Permission denied (EFCreateError) when trying to write into external SD card on an Android device

Android Lollipop (5.x) or later

If you are using Lollipop (5.x) or later, follow the instructions described in SyncBack Touch settings window on how to grant permissions to access the external SD storage on your device.

To access the device's external SD card then you may use the %SBT_EXTSDCARD% variable in the profile's source/destination directory instead of the actual external SD card's path.

Android KitKat (V4.4)

When using SyncBack Touch on a device running Android KitKat you may encounter the following error while trying to copy file into the device's external SD card with SyncBackPro/SE:

  Permission denied (EFCreateError)

This is a known security feature where Android sandboxes applications when it comes to writing into external SD cards. Applications can no longer write wherever they like into external SD cards, causing issues similar to this one.

Here is one of the many web pages that address this issue:
https://www.androidcentral.com/kitkat-sdcard-changes?nopaging=1

You may be able to get around it by using a different directory path instead of \storage\extSdCard\ but unfortunately this solution may not work since each device is different even when using the same Android version. Try browsing in the root folder of your device to see if there is another shortcut leading to your external SD card.

Other alternatives would be using MTP (via USB cable) which is supported by SyncBackPro/SE V7 and newer, rooting the phone and/or using another ROM version.