So what is your advice. When I'm installing programs, are all programs able to work off of the micro sd card? I want to save memory but should some programs be installed on the internal memory? What is the thought behind it?
some should. look at it like this:
memory: anything that you want to always have on (at least most of the time) and will stay running when your phone goes into hibernation.
Ex. BeeJiveIM, gyrator, callerutility, etc
storage card: anything that you don't use that often and want to start up manually.
Ex. Skyfire, Google Maps, Music ID
---anything that you want on a storage card i would recommend you putting on there BUT sometimes things you want to load onto your storage card only will download to your memory.
Thanks I'll take your advice.
So I guess my real question is, will I see a big speed difference if I"m running a program off of the card? Will programs run faster/better if they are installed on the internal memory? Or does the class or speed of the memory card come into play when you're tranfering files?
in performance no, not at all. only thing is different is that when the phones suspends itself after so many seconds the internal card also suspends itself after so many seconds after the phone is in hibernation, so therefore i would use it for things that you need right now and not over a long period of time.
Related
I've never had problems with moving apps back and forth from my phone's internal storage to the SD card. But recently, I've noticed that apps I used to be able to store externally (Shazam, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) have the "move to SD" option greyed out, making it impossible to move them off my phone. I'm running stock 2.3.4. I've combed the internet trying to find a fix to this issue, but have found no results so far. I'm contemplating doing a hard reset to hopefully fix this as a last resort if nothing else works... Anyone have any suggestions?
Unfortunately, not all applications support moving to SD card. This is typically because the developer has good reason for not allowing this. For example, apps like facebook that make use of widgets would error every time your SD card is unmounted. Now you may be thinking: "I never take out my SD card so why would this bother me"
However, every time you plug in your phone to a USB port to transfer files such as photos and videos the SD card automatically unmount.
Download App2SD from the market for an easy way to see a list of apps installed on your phone that are programmed to support moving to SD card.
Conclusion: without manipulating your device, there is no way to transfer the apps you've mentioned to an external storage device.
Having the same problem
blastindamusic said:
Unfortunately, not all applications support moving to SD card. This is typically because the developer has good reason for not allowing this. For example, apps like facebook that make use of widgets would error every time your SD card is unmounted. Now you may be thinking: "I never take out my SD card so why would this bother me"
However, every time you plug in your phone to a USB port to transfer files such as photos and videos the SD card automatically unmount.
Download App2SD from the market for an easy way to see a list of apps installed on your phone that are programmed to support moving to SD card.
Conclusion: without manipulating your device, there is no way to transfer the apps you've mentioned to an external storage device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm...that would make sense. But I've had Pandora stored externally on my SD card since I was running 2.3.3 and that has a widget feature as well. I'm assuming that the update to 2.3.4 made it impossible to store apps that have widget functionality to the SD once you move them onto internal storage. Thanks for the help.
This is my first tablet and I'm new to Android (always had Windows Mobile phones) so maybe this is common knowledge to Android users but I sure as hell can't find the answer via searching.
I finally bought a microSD card for my Prime but can't figure out how to use it efficiently. I can access it an copy files and folders to it via the File Manager so I know it works. However, I can't figure out how to make the camera save pictures and videos to it by default. After looking at that for a while I looked at my other apps and none of my programs seem to have an option to make use of the microSD card. Took me a while to figure out I can't even install programs to the SD card like I can with my Windows Mobile phone. I can deal with that last part though with 32 gigs on the internal card but if the only way to use the microSD card is to manually copy files over to it where those files are then inaccessible for all the apps so I have to manually copy them back over every time I need to use them, that's not acceptable.
What am I missing here? I can't believe this was intentionally designed this way. Is there some global setting that I'm missing to open things up?
I think most use the external card for music & vids and such that they carry over TO the tablet. I also noticed you cannot set apps to save there and I have an app that monitors apps when they install. & if they are SD compatible it alerts you.... it never works in this setup. No doubt you could - if rooted - move apps to SD card as I do this on my Droid all the time.
As for camera & vids no way to set SD as default.
Unless there been a change since honeycomb saving and running apps to sd is not native. Most people state that due to all the space the device comes with you don't need it since apk are so small. But I had 4 games take up 4.5 gb of space on my device so that rational does not float.
