I have a Samsung S7 phone and transferring files from my Ubuntu workstation to the S7 SD card have been extremely slow. Transferring a 3 MB files takes no less than fifteen minutes! I searched and searched to no avail. Some solutions stated to download an app to transfer files using WiFi. I did not try, as that seemed more like a band aid and a hassle than a solution, at least to me.

A light bulb moment! What would happen if I transferred to the phones onboard storage? I only tried to the external storage, as I did not want to fill-up the internal storage. So I tried transferring a 3 MB file and the transfer was as expected, less than three seconds. I tried to transfer a 400 MB and the transfer completed within twenty-seconds! I must have a slow SD card, I thought.

My solution is now to transfer to the phone’s internal storage and then use the phone’s file manager to transfer to the external storage. The transfer speed of transferring from the internal storage to the SD card is approximately the same speed as transferring from the workstation to the internal storage (FAST!). I am happy with the solution.

Then I wondered, if another OS would have the same issues. So, I tried using Windows 10 to transfer files to the phones SD card. No issues! The transfer is just as fast to the SD card as to the internal storage using Windows. I am speculating, maybe a Linux driver issue accessing the phone’s SD card and not my SD card being slow! When I was researching for the solution previously, I read an article on the different protocols used. But before I got to try making those changes to my phone, what I consider as my solution was enough of a solution and I did not investigate further.