I formatted SD card as internal storage (Android 6.0) and it is confusing...
I read that when the SD card is formatted as internal storage, it is also encrypted, so it can't be accessed trough windows for file transfer (if not rooted). OK, so I thought, there must be some practical way to transfer files such as books, movies, music, etc. from PC to SD card...
I tried to make some folder (for instance, BOOKS) on my tablets internal memory, transfer the files in that BOOKS folder, then move that BOOKS folder to SD card. But, I can't find the location of the SD card, so there is nowhere to move that BOOKS folder.
1) What is the SD card folder location, if there exists one?
2) Is there some practical way to transfer files from PC to SD card?
3) What does "Migrate data" option actually migrates, APK's, pictures, videos,...? And how does it decide what is suitable for migration, on what criteria?
4) Is there a way to pick which files would be transferred to SD card?
You correctly pointed out that the systems treats the SD card like internal storage. If your smartphone is running and you connect it via an usb cable to your pc, you will only see one folder. You can now copy something to your device and it is on your device. Basically, "SD card like internal storage" means that your internal storage has been extended by your SD card.
Simply said, there is only "one" storage. Your SD card ist now part of the internal storage. Usually, this is a great advantage as it takes away the limitations of a small internal storage.
However, the downside is:
- you must not take the SD card out of the phone and copy something. This will break the memory.
- you cannot pick what is stored where - Android decides this.
- you can only copy something to the pc via usb cable, bluetooth or network, you must not take the sd card out of the device.
The upside is:
You can stop worrying about where to copy what - Android decides this for you. So lean back and enjoy your new memory capabilities.
Paul2017 said:
You correctly pointed out that the systems treats the SD card like internal storage. If your smartphone is running and you connect it via an usb cable to your pc, you will only see one folder. You can now copy something to your device and it is on your device. Basically, "SD card like internal storage" means that your internal storage has been extended by your SD card.
Simply said, there is only "one" storage. Your SD card ist now part of the internal storage. Usually, this is a great advantage as it takes away the limitations of a small internal storage.
However, the downside is:
- you must not take the SD card out of the phone and copy something. This will break the memory.
- you cannot pick what is stored where - Android decides this.
- you can only copy something to the pc via usb cable, bluetooth or network, you must not take the sd card out of the device.
The upside is:
You can stop worrying about where to copy what - Android decides this for you. So lean back and enjoy your new memory capabilities.
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Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply. I converted it to portable storage as I find it much more convenient. With adoptable storage, the biggest downside is, as you mentioned, that I can't pick to choose what can I store on my SD card. Dedicated SD card is not an issue, as I never (and a vast majority of users) wanted to pull it out of device.
Migrate data is a terrible option, almost no control, undefined behaviour. Generally, the way that Google engineers handled the adoptive storage option is amateurish.
Also, I noticed now, why did they remove the sort by size and sort by date filters in settings--->apps on Android 6.0???
smarko1983 said:
Thanks for the reply. I converted it to portable storage as I find it much more convenient. With adoptable storage, the biggest downside is, as you mentioned, that I can't pick to choose what can I store on my SD card. Dedicated SD card is not an issue, as I never (and a vast majority of users) wanted to pull it out of device.
Migrate data is a terrible option, almost no control, undefined behaviour. Generally, the way that Google engineers handled the adoptive storage option is amateurish.
Also, I noticed now, why did they remove the sort by size and sort by date filters in settings--->apps on Android 6.0???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are right, I just had a look at my Nexus 7 running lineageOS 14.1 (Android 7.1): you cannot sort the apps by size. Don't ask me why.
Related
New Atrix, unmodded. Tested on default storage setting set in either internal storage, or sd card.
16g sd card.
Card contains music, books and pictures.
File manager of the phone can see it and folders on it just fine, music player can see music files on it just fine.
Market bought music player( Power Amp) does not see SD card, it can only see internal storage as SD card.
Cool Reader- same- it thinks internal memory is SD card.
Neither can browse to the SD card.
Both apps worked with droid x and nexus s phones succesfuly before.
Apps that have ability to browse internal memory (tiny player and fbreader)- can go to /sdcard-ext/ and find files there.
Is there any way to make sure that apps, that are built to use SD card for their media would be able to see and use SD card, instead of "virtual" SD on the Internal Storage?
Thank You
onna said:
New Atrix, unmodded. Tested on default storage setting set in either internal storage, or sd card.
16g sd card.
Card contains music, books and pictures.
File manager of the phone can see it and folders on it just fine, music player can see music files on it just fine.
Market bought music player( Power Amp) does not see SD card, it can only see internal storage as SD card.
Cool Reader- same- it thinks internal memory is SD card.
Neither can browse to the SD card.
Both apps worked with droid x and nexus s phones succesfuly before.