If you ever root your device there is app called gl to sd
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1328053
worked great on honycomb (waiting till i get home to use new root so have not tried on ICS yet) I moved all my games to SD and they ran fine .. games like shadow Gun GTA III DeadSpace Backstab 9mm.
Just my two cents if there is way for using the sd card natively in ICS I also wold love to know.
On my measly 512mb OG Droid I have 110 apps on the SD card. Ahhhh thank God root.
For this 32gb beast I decided to forgo SD card apps as it does slow the app down (has to r/w from slower card) and Widgets can bust.
It is lame though that we cannot set cameras & vids to auto save but again you'd get a performance hit to a small degree.
The situation was worse before Honeycomb, in Gingerbread you could have a 16GB phone but the way it was partitioned only 1GB to 2GB was considered "internal memory" for app installation space/data while the rest was partitioned into a virtual "sdcard" folder that you needed things like App2SD to move over to that parition space (and not even fully, portions of app/data/cache would stay in the internal memory space). With HoneyComb/ICS the full 32GB or 64GB storage space is visible and useable between the internal/sdcard mounts. I got the 64GB Prime so I wouldn't have to worry about app install space any more since I like to load hundreds of apps/games. I also have a 64GB microSDHC card which I use to store a bunch of videos/music.
Thanks for the reply guys. Surprised that Android is built to limit itself like that. Really though, 32 gigs is a lot of space for the apps themselves. If it was just a matter of having to install the apps on the internal card, I wouldn't even bother cause I know with my use I'd never approach the limit if that was the only limitation.
However, not being able to save data used by the apps to external SD card is an issue as I see it. Will probably get around to rooting my Prime just so I can move some of the apps to the external SD card so they'll, hopefully, save and use the data there to keep my internal card free. I have a few aviation chart based apps that will be taking up quite a bit of space. I don't think it will max it out on their own but I like having plenty of extra space.
Not being able to save the video and pics from the camera directly to the external card is a bit ridiculous though. Perhaps a developer can fix that? In the mean time, I've thought of a work around that, while not perfect, will work for me I think in regards to keeping the camera videos and pics from clogging up my internal drive. I've installed an app called SyncMe that syncs via wifi network to my computer. I'll set it automatically to move all the camera data from my internal card to my computer and then I'll have another event that syncs the files on my computer to my tablet external SD card. The effect will be a daily transfer of all my camera activity to my external SD card while also making them available on my computer until I have time to sort through them.
Yea, once you play around with it a bit you'll find what works best for you. Some apps wont install on the external sd card and a lot of apps behave better when install on internal memory. Apps to SD is great for some but not all apps. Now separating the data from the apps that are internal to the external ? I'm not sure how well that will work.
Oh wait. I just re-read what you wrote. Yes - you can save the data to the external sd card and you will want to. There are lots of apps that do that, our Primes came with a backup app that will allow you to select apps to backup and/or apps with data. Sometimes you only want to restore apps and not data.
Your work around for storing pictures and video to external sd sounds like it will work well. 32gb is a lot of space. It's also really easy to use the File Manager to copy them over. I can't speak for everyone, but I'm guessing a lot of us here, especially if we rooted our phones, have grown accustom to setting schedules for apps to backup or data and for me - that includes things like pictures. Some of these backups will sync to a cloud so the data/pictures are safe and wont get lost. With 32gb I'm not concerned about space.
I wasn't really concerned about space that much until I recorded some video of my son's basketball game. Just over 6 min and the video was well over 800mb.
I could see that adding up real quick if I didn't stay on top of it and I know I won't without some 'auto' help. Got concerned that I might clog up my internal card with personal stuff that would inhibit my work stuff, which is what this is was for in the first place.
Haven't looked at the backup utility yet but every other app I've tried, I can't see a selectable option for getting choosing where to save and access data. Well, except for the SyncMe and File Manager I already mentioned. Oh, and I noticed that the gallery can see the photos and videos I moved to the external card so that's good.
Well, I found another reason to not like the microSD card option but this time, it's directly related to the Prime rather than a generic Android problem.
Took my prime out for work. First full day with hotel stay since buying the microSD card. By the time I get back to the hotel to settle in for the night, I notice the microSD card is missing. WTH!!!
Now, there wasn't anything on it that I don't have on the computer at home BUT, that card wasn't cheap. If it comes out of that slot so easy as to be gone after my first full day away from home with the Prime, I can't trust it at all.
