My Tech Scrap: September 2025

Like many of us, I rely heavily on my phone — photos, downloads, documents, and a random mix of files I probably should’ve organized months ago. One day, I decided it was time to back everything up from my Redmi 9 Prime to my PC. I thought: “Easy. Just use PowerShell and Robocopy.”

That’s when reality hit me.

❌ The First Roadblock: MTP Isn’t a Real Drive

When you plug in an Android phone over USB, Windows shows it in This PC as:


This PC\Redmi 9 Prime\Internal shared storage

Looks like a normal path, right? But try to script it and… nope.
MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) isn’t a normal file system, so neither PowerShell’s Get-ChildItem nor robocopy could see it.

I needed a different approach.

🔑 Enter ADB (Android Debug Bridge)

ADB is a developer tool from Google that lets your computer talk directly to your Android device. With it, I could copy files reliably and even automate backups.

Here’s how I set it up:

Downloaded Platform Tools and extracted to C:\platform-tools.
Added that folder to my PATH.
Enabled Developer Options → USB Debugging on my Redmi.
Ran:


adb devices

At first, it showed:


hdshdsdhshd   unauthorized

The phone was waiting for me to approve the connection. A quick tap on “Allow USB debugging” fixed it, and finally:


hdshdsdhshd   device

Success! 🎉

🛠️ Writing the PowerShell Script

Now I needed a script that would:

Copy all internal storage folders.
Copy external SD card storage (if present).
Log the status of each root folder as COMPLETE or FAILED.

Here’s the final version I came up with:


param(
    [string]$Destination = "E:\PhoneBackup",
    [string]$LogFile = "E:\PhoneBackup\BackupLog.txt"
)

if (!(Test-Path $Destination)) {
    New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $Destination -Force | Out-Null
}

"Backup started: $(Get-Date)" | Out-File -FilePath $LogFile -Encoding UTF8

# -------- INTERNAL STORAGE (/sdcard) --------
$internalFolders = adb shell "ls /sdcard/" | ForEach-Object { $_.Trim() }

foreach ($folder in $internalFolders) {
    $src = "/sdcard/$folder"
    $dst = Join-Path $Destination "Internal_$folder"

    "Backing up [INTERNAL][$folder]..." | Tee-Object -FilePath $LogFile -Append
    adb pull $src $dst | Out-Null

    if ($LASTEXITCODE -eq 0) {
        Add-Content $LogFile "STATUS: [INTERNAL][$folder] COMPLETE at $(Get-Date)"
    } else {
        Add-Content $LogFile "STATUS: [INTERNAL][$folder] FAILED (exit code $LASTEXITCODE) at $(Get-Date)"
    }
}

# -------- EXTERNAL STORAGE (/storage/XXXX-XXXX) --------
$externalMounts = adb shell "ls /storage" | ForEach-Object { $_.Trim() } | Where-Object { $_ -match '^[0-9A-Fa-f-]+$' }

foreach ($mount in $externalMounts) {
    $basePath = "/storage/$mount"
    $externalFolders = adb shell "ls $basePath" | ForEach-Object { $_.Trim() }

    foreach ($folder in $externalFolders) {
        $src = "$basePath/$folder"
        $dst = Join-Path $Destination "External_${mount}_$folder"

        "Backing up [EXTERNAL][$mount][$folder]..." | Tee-Object -FilePath $LogFile -Append
        adb pull $src $dst | Out-Null

        if ($LASTEXITCODE -eq 0) {
            Add-Content $LogFile "STATUS: [EXTERNAL][$mount][$folder] COMPLETE at $(Get-Date)"
        } else {
            Add-Content $LogFile "STATUS: [EXTERNAL][$mount][$folder] FAILED (exit code $LASTEXITCODE) at $(Get-Date)"
        }
    }
}

"Backup finished: $(Get-Date)" | Add-Content $LogFile

📋 Example Log Output

After running the script, the log looked like this:


Backup started: 09/17/2025 12:00:12
Backing up [INTERNAL][DCIM]...
STATUS: [INTERNAL][DCIM] COMPLETE at 09/17/2025 12:05:10
Backing up [INTERNAL][Download]...
STATUS: [INTERNAL][Download] COMPLETE at 09/17/2025 12:07:02
Backing up [EXTERNAL][1234-5678][Music]...
STATUS: [EXTERNAL][1234-5678][Music] COMPLETE at 09/17/2025 12:09:15
Backup finished: 09/17/2025 12:10:00