Samsung Galaxy S4 Active — is kies3 still usuable for best backup of galaxys4 to transfer to s5

My galaxy s4 was operating fine until the glass was cracked a few days ago. I
had it looked at at the AT&T store and they said I needed a replacement.Having
insurance, I put in a claim and was sent an S5 (upgrade). Before it arrived I used KIES 3 with the help
of a Samsung Rep over the phone. It got hung up backing up my files due to what he
advised were some corrupted photo files.

New Galaxy phone arrived yesterday. I get on phone to AT&T. As we are trying to get everything
going and restore my files to the new Samsung S5 it appeared to get stuck in the restoring procedure due to the time it was taking to restore the files. The rep was not experienced and told me to abort that attempt and reboot
the galaxy S5 phone. Now it will not even reboot through the AT&T Logo where it gets frozen and does not
reach the point of the ATT intro sound.

Some factory reset boots have been attempted by holding down 3 buttoms on bootup of the S5 but so far
no luck.

While awaiting another S5 replacement from the insurance company (they sent an S5 insted of an S4 saying they were upgrading me due to unavailable S4s) i am trying to make sure i am backing up everything from my damaged S4 in the best way possible so that i will eventually retrieve all items and be able to restore them when i get a properly functioning S5 replacement this week (hopefully).

Any feedback on best backup when Kies 3 is hanging up?

A sumsung rep said that a Kies3 backup of galaxy 4 may not properly transfer data to a galaxy s5. Any feedback on that???