First question, is there an easily accecible log file that would show when the card was unmounted? If so, that might narrow down where to look for it. Might actually be able to find it if I know when it came out.
Second question, does anyone know if the SD card slot on the dock is more secure? I would really like more space but I'm not paying for another microSD card.
To answer one of your questions, the dock SD card is much more secure, it does not stick out of the dock at all unlike the Micro SD in the tablet
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
I would definitely recommend you have at least a sleeve for your Prime. That will help with the microSD not popping out, too. I have been carrying mine with me for weeks and haven't had mine pop out at all. No, I'm not aware of a way to find out when it was unmounted.
And yes - the dock has a SD card reader, so it's bigger and it will insert flush as opposed to sticking out a little due to the beveled design of the sides of the Prime. And with the usb port......well it's limitless really - maybe not to carry for every outing, but at home it's so easy to contect to the external hard drive and transfer movies and pictures that way. I really like the dock. Also, the prices of microSD cards have come waaaaay down. Sandisk, class 6, 16gb, $20.
"Haven't looked at the backup utility yet but every other app I've tried, I can't see a selectable option for getting choosing where to save and access data. Well, except for the SyncMe and File Manager I already mentioned. Oh, and I noticed that the gallery can see the photos and videos I moved to the external card so that's good."
The built in app backup does save your data to either or both places. This is data from your apps. Not things like downloads or pictures. It saves your apps too but you don't really have to do that since as soon as you sign into the market your apps are there. I have 2 other 3rd party apps that do the same thing with more features (schedules, bookmarks, etc)
Yep - the gallery and video player are going to find the pictures and videos/movies that you put on the removable sd card. The built in media player lets you tell it where to look for movies/videos. There really is plenty of room in the 32gb for most of your needs. Unless you root and start storing multiple weekly nandroid backups, you'll likely only need to manage your files when you "want to" - i.e. when you want to transfer pictures and videos on and off the Prime and/or when you back the Prime up. I have a 16gb $20 sandisk class 6 microsd that I've loaded up with 10 movies, but now I only have 4 gb left. I have over 80 3rd party apps installed to internal, that combined with the apps that came with it amount to only about 5gb, (plus misc pictures, videos, several hundred books, etc) and I still have 22 gb left. So I'm moving more movies to internal. I didn't get a 32gb tablet to leave a bunch of dead air
I have a TON of pictures and videos in my gallery. TONS. Thousands. But I've been using an android phone for several years so I'm synced with Google and the Cloud. Every picture I take with my phone or tablet is stored in the Cloud, private, available only to me unless I choose to make it public. I can access them anywhere from any computer within seconds of taking them. So they don't take up any space at all on any of my devices. Neither does my music anymore
Yeah, the 32 gigs is good for my needs. Not for my wants. I justified buying this thing to carry aeronautical chart which takes up several gigabits of space. Quite a bit of space but not so much that it overwhelms the internal card. However, when using it for secondary tasks like an HD video recorder, that space get chewed up fast. MicroSD was my plan for stuff like that. Will have to rethink that now.
Was planning on getting a sleeve or a case once I had the tab and keyboard and could figure out exaclty what I wanted for it (just got the keyboard) but that card got lost way too easy. Not buying another one even with the sleeve/case.
Well, the card showed up. Well, more accurately, it was sitting in a convenient place for me to stumble across it this morning.
Lucky for me for now.
hello guys. i have a galaxy note, At&T version but i have a little problem. For example, i bought Modern combat 3 from the market store and i downloaded the Apk file off market store into my phone, so all in order to play that game, i have to download rest of the data over WiFi right ? but the data of the games that i downloaded over WiFi, it will instal automatically to my internal memory not to my SD card, usually with my others Android phones that i used to have it before it will install to my SD card. However, with my galaxy note every data of the game that i downloaded over WiFi it will stored into my phone memory and now after downloading more than 7 games my phone memory is full and my 32gb SD card still empty, even though my SD card is mounted.And if i ever moved, any data to the SD card, then i cant play the game it will asked me to download the data again and if i downloaded again it will still install into my phone memory . Any helps please. I'm sorry about my English. I'm a french speaker....
Not sure if i understand what you are saying about your sd card. Is there anything at all on it? If not, is it mounted?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda premium
A little suggestion, read what you typed out loud to yourself (proof reading).
