HOWTO: Synchronize Music and Pictures, Backup Data on SD Card / Upgrade SD Card

[Exotic Hadron]

Hello,

Thanks to a very bad connectivity, I had to download albums from Xbox Music cloud down to my SD card and surprisingly 32 Gbytes aren't that big to fit all. I purchased a 64 Gbyte ?SDXC card only to find that I don't know how to synchronize both the old and the new SD cards and copy my data to that newly purchased SD card.

Windows Explorer just wasn't smart enough to allow me to copy the DRM-protected music from my old SD card to a folder on my laptop to drag it back to the new SD card when it is inserted.

I have found three solutions to synchronize data none of which were good enough to satisfy my needs:
1. Windows Phone Modern app.
2. Windows Phone app for Desktop application (regular Windows application that looks even more ugly that Zune).
3. Zune.

Windows Phone Modern app

Pros None found

Cons

• Copies files every time you synchronize them.
  No matter if the files you are about to synchronize already exist on the destination (such as your laptop), they still will be copied again, one by one.
• Queueing lags
  When you add a folder such as Camera roll to the synchronization queue, there is a big lag between when you click Save and see the files added to the queue. Sometimes it's impossible to get if the folder was enqueued or not. Say you rightclick several folders to add them to the queue then click Save. The app does nothing. A while after it shows a little progress in the top right corner of the screen.
• UI that displays progress just hangs constantly
  Often, if you click the progress display while it works, just to see what errors occurred during the copy, the app displays a blank window.
• Copy errors are shown during the copy procedure but disappear when copying is finished
  This is just that clumsy! You see a small line next to the copy progress like 3 then 4 then NN errors while the app copies your files. When it finishes copying, you expect to see what's been copied and what not. You see nothing! The queue flushes out and you don't know what failed to copy!
• Queue is cumulative, no way to distinguish items being copied
  The queue merges items from several selected folders. Like you've selected both Camera roll (let it contain 10 items) and Saved pictures (let it have 5 items inside) and expect them to be copied separately. At least you expect to see 10 and 5 be displayed separately. Instead, you see 15 are copied. That can be tolerated when you copy that little photos, but what if you copy several thousand? Yes, it isn't a rocket math to sum up all items in every folder you copy, but is it that useful?
• No check on existing items
  Items are enqueued again even though they might have been enqueued before! Like you select Camera roll and Saved pictures and click Save. Then there is the notorious lag between when you clicked Save and when the items were added to the queue. During that time you've managed to unselect Saved pictures and click Save. You'll end up with 15 items in one queue task and 10 of what you expect to have been copied in the next queue task!

I'd add more but for the time being there's one big issue with every app:
None copies every item. At least almost every attempt to copy music or videos either from the phone to the PC or back ends with 'For some reason we were unable to copy the following:'. And there may be hundreds of items! Possibly this happens because the app fails to contact cloud to get licensing information.

Any suggestions on succeeding the migration? I am freaking tired of all my numerous attempts to copy all data between the two SD cards. While I managed to copy items to PC, I can't copy all back. There're always some that fail to copy!

 

[BIGPADDY]

I think that an issue with the modern app itself which I would think Microsoft will be improving, just check to see if there any updates which may improve or fix some of the issues.