Quickly synchronize large folders on Android 4 Kitkat without taking out SD Card

Test Folder is a 9.5GB folder containing about 47,000 files.

I measured it take 22 (twenty-two) minutes over Wi-Fi just to display what needs to be synchronized, without doing the actual synchronization itself over FTP.
Whereas physically taking out the SD card and doing the same process can be measured in seconds.

Unless we install CyanogenMod or another Mod instead of stock software, we cannot connect the phone to PC with a USB cable and have the SD Card show up as a drive letter, which would solve the problem... so how do people synchronize large folders on Android 4 KitKat?


It takes only seconds to set up and not that long to do the actual synchronization on the same phone running non-stock software which allows the phone's SD Card to show up as a drive letter which makes the sync process quick a& easy. But on stock software, SD Card cannot show up as a drive letter on PC, making the sync process unbearably long...

This is likely device-specific. Every smartphone I've owned allows its internal & external SD cards to show up as drive letters when plugged into a PC. Granted, they sometimes pop up with annoying installer interfaces instead of media sync, but all you have to do is pull down the notifications panel, touch "USB connected as installer" and switch it to "Media Sync" (or something similar).

Every smartphone I've owned allows its internal & external SD cards to show up as drive letters when plugged into a PC.

Click to expand...

Yup. This is how I do it too. The last two phones (at least) I had did that. Current is HTC DNA, previous was Droid X.

I understand you are saying that this is device specific and not software specific... Do any of your devices run Android 4.4 KitKat, because that's the version that supposedly broke this feature regardless of device using it, unless the device is using modified software instead of official Android 4.4 KitKat...

4.4.2 is what is on my device. Stock ROM, nothing unlocked or modded.

My device is modified now (and has been for a while), but recently messing around with a leaked version of stock lollipop I had the occasion (several of them) to access the phone via a PC on stock, unrooted, unmodified 4.4 and yes, it worked fine.

It worked fine before ever rooting/modifying, but I say all this to allay concerns of a faulty memory; the experience was as recent as last week, after using the official LG builds of 4.4, totally stock restored to factory condition from LG software.

Thank you for posting that.
So Samsung themselves did this on Galaxy phones... I'm beside myself with anger at them....

I just got Galaxy S5 and out of the box it has a terminal battery killing problem I found out about the hard way. Their DCMProvider app kills the battery unless Samsung Apps are updated, which people don't do... because people don't use most Samsung apps... but the battery killer runs by default of course, without you even knowing or needing it, and it's busy at work killing your battery...

Then when I found out why the battery is dying so quickly, I updated Samsung apps and this solved the problem. They offered to update Samsung S health as well (measures your heart beat etc.). I accepted and found out the hard way that new update inserts an AUDIO - visual popup that runs randomly and CANNOT be turned off in options. We are talking about an AUDIO popup, wow.

Now you tell me that the SD Card drive letter lack of options is Samsung Galaxy specific and not Android Kitkat specific...

Last week they returned my Galaxy S4, with LCD physically SEPARATED from the rest of the body of the phone, and I spent two days on the phone with their so called "Executive Customer Relations" department with no resolution whatsoever to what they did... Gonna call them now again.

Not good.

Yep, after my Galaxy S3 I vowed never again to own a Samsung product. Without the stellar developers at XDA making de-bloated, fast-running touchwiz based ROMs, I never would have lasted through my contract. Touchwiz in stock form is the most horrid of the interfaces, bar none. Not necessarily because of the interface itself, but because of its bloated slowing down of an otherwise perfectly fine device.

Never again Samsung, never again. LG has seriously impressed me with the G3, as has the dev community around it.

Why people even buy phones from cellular carriers is beyond me. Cell carriers job is to provide the connection, NOT to sell phones. And YES, kitkat 444 removes permissions of the sd card. It has nothing to do with who made it. And the permissions are removed from the device, not your pc.

As for using wifi to transfer files, I found one ap that I got working-send anywhere. Problem was I was on win 8.1 on someone else's laptop I borrowed and somehow I ended up on the windows store page which asked me to get a hotmail acct. I figured, no big, It's not like I'm gonna use it. Long story short, when I rebooted, msuck had changed the laptop login to the new hotmail acct and the password was on the desktop. (never ever put your password program on just the desk, run it from a flash and/or back it up!) I never got a free, or otherwise wifi program to work again. At present I use HFS file server on MY box to transfer files. I did realize today however that to charge, I still have to open my port, so what does syncing really matter in the long run?

