Can I back up photos on an Amazon Kids tablet?
Q A couple of years ago, we bought two Amazon Fire 7 Kids Edition tablets for our children. Recently, we’ve started to see messages warning that they’re running out of space. Although I equipped both with a 64GB SD card, the internal storage remains almost full. Now they’re grinding to a halt and apps keep closing without warning, so I tried resetting them both. However, I’ve searched everywhere to track down photos or videos that our kids have taken. I want to back these up, but I can’t find where they’re stored. Is there an easy way to save the content, then reset the tablet?
A Try connecting one tablet to a PC, opening File Explorer and navigating to My PC. Once the tablet is configured it should appear as ‘Fire’ – right-click it and choose ‘Import Pictures and Videos’. Windows will search both the internal storage and any inserted memory cards, then offer you the chance to review, organise and group photos and videos to import. It may be quicker to just choose ‘Import all new items now’ – by default, the content will be copied to a sub-folder of your Pictures folder in Windows.
When the device is backed up, remove it from the PC, log into a parent account, drag down the top bar and tap the cog icon to open the Settings menu. Tap Device Options, then ‘Backup & Restore’ (see screenshot right) and check that it’s switched on. If not, switch it on and leave the device on for a week or so to ensure that the backup has run.
Once it has backed up, return to the main settings menu, tap Storage, then scroll down and tap ‘Erase SD card’. When the erase has finished, tap back out of the Storage menu, return to Device Options, tap ‘Reset to Factory Defaults’, then enter your PIN.
Once the device has reset, set the device up again using the same Amazon account as before. When prompted, opt to restore your previous backup.
Log into your profile, open Settings, go to Storage and check that the tablet is already configured to install all suitable content on your SD card – it should be by default, which should preserve the maximum space on the internal storage.