Apps that have ability to browse internal memory (tiny player and fbreader)- can go to /sdcard-ext/ and find files there.
Is there any way to make sure that apps, that are built to use SD card for their media would be able to see and use SD card, instead of "virtual" SD on the Internal Storage?
Thank You
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
I had the same issue with a app called Slideshow Bob. I came from a Samsung Captivate and the file system was such that the external card was seen as a subdirectory of the internal card. I never had a problem with this arrangement in apps. However, the Atrix sees the external card as completely separate and some apps simply could not "see" the external card. My solution? I used a different slideshow app. Not exactly the ideal solution, but I had spent enough time trying to work around it. I don't know how other android devices have the external card arrangement, but this may be a bigger issue than we'd like until app developers change their apps or Motorola decides to change it's storage arrangement. Hope this helps.
Thank you for your answer,
using different apps is a work around.
I used different one- moved my content to the internal storage.
Both work.
What I realy would like to see is - those apps work as intended, the way they do work in most android phones from Droid to Nexus S.
onna said:
Is there any way to make sure that apps, that are built to use SD card for their media would be able to see and use SD card, instead of "virtual" SD on the Internal Storage?
Thank You
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
contact the developer
Has anyone tried to replace the Music folder on internal storage with a symbolic link to the Music folder on external? Not sure if Android supports symbolics or not...
Should have known it would'nt be this easy. Tried it on existing SD and found that symbolic links are not supported on FATx. Reformatted my SD to EXT3/2 and booted back up. I get a SD format not recognized error.
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...
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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.
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.
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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
I just bought an LG L9 phone which for its price of $150 was pretty attractive for a dual core.
However, I noticed that when I downloaded apps that download extra data, they were not storing the data on my micro sd, but rather the internal storage, which only has 1.5gb available.
For some reason internal storage is named /SDCARD and the external storage is named SDCARD/ETERNAL_SD
I have no option to move any apps to the sd card from the app settings menu. I put my old microsd card in this phone and tried to restore settings saved from other apps, but it wouldnt recognize I had an settings saved since it apparently doesnt know about the new microsd card directory.
When I download a game that downloads extra files like Asphault for example, it doesnt store the extra data on the micro sd, it just puts it all on the internal storage. I cannot use my offline gps program because it says I dont have enough space to download the map files which normally would be downloaded right to the microsd
I called LG about this, and they claim its normal and all ICS phones have this file name structure.
Is this true? Starting with ICS, are all phones making micro sd cards practically useless aside fro m storing pictures and videos?
Phone the card came out of is a Doogee S68 Pro. I configured the SD card to be internal memory and for the camera app to save pics taken to the SD card. I assumed when the SD card was full the camera would save back to the internal memory but instead it gave an error saying storage full and wouldn't take more photos. There was no option within the camera app to switch the save location to the internal memory so I removed the SD card. This forced the camera to now save to internal memory. BUT. Now when I put the SD card back in it doesn't read and says I need to format the card to use it. Same result if I put the card in different android phones or pug it into a PC. I don't want to format the card because I want the pictures on it.
How can I get the image files off this SD card? I've tried a few file recovery programs without any success. I don't have a linux machine, just a PC, and I have no experience with rooting phones or the like.
Probably card is in raw mode now.
What you mean by saying that you have configured card as an internal storage?
gotaquestion said:
Same result if I put the card in different android phones or pug it into a PC. I don't want to format the card because I want the pictures on it. How can I get the image files off this SD card? I've tried a few file recovery programs without any success. I don't have a linux machine, just a PC, and I have no experience with rooting phones or the like.
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The External SD-card got encrypted as soon as you decided to use it as internal memory. It's no longer readable by any card-reader. IMHO forensic tools are needed to retain the data stored there.
a602820922 said:
Probably card is in raw mode now.
What you mean by saying that you have configured card as an internal storage?
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When I pulgged it in the first time it gave two options, use as internal memory or as mass storage device. I choose the internal memory option.
Dam
jwoegerbauer said:
The External SD-card got encrypted as soon as you decided to use it as internal memory. It's no longer readable by any card-reader. IMHO forensic tools are needed to retain the data stored there.
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I feared this was the case. I don't understand why the original phone cannot decrypt the card though as it would with a Samsung device. I have sent a support request tot he phone manufacturer so hopefully that bears fruit.
gotaquestion said:
When I pulgged it in the first time it gave two options, use as internal memory or as mass storage device. I choose the internal memory option.
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Ok thank you for confirmation. As above card encrypted and furthermore you might have lost all the data of the phone as well as sms , apps, updates basically everything since you choose that option has been storage on ad card, and your internal storage was not used or useless in a different world, access has been denied to it.
Which tools have you tried to recover data?