How to transfer files from a Smartphone easily

[j7n]

I got my first contemporary smartphone. A Showme Redmi 14C running HyperOS 2  (Android 15). I am not impressed by how many hoops I have to jump through to connect it to the computer. When first connected, it showed in the Windows 2008 R2 device manager as "Redmi 14" of course without a driver. After I enabled developer mode by tapping on the version number and enabled file transfer in developer options, it now shows in the device manager as "MTP", which I guess stands for Media Transfer Protocol. The smartphone is still patially "locked" whatever that means and I am not allowed to access it fully.

In my previous phone running Android Gingerbread I had to pull down the top bar to enable USB Mass Storage. It was a sort of hidden feature that I had to Google for. It then appears as a USB stick without any driver needed. But not so much with the new smartphone.

Can I use this MTP protocol without installing bloated software? On Windows Server 2008 R2. (Not any current sofware that requires Windows 10)

What other easy methods for transferring files are there?

[w2k4eva]

With each new version of Android it seems Google takes away previously useful features and makes others harder to use. USB Mass Storage is one that went away a long time ago. Sadly there is no way to bring it back. Some more detail is at https://www.howtogeek.com/192732/android-usb-connections-explained-mtp-ptp-and-usb-mass-storage/

On 7/21/2025 at 9:55 PM, j7n said:

What other easy methods for transferring files are there?

Some ideas are mentioned at https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/91900/is-there-a-viable-alternative-to-mtp-for-file-transfer but I'm not convinced they are any easier than just using ADB, especially since you still need the same USB drivers to do some of those ways too.

If you add an SD card, it can be inserted/removed and connected to a laptop or desktop that has a suitable adapter to read it. Just make sure it is not set up as "adopted storage" or it will be encrytped so Windows would not be able to read it. (Modern Linuxes can work with this once you extract the encryption key from your phone but it is something of a hassle to do.) But moving the SD card around all the time is something of a hassle, and you probably want to use MTP and/or ADB depending on the content to be moved.

In particular, the MTP protocol can only handle media. Meaning pictures, videos, soundclips, songs, etc. It will NOT want to let you move other content like PDFs, APKs, browser bookmarks, encryption keys, etc. It may sometimes be possible to rename something to be one of the allowed file types, transfer it with MTP, then use a file manager on your phone to rename it back, but that gets cumbersome after a while and in some locations may not even be allowed. So these other types of content are best handled with ADB.

On 7/21/2025 at 9:55 PM, j7n said:

Can I use this MTP protocol without installing bloated software? On Windows Server 2008 R2. (Not any current sofware that requires Windows 10)

Depends on your definition of "bloated", and of course assuming you are moving only suitable file types. You will need to install some device drivers (typically under 25MB). Probably best to get these from Xiaomi if possible, or there are some generics that can be used even with Windows XP. Oh, and you might need the Kernel-Mode Driver Framework (KB2685811 ?) if you don't already have it.

If you want to use ADB you will need to add the platform tools package (the latest version 34.0.5 still runs on W7, possibly even Vista, and is 12.2MB unpacked). Just unzip it somewhere, open a CMD window, make sure the unzipped folder is in that window's PATH variable, and you should be good to go. In case you have not used this before, there is a bit of explanation at https://developer.android.com/tools/adb and a command reference at https://adbshell.com/

[j7n]

Out of these choices I picked an FTP Server. I couldn't find the FTP Server Ultimate. But I got an WiFi FTP Server. It works without installing anything new to my computer. A bit slow for modern times ramping up to about 5 MB/s, but no setup time.

My phone is not rooted. Can I do something else useful with "ADB" to make it worthwhile having like hack the phone or disable things? I am not sure if what is called a Xiaomi Unlock means the same as rooting. I need an account with them and log in and ask them for unlock. The unlock tool wouldn't work with the old version the Windows web browser on Server 2008 R2.

An SD card is really really tiny and is extracted together with the SIM chip. It would probably get broken soon.

I think the disk had to be suspended when enabling mass storage device mode. And the modern  phone always wants to access the disk.

[w2k4eva]

4 hours ago, j7n said:

My phone is not rooted. Can I do something else useful with "ADB" to make it worthwhile having like hack the phone or disable things?

Definitely. ADB can be used to make or restore backups, and has access to some places that normal apps would not, so these backups can be more complete than those made by other methods. It can grant or deny various permissions. It can install or uninstall apps. It can explore directory stuctures, copy, move, rename or delete files within device storage or to/from your windows computer, change file permissions or ownership, or generally do most shell commands. It can remount read-only partitions as read/write (though you still need to consider how to deal with dm-verity on some of them like /system). It can reboot the phone into recovery mode or bootloader mode, useful if you want to change ROMs. It may be able to change itself to root mode, depending if Xiaomi left some config settings on that would allow this. It also has a "sync" function in addition to the backup/restore functions.

I find myself using ADB at least once a month or so, mostly because that crippleware MTP mode does not always preserve file timestamps correctly, where using ADB does.

4 hours ago, j7n said:

I am not sure if what is called a Xiaomi Unlock means the same as rooting. I need an account with them and log in and ask them for unlock.

I have not looked into Xiaomi in particular, but that arrangement sounds typical for getting a bootloader unlocked. While it is not directly rooting, it is typically the first step in either rooting or in installing a custom ROM. One thing to get clear about before you do that, is for some vendors, requesting that unlock will void whatever manufacturer warranty the phone had, so best to check the rules before asking.

4 hours ago, j7n said:

The unlock tool wouldn't work with the old version the Windows web browser on Server 2008 R2.

My guess here would be that their web site is coded to want Chrome, and the needed functions are missing in whatever older browser you tried. If you don't like Google Chrome (I sure don't!) there are other chromium based browsers that are more privacy friendly. Brave ver 1.47.186, while not the most current, does run on W7 and is my go-to browser when my preferred SeaMonkey can't cope. Others might include Chromite, Vivaldi, etc; you can probably find a thread elsewhere on these boards about browsers still running in W7 for more ideas.

4 hours ago, j7n said:

An SD card is really really tiny and is extracted together with the SIM chip. It would probably get broken soon.

Yeah, that is part of what I meant about the hassle factor. The card itself is usually pretty sturdy and not likely to break. But if your phone has one of those little pop-out trays that hold both cards, that thing is a lot more delicate and definitely prone to breakage, assuming it doesn't just get lost. I usually just install the card once and leave it in permanently, since ADB is simple enough for me to copy stuff out with.

 

4 hours ago, j7n said:

I think the disk had to be suspended when enabling mass storage device mode.

Yep. Even worse, for my FroYo device, doing this has about 50% odds of causing the phone to reboot, so I have to unplug everything, wait for it to finish, and start over. There's no real reason why the procedure to unmount and remount a partition should fail so often for androids when it is very reliable on Linux desktops, but apparently Google preferred to do away with it entirely rather than debug the actual problem here.

4 hours ago, j7n said:

And the modern  phone always wants to access the disk.

Somehow desktop Linux systems solved this problem a long time ago and routinely stop trying to access a partition that is unmounted. I don't know why the same solution never made it into the android kernels.

5 hours ago, j7n said:

Out of these choices

Oh, I just thought of another... if you have a USB-OTG adapter that fits your phone's USB port, you can plug in a standard USB thumb drive and use something like Ghost Commander to copy files in and out.