I am getting ready to root my unlocked experia z3 though. Xda has a working thread on it. Kind of a pita though.

I also bought a ravpower filehub/nas/wireless router and tossed a 128gb card in it. Kinda slow but it does work well as a charger too.

I did not buy this phone from a carrier, I don't know why you assume that and yes in some cases, rooting can absolutely be a complicated process which can brick your phone easily if you use a wrong file, so in that sense it's dangerous if you don't make sure what you are using is meant to be used with your phone and your phone's firmware.


Transferring files is not a problem over Wi-Fi, you simply Turn ON Wi-Fi > [use one of the many free apps like ES File Explorer] > Settings [upper left corner] > [under Network] Remote Manager > Turn on

You then have access to files using Firefox or Chrome or a free ftp program like
https://filezilla-project.org/download.php?show_all=1

So if your phone's address is ftp://123.456.7.890:9999/
in FileZilla you would access it by typing in Host:123.456.7.890 and Port:9999


This thread is about synching not transferring files. You can also sync using the same method but the synching will be slow unless you get your SD Card to show up as a drive letter. That's a problem on KitKat but I am talking to a developer on xda who has a working program to do this on Galaxy S4 and other phones:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=59539408&postcount=32

Very familiar with xda and I know what you said to begin with... Also, I did not assume anything other than the simple fact most people do buy from the carrier. I have no clue what's the prob with my phone's config but after the 'send anywhere' fiasco, I personally have not been able to get any windows box to connect to my phone wirelessly using any ap. Not worried cause it needs rooting anyways.

you might want to try installing Bit-Torrent Sync on your phone and PC, hassle free folder syncing over wi-fi, I get up to 8MB/s on mine(yes, thats mega BYTES), though I have a Nexus 6 and a high end router

I just rooted my phone yesterday and it's now also encrypted. I'm probably just gonna stick to hfs on my pc. Using the pc as the server works well and is simpler when all I need is a browser on the phone. Once I buy a new laptop later this year, I'm going to remove google completely from the phone by disabling it completely at the very least. I'll start with the rom I use now, and then when a decent stable custom rom, like moonwalker's, comes in my radar, I'll unlock the boot too and run without GApps.

habbajabba, your posts are strange across the forum, but maybe there is sense to that that I'm not seeing... You don't have to use Gmail or sync with Google servers, but not using GApps!?!?!

If you don't use the Play Store apps, or things like Google Maps to have your phone use GPS to show you directions... that's like saying you will remove Microsoft completely from Windows... It doesn't make any sense, without GApps, what is left?

You also keep posting how Windows 8 can't be used without giving Microsoft your email, yet there's a (small) link that allows you to do so, if you just look in the corners of the screen.


Bit-Torrent Sync looks promising but they JUST switched to 2.0 and I am having a lot of trouble figuring out how to simply sync a test folder from my PC. I have three files in my PC folder and two files on my Android phone an they DID NOT make Bit-Torrent Sync user friendly enough for me to figure out how to sync my PC test folder quickly.. or at all... not user friendly at all, I don't know how other people figure this out quickly...

How do you actually start the syncing process on the Bit-Torrent Sync?

"without GApps, what is left?"
Uh, about a thousand options which negate google servers holding my hand for every keypress.
So far,I can use OsmAnd~ for maps (plus a couple others), K-9 with openkeychain for email with encryption, lots of different browsers besides chrome, ndr utils for full phone backup and restore. I don't really need google just to make calls and use a few simple aps. The idea is to not need google and so not use them. Sure, most apk's for droid come directly from the play store which requires a google acct, but once you have a phone setup with basic security, browser, gps ap with maps, email client etc; I don't necessarily require a constant play store update at boot (24x7 actually) to function. The f-droid repo is an excellent source for an android phone's functioning. It's not on the play store either. I will eventually figure out exactly which apk's I must have and do everything possible to make sure they are not sourced from the play store. Every day I have to dismiss the updater for crap I don't use nor ever will. The only way to permanently fix that is to literally gut google by the roots.

It would feel so nice to turn a phone on and use it knowing it is not constantly calling home to google for every fing move it makes. F google. That's my goal and I'm sticking to it. The only thing google ever did was make a search engine and get rich off it. "Google"; does not make phones, browsers, apks, operating systems, or anything for that matter. They hire people who do and then put their name behind it. Did they create linux? F no. I look at google as nothing more than a monkey on my back which needs to be smacked down.

