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]

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.