SmartSwitch "There are no items that can be restored."

[serspring]

My previous phone, a Galaxy A42, became unable to charge. I backed everything up to an SD card using SmartSwitch before it died forever. I do have access to the backup, and can view files, in the structure below.

In the SmartSwitchBackup folder,

And within that, these backup files

I can access the folders such as VIDEO and see that my data is there. For example, here is 1741130456414\PHOTO\DCIM\CAMERA

The issue arises when I connect my S25 to my PC, and the SmartSwitch app (on PC) is unable to find restorable data. Manually selected files are all in file types I don't have, even though I used SmartSwitch to make the backup in the first place. "Add backup data" allows me to select a folder, but every folder I try ends up with this failure message.

The issue is similar to the unsolved SmartSwitch "there are no items that can be restor... - Samsung Community - 3132890, but there are no secure folders in my case. Also, neither response understood the issue.

Solved: Smart Switch not recognizing my backup folder - Samsung Community - 2743474 was able to solve the problem by choosing "the last folder", but the backup is structured differently than mine, and I've exhaustively tried every folder anyway.

Smart Switch - "There is no backup data to restore." | Android Central is my penultimate hope, but obviously there's no information in it.

To be extra clear, I do not have access to the old device. I do have access to individual files, and they are intact and unencrypted. I can confirm this by simply changing the filetypes to remove the underscore. That said, I want to be able to restore to my new device, but SmartSwitch seems unable to recognize anything in the backup.

[Tom6068]

Did you have any cloud backup like on Google or Samsung?

[serspring]

No.

[Tom6068 · Accepted solution]

The only suggestion I have is to directly copy and paste the content of each file (not that actual folder itself) in the same folders on the new S25. If you can hard connect your new phone to the PC with a C to USB A or even a C to C (most newer PCs have C ports  as well as USB A), that may work.

First off, developer mode needs to be enabled. Go to settings/About phone/Software information, then lick of the section "Build number" seven times and that will unlock developer mode. Developer options has to be turn on at the top, then scroll down to USB debugging and enable that. Then scroll down more to "Default USB configuration" and open that and then choose "Transferring files". Connect to the PC and then a popup should show that he phone is connected. Open two windows, one for the phone and another where the files to be put back on the phone are located on the PC. Copy and paste the files into the same folder names/directories and see how that works. 

Just try one file to see if that works and go from there. If it does, then highlight all of the files in one folder at once, copy and paste them into the phone directory.

[serspring]

USB debugging was blocked by Auto Blocker, solution found was to go to Settings->Security->Auto Blocker, easy enough. In case anyone needs it.

I tested with an image, and the transfer worked. I used a batch script to remove the trailing underscore from every file with one. I paste it here for anyone who needs it, just make a .bat file in your equivalent of the "1741130456414" folder. Watch out for any files you may have that intentionally have an underscore in their filetype. It also hits "SmartSwitchBackupInf.bk_backup", which is probably useless at this point anyway. 

setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
FOR /F "delims=" %%F IN ('dir /b /s *.*_') DO (
    set "nU=%%~nxF"
    ren "%%~F" "!nU:~0,-1!"
)

I could have been clearer that all of my data is located within SmartSwitchBackup, and the directory with normal Android access is empty. Had to organize where I thought the data in 1741130456414 went. For example, VIDEO is not the first folder, there are many others.

The directory in 1741130456414 is unlike what I can see by linking my phone, or in the root folder of the backup, and also unlike root access from Android Studio. So, I experimented. I only took what's listed below, as other folders were empty of any data I saved. I didn't say yes to everything in the backup, so you might have to sort things yourself.

I found a lot of files in DOCUMENT, ETCFILE, and ETCFOLDER. DOCUMENT contained things that fit in Documents. ETCFILE had a few zips and apks. ETCFOLDER had all of these and more. I took all the files (that I wanted to keep) from DOCUMENT and put them in Documents. Using ETCFOLDER, I found the few additional files I wanted and put them in Download.
GALLERYLOCATION is noted here as a giant privacy risk, so I ignored it. I don't know where it would go anyway, but I am wholly uninterested in saving that data.
MESSAGE is a rough one. It does indeed contain my message data, but I couldn't tell you how to restore it, which folder to put it in, or if it's encrypted. So, I just took the whole MESSAGE folder and I'm keeping it on my PC for now. I attempted to use Stellar Converter, but it told me it was corrupt, which likely means encryption.
In MUSIC, I found some files in Download, which I sent to my phone's Download, and in Music, I found a voice message from one of my MMS messages, so perhaps that's useful to someone.
PHOTO is happily easy. PHOTO\DCIM can go to your new phone's DCIM directly, even the folders can be directly transferred. Just copy and paste everything in there. Same thing for PHOTO\DOWNLOAD to Download and PHOTO\Pictures to Pictures.
PHOTO_ORIGIN seems to be unedited versions of photos already saved elsewhere after editing. So, garbage to me, but perhaps there's a use for originals if you didn't save a copy on accident.
SAMSUNGNOTE seems to be the notes app files, which I'd love to keep, but I can't figure it out, just like MESSAGES. So, another keep until later.
Last for me was VIDEO, which is exactly like PHOTO. DCIM to DCIM, Download to Download.
Many of these have a Smartswitch folder, such as VIDEO\SmartSwitch. Delving into the subfolders, there's an info file containing information on the files such as coordinates and date and time. I ignore them for the same reasons as GALLERYLOCATION, but I wouldn't kno how to restore it anyway.

If you want the easy path, put ETCFOLDER\Download in Download, keep MESSAGE on the PC until a solution is found, put MUSIC\Download into Download and check for "MUSIC\Music\Samsung Messages", put PHOTO\DCIM in DCIM, PHOTO\Download into Download, PHOTO\Pictures to Pictures, keep SAMSUNGNOTE like MESSAGES, put VIDEO\DCIM in DCIM, and keep VIDEO\Download in Download.

This method resulted in my new phone accessing everything in DCIM\Camera correctly by date, but all other transferred files are literally saved to the phone from the transfer, so my gallery for example has a huge block of all other photos. It's good enough for me, but hopefully there's a fix eventually.

If anyone has a solution to the MESSAGES or SAMSUNGNOTE contents, that'd be cool. I would love those.