File Directory Layout - Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hello all,
I'm new here and have a couple of questions about my first smartphone the Galaxy SII (Rooted)
I have recently been getting a few messages informing me that the SD Card is full, which seems to hold about 12 GB.
I have a 32 GB External Sd Card which I try to keep most of my vids / music, and apps that I consider don't really need to e on the actual phone like games, etc.
Other apps like browsers, Password safes, etc I keep on the phone itself.
The Phone seems to have 3 storage areas that it seems to refer to
USB Storage (Actually part of phone memory= Correct ?
SD Card (Actually part of phone memory = Correct?
External SD Card (Removable sd card = Correct ?
Can somebody please explain to me what the idea behind this setup is and how do I go about freeing up the SD Card when most of the directories in there seem to be Data related with the odd folder left over from uninstalled apps.
Hope that makes sense.
Apologies for any bad / incorrect terminology.
Regards
Loachy

If you go to Settings->storage ;
SD Card would refer to any external microSD card you might have put in.
USB Storage would refer to the Internal storage (can be used for storing media/data files)
there is another storage of about 2GB or so... which is used for apps installations..
this partitions can only be accessed via few apps like root explorer and others...
In order to free up your App storing internal storage ( which is 2GB odd)... you would need to put in an external microSD card...
then use any App (i use titanium Backup Pro) to move some of the apps to SD card...(which is infact the external microSD card)

Related

Understanding Android Storage

I don't understand storage on Android and how it works. I would be grateful if someone could explain it.
Normally I thought that Phone memory refers to the storage space on the phone (like ROM) that was fixed and not removable. SD card is the microsd card that I physically insert into a slot on the phone. However, it seems that Android has 3 types of storage: Phone, Internal SD and External SD. Is this correct? I would appreciate if someone could clarify. Also, when I do move Apps to SD card on my CyanogenMod ROM, it seems to only move them from phone memory to internal SD, not external SD. As a general rule, is is better in terms of speed to keep the apps on internal or external SD? I don't want to keep in Phone memory since it is quite small, only about 1.8 GB. I should point out that I am using a Class 10 MicroSD, so it should be quite fast, or so I've been told.
What you refer to as Internal SD is probably not on the SD at all but read/write memory in the device itself. Basically built in storage that's an addition to the read only memory where the important stuff is.
As an example, the Omnia i900 had ROM + 8GB Storage in the Phone, with whatever you wanted to add as External SD. Plug the Omnia into a PC and you had two lot's of storage that you could drag and drop files to.
Basically you have 3 things:
ROM (Read-Only-Memory): This is where Android itself resides. All the OS stuff is here.
Phone Storage: You may consider this as the phones HDD. This is where all the apps/SMS/MMS/... are stored. (This is usually not meant to be accessed by the user to place files there, thats what the SD-Card is for)
SD-Storage: Your SD-Card where you can put everything you want. Music/Pictures/Files...
m0jo said:
Basically you have 3 things:
SD-Storage: Your SD-Card where you can put everything you want. Music/Pictures/Files...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is it possible to run apps off the SD-Card? When I use an app like App2SD, does it actually copy to the SD Card or just to the Phone storage? This is what confuses me, because I selected 'move to SD' on my phone (I'm using Cyanogen 7.1.0). But its still in the Phone Storage. I know this because when I put the SD card into my laptop, it does not show any of the software files.
When you move apps to the SD not all data is moved to the SD. The phone needs some files on the internal storage to run, since it needs to know that the apps are installed on the phone. When it needs to run it'll find the executable files in the internal storage, and run the data files from the SD card. Much like on a computer when you've installed an application and install it on an external HDD.
Apps you move to the SD will be moved to /Android/data/ and /data i believe since i have quite a bit of appdata in these folders.

Why don't Android ICS apps detect my external SD card?