Meh; I succumbed years ago. All hail our Google overlords!

Haha. I have half-succumbed.

I think I don't have your problem, habbajabba because immediately upon installation, I disable everything you are talking about in settings, because it is a given that it's going to be annoying if you don't disable updates in settings. But as long as they give you that option, all will be well.

I think most of the things you posted in the forum can be easily disabled. Which is not to say that you don't have a valid point. It is difficult to roll back latest Android operating system updates for example, so that is bad that they are not allowing us to roll back like we could before.. As for apps, thankfully, we can still easily save .apk installation files for apps. I prefer to get them from Google once, then save them for all future installs on all phones. It is riskier to get .apk installation files elsewhere unless you know the source is legit and has not tampered with the original .apk files.

And so prime example of our topic of not allowing them to control updates is this:

Wathnix said:

you might want to try installing Bit-Torrent Sync on your phone and PC, hassle free folder syncing over wi-fi, I get up to 8MB/s on mine(yes, thats mega BYTES), though I have a Nexus 6 and a high end router

Click to expand...

So get this, your Google Play updates your Bit-Torrent Sync to version 2, JUST released by the way and bam, the thing puts a limit on the number folders you can sync and, wait for it, you have to pay repeatedly to lift that restriction... subscription ware, or whatever they call it now.

So there you were, sitting pretty syncing your stuff when all that's taken away from you and YOU CAN'T EVEN BUY IT... you have to permanently be paying for it...



There are ways to get the old version 1.x elsewhere if you are resourceful but certainly not on Google Playstore which ONLY offers the newest versions which may, as in this specific case, gut your functionality and make our worst nightmare scenario of permanent never ending payments to use a program true.



I totally spent like an hour trying to get Bit-Torrent Sync to simply sync a test folder on PC and phone and couldn't get it to work, it kept changing my PC test folder files even though I set the option for read only to make sure test PC folder files are not changed, only synchronized (copied to phone) - just want phone to be the same as PC.


I spent an hour with Bit-Torrent Sync and couldn't figure it out and I like, went to college and stuff
And I like hang out at overclockers and know maybe a thing or two about modifying programs and figuring out settings... I couldn't figure it out. I was extremely frustrated and almost embarrassed to admit it.

I felt the anger mount as I watched hour long Youtube videos on how to use Bit-Torrent Sync and I couldn't get it.

I was like 'no trial - straight to execution' to whoever made it this complicated but then I thought maybe it's me - maybe this new technology is beyond my grasp...






I still can't sync an Android folder quickly and effectively with PC unless I can get it to show up as a drive letter on PC, which Google doesn't let you do any more...

Try HFS on the pc side. It's super simple, secure, and stable.
As for succumbing to google; I'll give an example of why google is plain annoying. Every time I turn the gps/location on, fing google asks to piggyback as if the gps needs google's help. Short answer: google wants to track my gps usage (and since fing when did GPS get renamed to 'location'- F THAT). You can't simply disable the entire google framework and aps such as update and store without essentially gutting it. I actually did disable Update from the startup process on my rooted phone and it still notified me shortly after the next boot of updates I didn't want. If pos google allowed for actual disabling of aps which would include not constantly telling you to update that what is disabled, I might work with them. As it stands, you CAN NOT disable system aps properly UNLESS you root device AND uninstall them COMPLETELY. F google. It is quite obvious they think they own the device and not the person who payed for it which incl. the monthly fees to use it. Bottom line I do not appreciate a fing search engine taking over my phone like they are doing me a favor. I don't need their maps or ANY of their stupid apk's which are nothing more than an excuse to track my every move. As soon as I get my new laptop later this year. I WILL be gutting every instance of google crap off my phone. The laptop I'm getting will have a sirf iv chip and map software for desktops is easy. My phone will be a REAL smartphone instead of a google tracking device.

As for syncing a folder; After rooting you can use the free apk, NextAp's "SDFix", which gives you r/w permissions to your sd card allowing you to free up internal memory, move aps, etc.. My Xperia phone still only shows up as Z3 in explorer. BUT; changing usb connectivity from media transfer mode to mass storage mode, now my sd card has it's own letter in explorer. Z3 is gone. Sweet!