How to open a mobile device (smartphone) for compare with no drive letter assigned?

[Dukmiester2]

Hi all. I just upgraded both mine and my wife's phones to Samsung Galaxy S3 phones and the USB connection does allow the contents of the phone's SD card to show in Wondows Explorer as either a Camera OR a portable media player, and shows the folder structure.

Problem is, it does NOT assign a drive letter to the device so I am assuming this is why BC2 can not open it to do a compare.

With my previous phones, a drive letter was assigned so it was very handy to use BC2 to make backups of the phone's SD cards.

Is there any way around this with BC2? If not, does the newer BC3 allow for comparing of such devices where a drive letter does not get assigned?

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated,
thank you

[Chris]

Sorry, both BC2 and the current version BC 3.3.5 cannot compare mobile devices that do not assign drive letters.

Support for devices without drive letters is on our wish list for a future version of BC.

[Chris]

Our lead developer Craig just told me there are possible workarounds for Android mobile devices that do not assign drive letters.

One method is to install an FTP server on your Android device, then connect to it using Beyond Compare 3's built in FTP support.

You can also try installing Samba support on your Android device to access it as a network drive.

Samba for Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...sh.samba&hl=en

Note that we haven't tested the Samba for Android linked above ourselves.

[Dukmiester2]

Very good to know I have been using BC2 for personal backup/restore/compare for quite some time and would be LOST without it.

Use it almost every day to archive files on my PC.

I'll discuss this Samba program on my Cell Phone's forum, see if anyone has had any experience with it.

I have already restored all the pics/music/misc. files back to our new phones. Took a little longer without BC, but I got it done. Looking forward to a future version of BC that supports my phone natively, will need to do periodic backups as my wife uses her phone to take a LOT of pictures. With the quality of these newer phone's cameras, a separate digital camera has become almost obsolete.

I will be keeping my eye on the Scooter Software page for when the next version may hit, I'll be first in line to hand over my money, it is one of most frequently used programs.

Thanks for taking the time to reply,
I appreciate it,

[cbit]

I tried the FTP workaround, and was successful. However, it's a slower way to sync, and a security risk over WiFi. I'd rather see a USB solution in the future. Thanks!

[dieselpower]

Same here: USB would be good . Sorry for the thread necro, just wanted to make the list of people who need this longer.

[monzagorilla]

Just checking... SwiFTP server works very well on my Droid, but my camera shows up as just:
Computer\Canon PowerShot S3 IS\Removable storage\DCIM\100CANON
and cannot be used by BC.

[sgartner]

Fourthed

I would like to chime in here that I would really love to see BC support MTP and PTP devices as well. I would use this with cameras, smart phones, and Android tablets. As it is I often have to fight with them to get stuff on and off and be certain I have everything correct. I did find a product that might solve the problem for $30 called PTPDrive (http://www.ptpdrive.com) but I haven't pulled the trigger on it yet.

Edit: Turns out PTPDrive does not solve the problem (for me at least) as it only shows JPG and MP3 files on the device. It does not show all files on the device. Back to the search for a solution...

[JLN]

I would like to re-open the discussion on comparing files on my new smartphone.
Does the current BC version 4 support comparing files from smartphone, USB connected ?
I bought an oppo smartphone last week and BC v3 will not work on it (no drive letter assigned).
Thank you.

[Chris]

Beyond Compare 3 only supports devices with drive letters, Beyond Compare 4 on Windows added support for mobile devices without drive letters (media transfer protocol - MTP).

Beyond Compare 4 runs as a fully functional trial for 30 days before a license is required. I'd recommend testing the trial with your smartphone before purchasing a license upgrade.