Hi guys I am new to android and I got myself a Micromax A110 running on android ics with 2 gb of internal SD card memory...
As you guys can figure, the internal memory just isn't enough for installing heavy games and storing and downloading large videos and music, so I added a 32 gb external micro SD card.. the card shows in my file manager and its contents are accessible, most apps like ttpod, ttorrent, vlc, chrome etc don't detect my external card. They only access the contents of my internal SD card, download to it.. I can't set the default directory to the external card...
When I installed nfs most wanted to my phone, it asked me to free up data in my SD card or insert another one as there was no space left due to obvious reasons of my internal SD card being filled with other apps.. I uninstalled and reinstalled it after setting the default storage location to the external storage... I found that the game installed in the internal storage this time and on startup, it gave the same message..
Is it a common problem or a limitation to the OS? Is there a work around for this? If so how? Does my phone needs to be rooted for the purpose? Please help as the problem is getting annoying.. my external card is lying almost empty...
Thanks in advance,
Extremely sorry for the long post...
Sent from my Micromax A110 using Tapatalk 2
It's because Google made the stupid decision, starting with Honeycomb (which is why the Motorola Xoom, the first Honeycomb device needed an update to enable use of it's MicroSD card slot) to merge the /data/ and /sdcard/ partitions. What that means is that the SD card becomes a virtual space (a folder, in fact) located in the same place where all your apps are stored. Why is it stupid? If you have a phone that actually has a MicroSD card slot, like yours or the Galaxy S III, the MicroSD card becomes a different "folder" (something like /sdext/, which stands for either extension or external). Only apps that specifically are programmed to look for that mount point/folder will be able to use it. Most music/video/picture players/viewers can, because it makes sense to automatically program to do that. But with large games, like you said, NFS Most Wanted (which I also have), it sucks because the game is like 2GB.
My Galaxy S3 has 16GB internal and a 32GB card. I'm forced to use the internal storage only for large games because they don't see the memory card. It sucks. The good thing about merging /data/ and /sdcard/ is that it simplifies things, like on the iPhone where your space is your space, no matter how you use it. It used to be that you had like 1GB or 2GB for apps (the APK files only, not the files that games download for example) (which the HTC One X does, but still only uses internal storage because there's no card slot), and the rest went to your MicroSD card slot. Now it's all to internal storage because your internal storage IS your MicroSD card slot at system level.
Product F(RED) said:
It's because Google made the stupid decision, starting with Honeycomb (which is why the Motorola Xoom, the first Honeycomb device needed an update to enable use of it's MicroSD card slot) to merge the /data/ and /sdcard/ partitions. What that means is that the SD card becomes a virtual space (a folder, in fact) located in the same place where all your apps are stored. Why is it stupid? If you have a phone that actually has a MicroSD card slot, like yours or the Galaxy S III, the MicroSD card becomes a different "folder" (something like /sdext/, which stands for either extension or external). Only apps that specifically are programmed to look for that mount point/folder will be able to use it. Most music/video/picture players/viewers can, because it makes sense to automatically program to do that. But with large games, like you said, NFS Most Wanted (which I also have), it sucks because the game is like 2GB.
My Galaxy S3 has 16GB internal and a 32GB card. I'm forced to use the internal storage only for large games because they don't see the memory card. It sucks. The good thing about merging /data/ and /sdcard/ is that it simplifies things, like on the iPhone where your space is your space, no matter how you use it. It used to be that you had like 1GB or 2GB for apps (the APK files only, not the files that games download for example) (which the HTC One X does, but still only uses internal storage because there's no card slot), and the rest went to your MicroSD card slot. Now it's all to internal storage because your internal storage IS your MicroSD card slot at system level.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey man! Thanks for the reply....
Can you tell me how to work out a solution for this?
Is directory bind or fstab file hack the only solution?
Is it possible to overcome this without root?
And some apps do detect my Micro SD card... It is in the directory mnt/sdcard2
Please post questions one time only and in the proper Q&A section.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2019921

[Q] Cannot move apps to SD, Memory is almost full, please help

I recently bought a 32GB SD card that cost 50$! for my phone, however none of the app2sd apps work on my phone.
I have alot of apps I need to move to the SD. I may want to put videos, etc. on there in the future too.
Thread moved to proper forum.
Bump
bump
I'm not sure of the tech reasons but apparently the way Samsung implemented the internal memory system means apps cannot be moved to or run from the external SD card. There is however a rather neat way to use your SD card as Internal memory and your phone's internal memory as the extSD card. Have a look in ExtSd2InternalSd v4|Increase your data storage
You could try Directory Bind: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1410262
Works well for me but I could make problems with apps that need loaded its data right at the beginning after bootup.
But for game data and stuff like that it works well.

[Q] External Memory Problems, Please Help!

Hi, so I recently bought a MICRO SD card (16gb) for my Samsung Galaxy S Duos S7652.
I inserted it in the phone. When I go to the storage in the settings, it shows that there is 14.83gb available even though it is empty I haven't put anything inside. But this is not the major problem.
The problem is that the card is USELESS. I mean whatever I do, I cannot get applications in the SD card. They always install in the internal memory where there is no space left and the game is like 1.5gb which is more than the internal memory I am given. I tried moving the applications to the SD card folders in ''my files'' but nothing hapenned.
I searched the internet and found out that I had to change my internet browser settings and so did I. I put the memory card as deafult. I downloaded Directory Bind and App to SD and still i cannot transfer applications from internal to external memory, or just download directly in the memory card. The memory card is working correctly, i just dont know how to place apps in there.
In my settings--> storage, when i go to an application and tap on it, i can see the SD card under storage, but there is no ''MOVE TO SD CARD'' in any application. I have tried with the App to SD and the Directory Bind programs but i still get Root Access FAIL. My phone operater is 4.0 ice cream sandwich (i think that is how it's called)
I have tried everything. So my question is:
Can I fix this and transfer applications from internal to external memory? Or download the apps directly on the SD card?
Or i just wasted 20EURO and the card is useless.
Please Help.
Thanks.

Need a help of real Android system professional with the SD card connection

Hello everyone,
I am looking for the help of real expert on Android. I have an old phone Galaxy S II (I9100) and I said to myself that I will use it as an MP3 player, radio, handheld camera, in short, such a home device. I made a hard reset, installed CyanogenMod, that I updated, installed the necessary applications and because the phone has storage for applications only 2GB many I moved to internal storage for data that is marked as an SD card (in the storage manager) and it has 16 GB For MP3 I bought 64 gigabytes Samsung SD card. And then there was my problem. When I slid the SD card and run the system, it didn't see the application transferred to the internal data storage. The problem I think is that the system has changed the path of the internal data storage and the actual SD card. So it doesn't seek for apps in the internal data storage, but in the blank SD card. Is there any way to replace or modify the path to both memories so that the system will be looking for applications where before, ie only the internal data storage and not on an external SD card? Than I will be able to change SD card any time and it will not affect installed apps moved into internal storage for data. I have installed CM 12 with a root. All three storages can system see. Thank you very much.

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