Why is photos apps using up more memory on microSD card than the photo files themselves?

[Windows Central Question]

I have a L950XL Dual-SIM that I was thrilled to get when it first hit the market. Loved the fact that I can now use a 200GB microSD card in it. I take a lot of photographs and love my camera. However, I swap my photos from my phone to my PC quite frequently. This is where my problem becomes apparent. If I load photos on the microSD card, either loaded through phone with microSD inside or on microSD card through PC, the photos app starts creating thumbnails for photos but using large amount of memory on the microSD card. 8GB of photo file (*.jpg) will use up an additional 15GBs. In the storage selection under settings, the microSD card shows 8GB under photos but 15GB under System & reserved (this is not including the amount that is already being used for the phone. At this point, if I were to remove the microSD card out of the phone, the memory usage under System & reserved will then decrease back to its original usage of 3GB or less. Through a little hunting and searching, I found that the phone creates a folder where it saves duplicates of the same thumbnails under separate sub-folders. If I were to load 16GB of photos in 32GB microSD card, the photos app cannot create thumbnails for all photo files. This issue is not present in an Android phone. I really do not want to abandon Windows 10 Mobile. Has anyone else noticed this?

 

[Chintan Gohel]

I have a L950XL Dual-SIM that I was thrilled to get when it first hit the market. Loved the fact that I can now use a 200GB microSD card in it. I take a lot of photographs and love my camera. However, I swap my photos from my phone to my PC quite frequently. This is where my problem becomes apparent. If I load photos on the microSD card, either loaded through phone with microSD inside or on microSD card through PC, the photos app starts creating thumbnails for photos but using large amount of memory on the microSD card. 8GB of photo file (*.jpg) will use up an additional 15GBs. In the storage selection under settings, the microSD card shows 8GB under photos but 15GB under System & reserved (this is not including the amount that is already being used for the phone. At this point, if I were to remove the microSD card out of the phone, the memory usage under System & reserved will then decrease back to its original usage of 3GB or less. Through a little hunting and searching, I found that the phone creates a folder where it saves duplicates of the same thumbnails under separate sub-folders. If I were to load 16GB of photos in 32GB microSD card, the photos app cannot create thumbnails for all photo files. This issue is not present in an Android phone. I really do not want to abandon Windows 10 Mobile. Has anyone else noticed this?

do you have onedrive set to show photos on the phone by any chance?

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[gavino96]

I do not. OneDrive is not set to backup the photo images that are on microSD, only on internal memory.

 

[RumoredNow]

In addition to the actual pics, W10M creates extra files for Living Images, HDR, DNG, etc.

Are you accounting for those? Do you remove them when you export the pics from SD to PC?

 

[gavino96]

I've actually reset the phone itself and have not taken any pictures at all. Just loaded the microSD card with *.JPEGs, *.PNGs, and *.BMPs of other photos I had on my PC. I've even made sure to remove the thumbnail files that Windows makes in the pic folder. At this present time, I have 56GB of photos I exported to a BLANK microSD car and its using 113GB in the card according to Storage under "apps and games". It's still not even done generating thumbnails for the pictures!