovery software - Mobile Recovery for Android can retrieve transferred photos easily and effectively.

Photos Lost During Transfer Android

I've taken a bunch of pictures with my Samsung Galaxy S7 that I wanted to move from the internal memory to the SD card. After a couple of minutes, I checked my phone again and saw that only 8 out of ±50 pics had been moved to the SD card. Around 15 were still on my device. The content of the SD card could not be accessed and the 20 other pics were gone. I rebooted and could access the SD card normally again, but no trace of the 20 pictures whatsoever.androidcentral

Moving some large files like pictures, videos and music files from Android internal memory to an SD card can be a good choice to free up Android internal storage space for better performance.

However, we recently received some feedbacks from Android users saying they lost pictures while transferring to SD card. And the above example is a case.

Actually, this issue is fairly common and can be caused for some reasons. Perhaps the SD card is disconnected somehow in the middle of the file transfer process, there are some bugs inside the Android phone or some mistaken operations are performed.

Well then, what if photos lost during transfer? Now, do the followings to solve this issue.

Possible Solutions to Pictures Lost during Transfer Problem

If you find pictures are lost while transferring to SD card from Android phone, you can take some measures to solve this problem. And here are two possible solutions.

Top 10 Solutions to Photos on SD Card Gone – Ultimate Guide
Top 10 Solutions to Photos on SD Card Gone – Ultimate Guide

If photos on SD card are gone for no reason, try these solutions in this post to get missing pictures from SD card back. Hope they are helpful.

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Way 1: Restart the Android Phone

Sometimes this problem is caused by some bugs of the Android phone, hence, you can try to restart the phone. If you can't find lost photos, try the second way.

Way 2: Unmount SD Card and Check It in PC

To find the pictures lost during transfer, you may choose to unmount your SD card and check it on a computer. Just go to Settings > Storage > Unmount SD Card so as to remove it safely. And insert it into your computer, then see if you can access any of those lost pictures using Windows Explorer.

If these two ways are useless, the only thing you should do is to recover lost photos on an Android phone if you have lost files while moving folders.

How to Recover Photos Lost During Transfer

How can you recover transferred files on an Android phone? In order to get back the lost pictures during internal-SD card transfer, a piece of professional Android data recovery software can be a good option. Here we highly recommend you to use MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android.

It is greatly helpful for you to retrieve lost photos from the internal memory as well as Android SD card with its two features.

In addition, you can also easily handle multiple data loss accidents and recover not only pictures but also other data including contacts, videos, audios, messages, documents, etc. from multiple Android phones and tablets, for example, Samsung, Google, HUAWEI, HTC and more.

Besides, this freeware is available for Windows 10/8/7.

Now, free download MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android on your computer and then start to recover photos lost during data transfer.

Free Download

To transfer photos to SD card, some of you may directly move pictures using the Android phone or connect the phone to a computer and use cut & paste keys. As a result, you may find some photos disappeared from both an Android phone and SD card during the process. In the following, we will tell you how to recover photos lost during data transfer from phone and SD card.

① Recover Transferred Files from Android Internal Memory

Before solving photos lost during transfer with MiniTool, there is something you need to pay attention to:

  • When using MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android to restore lost photos on Android phone, to guarantee its normal running, you should close any other Android management software.
  • You must root your Android phone at first no matter which Android recovery software you are using. Otherwise, the phone data is inaccessible by the software.

Step 1: Choose a recovery module

  1. Launch MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android on your computer to the main interface where two recovery modules are offered to retrieve photos lost during transfer.
  2. Here, we firstly show you how to use the Recover from Phone feature for photo recovery. Just click it.

choose recover from phone module

Step 2: Analyze the phone

Once your phone is connected to your computer via a USB cable, this freeware will start analyzing this device.

analyzing your Android phone

Step 3: Enable USB debugging

  1. After finishing the analysis, you will be prompted to enable USB debugging.
  2. See the following figure and you can view four different kinds of guidance.
  3. Different Android OS versions have different ways to enable USB debugging. Just check your Android version and follow the detailed graphic procedure to do this work.

enable USB debugging based on Android version

If it is the first time that your phone is connected to the computer where MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android is installed, USB debugging authorization is required. To avoid authorization next time, check Always allow from this computer and click OK on the phone screen.

always allow USB debugging

Tip: Sometimes Android phone won't turn on or get bricked for some reasons. Always allowing USB debugging is necessary before some problems occur so as to recover deleted/lost files in case of some accidents.

Step 4: Choose a scan mode

There are two scan modes: Quick Scan and Deep Scan. Here you should choose the latter one in the event of this issue "photos lost during transfer".