BUT, I think I understand.
Unfortunately, not every app (in fact, only around 50-70%) of apps support the ability of moving the app to the sdcard. Most games that download additional data do NOT support being moved.
So, what I suggest you do is move anything on your phone's internal memory to your sd card. Audiobooks, podcasts, movies, music, pictures, etc should be on your sdcard. This way, you should have more than enough room for whatever additional stuff apps are downloading.
Personally, I use my sd card for all of this stuff for two additional reasons - the sd card is replaceable, my phone memory is not. Media such as podcasts, audiobooks, movies, music, and pictures are always being swapped on my phone for different content. Every time you write data, this is a destructive process that wears down the memory cells that store data on the phone or sd card. But since the sd card is much more easily replaced than the phone, I put all of this content on the sd card.
The second reason I put all of my media on the sd card is, 'if' my phone should need to be warrantied, I dont have to worry about anything in the phone's internal storage because I keep everything I can on the sd card.
You also might need to actually plug your phone into the computer and browse thru the folders on the phone and manually delete any game data that is still around for games you arent playing anymore (games you uninstalled) or apps that you no longer have installed.
Or alternatively, redownload the game and follow the instructions below.
When you remove an app that you know you arent going to play again, you should delete it by going to Settings->Applications->Manage Applications, then tap the 'All' tab near the top of the screen. Scroll thru the list and when you see an app you want to remove, tap it. In this next screen, 'if' Force Stop is selectable, tap Force Stop. Then tap 'Clear Data'. Then finally tap 'Uninstall'. Clearing Data deletes any additional data the app creates that is not the actual apk you originally downloaded from the market (in most cases anyway).
Of course, another option is just to do a factory reset (Settings->Privacy and Storage->Reset Phone). This will clean everything (for the most part) off the phone and give you a clean slate to work off. Then, when you delete apps, do the steps I mentioned in the above paragraph when you uninstall any apps.
Mad383Max said:
Not sure if i understand what you are saying about your sd card. Is there anything at all on it? If not, is it mounted?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes the SD card is mounted. it shows me the capacity and everything.
littlewierdo said:
A little suggestion, read what you typed out loud to yourself (proof reading).
BUT, I think I understand.
Unfortunately, not every app (in fact, only around 50-70%) of apps support the ability of moving the app to the sdcard. Most games that download additional data do NOT support being moved.
So, what I suggest you do is move anything on your phone's internal memory to your sd card. Audiobooks, podcasts, movies, music, pictures, etc should be on your sdcard. This way, you should have more than enough room for whatever additional stuff apps are downloading.
Personally, I use my sd card for all of this stuff for two additional reasons - the sd card is replaceable, my phone memory is not. Media such as podcasts, audiobooks, movies, music, and pictures are always being swapped on my phone for different content. Every time you write data, this is a destructive process that wears down the memory cells that store data on the phone or sd card. But since the sd card is much more easily replaced than the phone, I put all of this content on the sd card.
The second reason I put all of my media on the sd card is, 'if' my phone should need to be warrantied, I dont have to worry about anything in the phone's internal storage because I keep everything I can on the sd card.
You also might need to actually plug your phone into the computer and browse thru the folders on the phone and manually delete any game data that is still around for games you arent playing anymore (games you uninstalled) or apps that you no longer have installed.
Or alternatively, redownload the game and follow the instructions below.
When you remove an app that you know you arent going to play again, you should delete it by going to Settings->Applications->Manage Applications, then tap the 'All' tab near the top of the screen. Scroll thru the list and when you see an app you want to remove, tap it. In this next screen, 'if' Force Stop is selectable, tap Force Stop. Then tap 'Clear Data'. Then finally tap 'Uninstall'. Clearing Data deletes any additional data the app creates that is not the actual apk you originally downloaded from the market (in most cases anyway).
Of course, another option is just to do a factory reset (Settings->Privacy and Storage->Reset Phone). This will clean everything (for the most part) off the phone and give you a clean slate to work off. Then, when you delete apps, do the steps I mentioned in the above paragraph when you uninstall any apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for ur help bro but it didn't work. i even rest the the phone to the factory but still doing the same thing. tell me on your galaxy note if u download for example asphalt 6 apk and if u star downloading the rest of that over WiFi tell where that file will install ? on your phone memory or to your external SD Card ? thanks
The reality is that any connection you use whether wifi or edge ect.some goes to device and some in sd. sometimes you can put a little bit more inside the SD card.
