Okay, first of all, I have done a lot of search on this topic over various forums and google. Some topic pops up occasionally, but never got answered, strange...
Basically I am trying to figure out two things:
1. How to move apps to microSD card? Not a single definitive answer or tutorial would allow me to move apps to external SD card. I've tried app2sd, link2sd also the stock CM7 application manager, which all of them would only allow to move apps to internal storage of the phone which is called SD card for Galaxy SII. Also the microsd card is under the diretory of mnt/emmc. Some other tutorials suggesting moving game data over /sdcard/external_sd/, I tried as well, but my microSD's storage doens't go down so I assume the data is still on internal SD card.
2. How to enable apps to save user data automatically on micro sd card? For example, I have lots of camera apps, which automatically save photos that I took on /sdcard/DCIM, I want them to be on my micro SD card AUTOMATICALLY, is there a way of doing this?
Many thanks, oh btw, I am using cyanogenmod 7 on Galaxy SII
I cannot see much reason to move apps to external sd card with a sgs2, that is something for inferior phones , there is a lot of space on application storage and internal sd card for that.
Most people are fine by just moving media files to the external card.
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how about my second question, i shot a lot of photos and hd videos daily, i know i can manully move them to external, but that Kinda make my gallery look clustered if you know what i mean.
Have you tried doin it internally via your phone:settings-applications-running services.On the top left touch on "downloaded" and all your downloaded apps will appear.Touch on whatever app you like and you will get the option to move,uninstall or clear data.Remember that not all downloaded apps are able to be moved to external sd and if the app you would like to move is unmovable by default then you will see that.
The problem is Android only likes one sd card. So when you have an internal SD card like the sg2 the system doesn't take advantage of your external sd card.
imolared333 said:
how about my second question, i shot a lot of photos and hd videos daily, i know i can manully move them to external, but that Kinda make my gallery look clustered if you know what i mean.
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You can change storage area in camera settings (with stock camera app).
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.
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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.
Keep seeing that more and more apps are allowing the option to move to SD. Is there a reason no to do this?
Don't quite get it, but a 30mb app went down to 5mb by moving it.
In there a rule of thumb of when/why to move to the SD card vs using the internal[?
You lose certain features when you move an app to SD. Widgets and anything that needs an "on boot" alert are the biggest things affected. Things that need to be available at boot time as defaults (like keyboards) shouldn't be moved either. You have to ask yourself what do you gain by moving. If you have enough internal app space, the answer is generally nothing. Most apps use the SD card for data storage even if they're running from internal, and internal is usually quicker than SD. If you do want to move things, grab the App2SD app so you can see on a per-app basis exactly what will be affected by moving the app, but I just leave things alone...there's generally no benefit to moving on newer devices with plenty of app space.
how the heck can i move my apps to my sd card?? i run the app App 2 SD and all it does is move my apps from phone storage (internal) to the phones (''sd card'') i cant move google chrome, google+, facebook, adobe...all fairly large apps. when i look at apps under settings > apps, the only options i have is to move it to phone storage or internal storage. im pretty lost
Linch89 said:
how the heck can i move my apps to my sd card?? i run the app App 2 SD and all it does is move my apps from phone storage (internal) to the phones (''sd card'') i cant move google chrome, google+, facebook, adobe...all fairly large apps. when i look at apps under settings > apps, the only options i have is to move it to phone storage or internal storage. im pretty lost
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you may need root.
don't hold me to that though
thats what i was thinking but i wasnt trying to talk out of my rear end ah well at least i can still store my music and pics on my sd card...without root a 32gb card seems pretty extreme doncha think? without all the nandroids and roms lol
Linch89 said:
how the heck can i move my apps to my sd card?? i run the app App 2 SD and all it does is move my apps from phone storage (internal) to the phones (''sd card'') i cant move google chrome, google+, facebook, adobe...all fairly large apps. when i look at apps under settings > apps, the only options i have is to move it to phone storage or internal storage. im pretty lost
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know i don't know if this will work with apps but it work for photos, i opened the phone's card and long pressed on the ones i wanted to move and selected the option-move to, and transfered photos from phone card to sdcard. i did this with es file explorer. from the phones card not the internal storage or memory wharever it's called
Tried using es file explorer and my sd card didn't even show up. This is what it looks like in disk usage
The storage card is the phones hard drive I think (it's 8 gbs right? And we can't use all 8?)