Why? See the following information to find the answer:

Quick Scan: This mode is a fast way but it only recovers contacts, messages, call histories, and WhatsApp messages & attachments.

Deep Scan: This may cost much time to scan your Android phone but it supports recovering more file types including contacts, messages, call records, photos, audios, videos, etc. In order to recover pictures lost during transfer to SD card, you should use it.

two scan modes for Android phone

Step 5: Scan the phone.

  1. This software will begin to analyze and scan your Android phone.
  2. Wait a few minutes to complete the deep scan.
Tip: You can stop the scan during the scan process and this software will load the current data. But for a better scan result, please wait patiently.

Step 6: Select needed pictures and save them to a safe place.

  1. After the scan, MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android will show you its scan result including the deleted files as well as the existing files.
  2. To recover lost pictures while transferring to SD card, choose Camera, App Picture, Screenshot, Picture or Multimedia from the left list and view the items one by one.
  3. Check the items you need and click the Recover button.

choose needed files to recover

Note: You may get a prompt window asking you to upgrade this software if the selected pictures reach the recovery limitation. To get back more photos lost during transfer, we suggest using its full edition from the following button. Then, click the Register button and type the license in the textbox to register this software. To avoid a scan again, do this in the scan result.

register MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android Free

Step 7: Choose a storage path

  1. After clicking the Recover button in the resulting interface, a small window with the default storage path pops up.
  2. If you want to save the selected data to this path, please click Recover in this window.
  3. If you need another storage path, just click Browse to choose a location and finish the photo recovery.

save the selected data to a place

②Recover Photos Lost during Data Transfer from SD Card

If the lost pictures while transferring to SD card cannot be found from Android internal memory, you can try to recover them from the SD card with another feature of MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android.

Step 1: Choose a mode

  1. Run MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android on your computer and go to the main interface.
  2. Click Recover from SD-Card.

choose recover from SD-Card feature

Step 2: Connect your SD card to a PC

  1. Take out the SD card from your Android phone and connect it to your computer.
  2. Then, click the Next button to continue.
Note: You should use an SD card reader to establish the connection. For more information, read What Is SD Card Reader & How To Use It.

Step 3: Choose the selected card

  1. The inserted SD card is displayed along with its label, drive letter and partition size.
  2. Select it and click on the Next button.

choose the inserted SD card

Step 4: Analyzing the card

  1. After that, this software will analyze your SD card and then scan the data saved on this SD card.
  2. Likewise, you can click Stop to cancel the scan process if the desired files are found. But, it is recommended to wait patiently until the scan completes.

Step 5: Recover photos lost during transfer from the SD card

  1. In the result interface, select the corresponding file type and you can see the scanned items shown on the right side.
  2. Here, since you want to recover photos lost during transfer, you should click Camera, Screenshot, App Picture, Picture or Multimedia and check the pictures you need.
  3. After that, click the Recover button in the lower right corner to save these photos to a safe location.

select files to recover

Tip: As for the storage path, it is recommended to save the recovered files to another location rather than the original SD card. Or else, data overwriting will appear and lost pictures may become unrecoverable.

“I lost pictures while transferring to SD card from my Android phone. Thankfully, MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android helped me to get them back within simple clicks.”Click to Tweet

In addition to MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android, you can also use other data recovery software to get lost pictures back, for example, MiniTool Power Data Recovery and MiniTool Photo Recovery.

Tip: Sometimes you may choose to transfer photos, videos, music files, etc. on Android SD card to a computer by cut & paste method but lose those files. In this case, it is easy to recover cut files with MiniTool Power Data Recovery. This post Solved - How to Recover Files Lost after Cut and Paste is worth recommending.

Tips of File Transfer from Android Phone to SD Card

To prevent unexpected data loss while transferring any file to SD card from Android phone memory, here are two useful suggestions for you.

  • It is recommended to copy files from phone memory and then paste them to SD card instead of cutting and moving files since these two ways will delete the original files.
  • Back up your photos, videos or music files to Google Drive, Cloud, a computer, etc. before the data transfer.
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Bottom Line

Photos lost during transfer to SD card from Android phone? Try the possible solutions above. If you fail, how to recover files lost during cut and paste? Just download MiniTool Mobile Recovery for Android on your computer and then use it to recover lost pictures while transferring to SD card with simple clicks.

Free Download

Should you have any suggestions for Android data protection or any questions during using our software to get lost photos on Android phone back, leave your idea in the following comment area or send it to [email protected] now.

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