Manage files on USD device from CMD ?

cbreemer · Jul 12, 2024

Hi all, I wonder if there's a way to see recent files on an USB device from the command line rather than Windows Explorer ? I regularly want to grab the latest videos/photos from my Samsung Android A51 camera, but Explorer takes an awful long time to find them. I must admit there are thousands of media in the Camera folder.... I should really clean that up but that's a hell of a job. And it's probably just the Samsung interface being grindingly slow, but I somehow hope it might be better with a DIR command. Any ideas ?

pseymour · Jul 12, 2024

The forfiles command is your friend here.

FORFILES /P C:\WINDOWS /S /M *.txt /D +2024-6-12

Would give me all of the files in C:\Windows and subdirectories (/S), matching the pattern *.txt, created on or after June 12, 2024.

cbreemer · Jul 12, 2024

pseymour said:
The forfiles command is your friend here.

FORFILES /P C:\WINDOWS /S /M *.txt /D +2024-6-12

Would give me all of the files in C:\Windows and subdirectories (/S), matching the pattern *.txt, created on or after June 12, 2024.

Thanks for your quick reply ! I knew the command line would have useful commands like this. My problem is that I don't know the physical path name. In Explorer, my camera folder is

Code:

This PC\Chris A51\SD card\DCIM\Camera

but the command line does not recognize this path:

Code:

C:\Windows>dir "This PC\Chris A51\SD card\DCIM\Camera"
The system cannot find the path specified.


C:\Windows>dir "\\This PC\Chris A51\SD card\DCIM\Camera"
The network path was not found.


C:\Windows>dir "\This PC\Chris A51\SD card\DCIM\Camera"
The system cannot find the path specified.

What am I missing ?

pseymour · Jul 12, 2024

I don't have a device I can test with. Maybe you can right-click the folder and Open In Terminal? If it opens the terminal in the correct folder, you can skip the /P part altogether.

cbreemer · Jul 13, 2024

pseymour said:
I don't have a device I can test with. Maybe you can right-click the folder and Open In Terminal? If it opens the terminal in the correct folder, you can skip the /P part altogether.

I did not know about "Open in Terminal". Glad to have learnt about it, thanks. But as sod's luck would have it, this option is not shown for folders on my camera, only for regular devices (USB sticks included). The context menu for the camera is much smaller than usual. Clearly, the camera's file system is handled much different from anything else.

pbcopter · Jul 13, 2024

For This PC use c:\Users
Is Chris A51 your user name?

pseymour · Jul 13, 2024

I would bet it’s an A51 phone belonging to a person named Chris.

antspants · Jul 13, 2024

pseymour said:
I would bet it’s an A51 phone belonging to a person named Chris.

It’s a bet I wouldn’t take against you. Put a thousand on for me also.

Bree · Jul 13, 2024

cbreemer said:

my camera folder is

Code:

This PC\Chris A51\SD card\DCIM\Camera

but the command line does not recognize this path:

Code:

C:\Windows>dir "This PC\Chris A51\SD card\DCIM\Camera"
The system cannot find the path specified.

C:\Windows>dir "\\This PC\Chris A51\SD card\DCIM\Camera"
The network path was not found.

C:\Windows>dir "\This PC\Chris A51\SD card\DCIM\Camera"
The system cannot find the path specified.

If Chris A51 is the device name of a camera, then dir "\\Chris A51\SD card\DCIM\Camera" (without the 'This PC' bit) should work.

If Chris A51 is your user folder then you can use "%userprofile%\SD card\DCIM\Camera" in the command line.
The userprofile environment variable contains the path to your user folder.

cbreemer · Jul 14, 2024

Bree said:
If Chris A51 is the device name of a camera, then dir "\\Chris A51\SD card\DCIM\Camera" (without the 'This PC' bit) should work.

Thanks for your reply. Indeed Chris A51 is the phone's device name.

Alas, that command does not work either. I believe I had already tried that too.

Skeptic Mike · Jul 14, 2024

Windows explorer is an object manager not simply a file manager. So it can represent objects from a device connected by media transfer protocol (mtp) as well as files. But mtp objects aren't files and you're trying to treat them as files - which is why it's not working.
It's possible to use the "shell objects for scripting" to work with these objects. If you try a Web search for "windows command line mtp" you should find some ideas as to how you might deal with these objects.
However, on your phone they are files, so with a file manager on your phone you should be able to sort and move files to different sub folders. You should also be able to change the default folder where photos are saved. If you did this monthly that might make managing the photos easier.
When you get the photos on your pc it will be easier to work with folders that don't contain thousands of images.

Mike

cbreemer · Jul 14, 2024

Thanks for that Mike. I guess you are right, Explorer does a decent job presenting the phone as a real filesystem, whereas it isn't. I'll check out these shell objects, but I think my best bet is, as you say, to organize the humongous wad of pics and videos on my phone. Damn grandkids

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