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Is there any tool that allows me to compare a local folder with a folder on my android phone (connected via USB) ?
I tried WinMerge and FreeFileSync, but none of those can "see" the connected smartphone.
The issue seems to be that, while the phone is visible and browsable in Explorer, it is not mounted as a drive,and the MAP cannot be used there as well.

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  • Are you trying to compare them or actually synchronize their contents?
    – music2myear
    Sep 22, 2014 at 14:43
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    In fact I'd like to "clean up" my phone, by deleting pics that I have already copied to the pc. I don't mind deleting manually, but I'd lile to improve the process a bit. THe bad thing is tha on the phone, it's all in 1 folder, while on the pc, I have made folder like "201407 Holidays". I wanted to used a sync tool more for quick comparing.
    – iDevlop
    Sep 22, 2014 at 15:09
  • Ah. Do you do most of your photo importing from your phone when it is directly connected to the computer via USB?
    – music2myear
    Sep 22, 2014 at 15:12
  • I enabled automatic save of pictures to DropBox. Regularly, (after holdays, party..) I move them from the "Camera Uploads" in DropBox, to the appropriate folder on my NAS. I just realized that this does not clean up my SD card, and I need to do something. But I want to make sure I don't delete forgotten pics by mistake.
    – iDevlop
    Sep 22, 2014 at 15:19
  • Did you configure your Android phone, by enabling the setting, to allow you to see the its storage contents?
    – Ramhound
    Sep 22, 2014 at 15:25

3 Answers 3

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It appears this is an issue with lots of comparison tools and smartphones, and has been for a while. As you guessed, the main issue is that phones attached as storage are not assigned drive letters when they are connected (See here for a thread dealing with the same issue from nearly two years ago: http://www.scootersoftware.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?9696-How-to-open-a-mobile-device-%28smartphone%29-for-compare-with-no-drive-letter-assigned)

One workaround is to use a comparison tool that supports FTP connections, then set up an FTP server on your Android phone and run the comparison that way. It will probably be much slower than a USB connection, but still better than nothing.

In order to actually get a drive letter assigned to your Android phone, you'll need to not use the MTP connection method, which means rooting your device and using one of the various methods available to mount your phone as mass storage (https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/22979/drive-letter-for-mtp-connection-under-windows).

A long term solution is to use a different tool for synchronizing files between your phone and your computer.

Personally, I use Bittorrent Sync to move photos from my phone to my computer. When I remove files from the synced folder on the computer, they are moved to a hidden folder on my phone as well, and then I just delete them from there knowing they've already been dealt with on the computer.

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  • The BT Sync seems like a great idea. And apparently it has an option to prevent using mobile data, so that looks like a winner ! Thanks
    – iDevlop
    Sep 23, 2014 at 7:15
  • ANd...silly me...by reading the first link you provided I realized that indeed, the pics on the phone are on the SD card, so I just could mount the SD card. Anyway I already wanted to give a try to BT Sync, and this seems a great opportunity.
    – iDevlop
    Sep 23, 2014 at 7:19
  • I love BT Sync and have begun using it in a variety of situations. It became necessary after my wife got her own smartphone and began taking oodles of pictures of kids, filling our Dropbox folders right up. As Dropbox is designed for backup, not for transfer, this was a real problem. Using BT Sync all our photos and important files end up on one very large drive in my home desktop, and from there are backed up using our cloud backup service. Easy transfer and all backed up.
    – music2myear
    Sep 23, 2014 at 13:49
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I know this post is two years old but I ran into this issue recently and I think it could be useful.

I found the FreeFileSync software from freefilesync.org that supports the MTP protocol natively.

So if the folder is on my SD card, it would be: mtp:\Xperia Z5 Compact\SD Card\Folder to sync

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    Great ! I had seen the product but did ont notice this feature. I'll give it another look.
    – iDevlop
    Jun 30, 2016 at 13:15
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    After trying a number of different tools, this one did the magic for me.
    – Alam
    Nov 16, 2021 at 14:19
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    It still works with Windows 11
    – tuomastik
    Jun 30, 2023 at 5:31
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Beyond Compare.. buy it. Worth every cent. Very robust and it is highly recommended to read those silly directions to understand what exactly you can do. Makes life easy transferring and comparing files on the computer, cell phone, and network storage device.

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