What’s the best way to transfer lots of photos and videos from a Samsung phone to a Lenovo laptop?

Use copy and paste rather than cut and paste. That way, the originals stay on the phone until you confirm that everything transferred successfully. Avoid unplugging the cable during the transfer, since large videos can take a while to copy.

Connect the phone to the laptop with a USB cable, then swipe down on the phone and tap the USB notification. Change the connection from charging to File Transfer. The phone should appear in File Explorer. Open the phone, go to DCIM, then Camera, and copy the files to a folder on the laptop. If you have a lot of videos, transfer them in smaller batches so the process is less likely to freeze. Also, some cables only support charging, so try another cable if the phone does not appear.

You can also use a cloud service such as Google Photos, Google Drive, or OneDrive. If the photos are already syncing, sign in to the same account on the laptop and download them there. For a very large collection, a USB cable is usually faster and more dependable than uploading everything first.

If you want to verify that the laptop copy matches what is still on the phone, a file-sync utility such as FreeFileSync can compare the folders and help copy anything that was missed. It can also handle phone file transfers, although File Explorer is simpler for most people.