Access SD card from laptop on Galaxy S5. Phone shows, but no files or SD card

[lanahan95]

I have SD card on my Galaxy S5. When I plug it into computer, the phone shows up but it says there's NOTHING on it. I can't get to the SD card at all.

 

[webworkings]

Well that is going to depend on how you are trying to access it. Are you using a program to open it up? If that is the case you should try just opening up the SD card as a folder on the computer. It should work that way.

Also note, if you haven't saved files (music, videos, and photos) to the SD card, then there would be nothing on it to open from the computer. It will only view/access certain types of files. Not apps.

 

[lanahan95]

Well that is going to depend on how you are trying to access it. Are you using a program to open it up? If that is the case you should try just opening up the SD card as a folder on the computer. It should work that way.

Also note, if you haven't saved files (music, videos, and photos) to the SD card, then there would be nothing on it to open from the computer. It will only view/access certain types of files. Not apps.

The phone only said "no files to display" on the PC and of course there were files on the SD card I was trying to retrieve.

Found this on another message board, it was exactly what I needed. Sorry to not give credit! I don't have the original thread anymore. This is what I copied from there:

I would agree with Marty L. I recently upgraded my Nokia to a Gallaxy s7, and couldn't figure out why my desktop PC would "see" the phone, but when I clicked on it in the PC's file directory, there were no files or directories shown - just a big blank area where they should be. If you've just gotten a NEW phone, then you'll need to address this challenge in two steps.

First step is, you need to turn ON the Developer Options. This is turned off by default at the factory, and turning it on is a bit of a chore. A blog at Recomhub.com explained it as follows:

"When users turn on and enable developer options on the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, you have the ability to control some hidden features that you can change. With Developer Options you can control additional aspects of your device, change settings, or enable USB debugging for advanced functions will need to enable the hidden developer menu in settings."

So to turn on Developer Options, go to Settings>About Phone (all the way at the bottom of the menu list).

After opening "About Phone", you'll see there are a lot of items listed. The item you want to find is called "Build Number". Now here's the bizarre part. Start tapping on the "Build Number" item. After a number of taps, the phone will notify you that it's turning on Developer Options. (Weird. I wonder who came up with that idea......)

Once you've activated the Developer Options, use the "Return" arrow on your phone to back out of the menus until you return to your Settings list. Now when you scroll to the bottom, you'll see a new menu item called "Developer Options" above About Phone.

Now for Step 2. Go into Developer Options menu, and scroll down until you see the "USB configuration" menu item. In smaller letters below that menu item, it should identify the status as "Charging". What that means is that the USB port is only configured to "Charge" at this point, not transfer files. Tap on the USB configuration menu item and change it to "Media Transfer Protocol (MTP)".

Now back out of Settings completely and return to your phone's main screen. You will discover that your PC will now "see" the files on the phone, shown as a "Card" directory (assuming you've added extra memory), and a "Phone" directory. Double clicking on the directories will show you what's stored in each on your phone.

The unfortunate part is this - and others here can correct me if I'm wrong. It seems that every time you hook up your phone to your PC to transfer files via the USB cable, you will need to turn on the MTP again (Step 2 in my instructions). That means you'll need to remember to navigate to the Developer Options menu items in Settings, and scroll down to "USB configuration" and turn on the MTP. A real pain, but it's a security feature, so I guess it's worthwhile. But hopefully, you can save this information to your phone, and just reference it next time you want to transfer files.

To everyone else out there, please comment if I've gotten this wrong.

This was all a little challenging to figure out. The multiple sites I visited each seemed to have pieces of the solution. However the posters invariably left out key steps, or their information was incomplete. I'm hoping my post contains the whole shooting match, and is a help to folks.

 

[webworkings]

Hmm, you should not need to turn on developer options, or any of that, to make it work. It should just work normally. If this was required for you, something isn't quite right.

But I am glad you got it sorted.

 

[FryBoss]

Lanahan95 is right. It must have changed with the last update because dev options was hidden for me again.

So basically to access the sd card on an Android phone:

- Go to settings -> at bottom click "About phone" -> at bottom tap "Build number" until you get the message "you are a developer now.
- Then go back one screen and at the bottom you will see "Developer options".
- Look for "Select USB Configuration" and select MTP option.

Now your SD Card on your PC file manager will show all your files.