Sony ****ed up on this. See, this phone has an 8GB Internal storage. But 4 is used by Android, about 1 and a half by the apps pre installed, but because of the fact that you can't download anything from Play when I reach 500MB left in storage, I'm left with 2GB or so. Now I got an SD card, a 64GB one, to deal with this very problem. Now I'm a gamer, so naturally I wanna download some games. Obviously, games take a bit more space than your average app. So the solution is to have it install to external by default, that is the SD card. But for whatever reason, despite having 60GB left, I apparently have no space in external, I can't install anything. So the first thing I try is to, and painfully so, delete enough things on the internal to fit this smaller 500MB game. And it works. Clearly, it thinks the internal is the external, and so does all apps that show what is internal and external. Apparently I have two externals. Google Play isn't the only problem. If a game is looking for the data to it, which is typically found in obb, even if I have it in the actual SD card it searches in the internal thinking it's the external. Even the OS itself, the settings app, gets confused. Reading that, for an example, 500MB of the app is on the external, when it really still is on the internal. So how do I solve this? I'm willing to root if necessary.
I just stumbled upon it and I though it might be useful. In order to move an app from your phone's internal storage to your SD card, you just need to
1) open Settings -> Apps
2) Tap on an app
3) Tap on Storage
4) Tap Change
5) Tap SD card
PS: Obviously apps will take more time to open (the delay is noticable in facebook).
jsalatas said:
I just stumbled upon it and I though it might be useful. In order to move an app from your phone's internal storage to your SD card, you just need to
1) open Settings -> Apps
2) Tap on an app
3) Tap on Storage
4) Tap Change
5) Tap SD card
PS: Obviously apps will take more time to open (the delay is noticable in facebook).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't even need to do that. Just long press any app then >app info>storage etc...
jsalatas said:
I just stumbled upon it and I though it might be useful. In order to move an app from your phone's internal storage to your SD card, you just need to
1) open Settings -> Apps
2) Tap on an app
3) Tap on Storage
4) Tap Change
5) Tap SD card
PS: Obviously apps will take more time to open (the delay is noticable in facebook).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Welcome to Android! :silly:
And for anyone tempted to try, the onboard 64 gig is far faster than any SD card you can currently buy. Many apps will run poorly, if at all. Moving apps to the SD card should be an absolute last resort, right after you've figured out which apps you really didn't need in the first place.
douger1957 said:
And for anyone tempted to try, the onboard 64 gig is far faster than any SD card you can currently buy. Many apps will run poorly, if at all. Moving apps to the SD card should be an absolute last resort, right after you've figured out which apps you really didn't need in the first place.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tend to agree, I moved a much of apps to my SD now things run much slower I regret doing so.
Moving apps to SD is soooo kit kat....
Depends on what apps you moved i guess.
Ive notified NO CHANGE on the apps ive moved. WhatsApp is on the SSD card and behaves just as it did on internal.
Let's see.. samsung internet , Firefox, textra, all amazon apps, google drive, instagram, Snapchat, outlook, pandora, OneDrive...
NO DIFFERENCE at all.
Now there was one app, samsung gear 360, it did NOT like to be on storage card (kept force closing even though i was not using it when this was happening) so i moved it back to internal.
Also not ALL of the apps data is moved to the SD card. Some data of the app still lives on the SD.
EDIT: i dont use crackbook aka Facebook, so i cant speak on that, but i use WhatsApp, for example, and it opens up normally. No lag. None of the apps i moved are behaving out of normal. Again this is dependent on other factors, but in my daily use environment i dont notice any lag.
I also dont use the memory and storage optimizer (killing apps in the background from running)...
The internal storage is faster than sd unless you can find one of their new faster sd cards...if you move a lot of apps you may see performance loss...
marctronixx said:
Depends on what apps you moved i guess.
Ive notified NO CHANGE on the apps ive moved. WhatsApp is on the SSD card and behaves just as it did on internal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't move WhatsApp on my S7 edge. Being wanting to. I get my N8 tomorrow, so even happier if I can now move it
Hey liquid guru
I can't move any apps with my 8.1 rooted phone ...
Is there a thread I'm not able to find on this.
Thanks