The /mnt/sdcard/ext_sd is my 32 gig sd card. But when I move my apps it goes to internal storage
Linch89 said:
Tried using es file explorer and my sd card didn't even show up. This is what it looks like in disk usage
The storage card is the phones hard drive I think (it's 8 gbs right? And we can't use all 8?)
The /mnt/sdcard/ext_sd is my 32 gig sd card. But when I move my apps it goes to internal storage
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Have you tried plugging in phone to computer and dragging and droping from one drive to the other, just a suggestion, don't know if it will work
I'll try that after work thanks boss
Aldo101t said:
Have you tried plugging in phone to computer and dragging and droping from one drive to the other, just a suggestion, don't know if it will work
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We established this in another thread about a month ago. With the introduction of Android 4.0, Google decided to change the way mounts work in Android. Google, assuming that microSD card would be phased out in the introduction of larger capacity internal storage phones without microSD slots, decided to make the internal eMMC storage be named 'sdcard', since most apps already used the 'sdcard' location for saving data, and name a real SD card 'sdcard2', also reachable by a folder in 'sdcard' name 'sd_ext'.
The largest phone out there right now that I know of has 64GB total of internal storage, while phones like ours only have 8GB total, with about half being taken up by the system, necessitating the usage of a real SD card for storage. The /data partition on our phone only has about 1GB available, and a dozen medium-sized apps and their data will use that up quickly. In short, there's no way to install apps to the real SD card since ICS, and once your eMMC 'sdcard' fills up, you're out of luck. A large oversight, in my opinion, by Google and HTC.
If our phone had 16GB of internal storage, we might not have that problem nearly as quickly, but games like DEAD Trigger, which is nearly 200MB, will quickly fill up our phone.
Basically, pick and choose the apps you want carefully, and keep the eMMC 'sdcard' partition as empty as possible, aside from your larger apps.
Aldo101t said:
Have you tried plugging in phone to computer and dragging and droping from one drive to the other, just a suggestion, don't know if it will work
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When you move an app to 'Phone storage', it saves in the eMMC internal storage '/sdcard/.android_secure/' folder as a '.asec' file. In my testing, if you move it to actual SD card, that is '/sdcard2/.android_secure/', it won't recognize it. It displays 'Application not installed' when clicking on the app to run it. The Android system saves the pointer to the apk, whether it's saved in '/data/app' or '/sdcard/.android_secure/', and that's the only place it will look for it. You can't move it to the real SD card unless someone else has found a workaround, and I haven't heard of it if the have. I'll find the link to our previous discussion and post it.
IceDragon59 said:
We established this in another thread about a month ago. With the introduction of Android 4.0, Google decided to change the way mounts work in Android. Google, assuming that microSD card would be phased out in the introduction of larger capacity internal storage phones without microSD slots, decided to make the internal eMMC storage be named 'sdcard', since most apps already used the 'sdcard' location for saving data, and name a real SD card 'sdcard2', also reachable by a folder in 'sdcard' name 'sd_ext'.
The largest phone out there right now that I know of has 64GB total of internal storage, while phones like ours only have 8GB total, with about half being taken up by the system, necessitating the usage of a real SD card for storage. The /data partition on our phone only has about 1GB available, and a dozen medium-sized apps and their data will use that up quickly. In short, there's no way to install apps to the real SD card since ICS, and once your eMMC 'sdcard' fills up, you're out of luck. A large oversight, in my opinion, by Google and HTC.
If our phone had 16GB of internal storage, we might not have that problem nearly as quickly, but games like DEAD Trigger, which is nearly 200MB, will quickly fill up our phone.
Basically, pick and choose the apps you want carefully, and keep the eMMC 'sdcard' partition as empty as possible, aside from your larger apps.
When you move an app to 'Phone storage', it saves in the eMMC internal storage '/sdcard/.android_secure/' folder as a '.asec' file. In my testing, if you move it to actual SD card, that is '/sdcard2/.android_secure/', it won't recognize it. It displays 'Application not installed' when clicking on the app to run it. The Android system saves the pointer to the apk, whether it's saved in '/data/app' or '/sdcard/.android_secure/', and that's the only place it will look for it. You can't move it to the real SD card unless someone else has found a workaround, and I haven't heard of it if the have. I'll find the link to our previous discussion and post it.
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okey dokey, maybe after root we can do something with it.
Has anyone tried a 64 GB card with this phone? I jumped the gun and bought one for $44 because they work in the Incredible 2.
itll work for media like pics and music I think. Thanks for all the info. I'm new to this phone and also official ICS
bberryhill0 said:
Has anyone tried a 64 GB card with this phone? I jumped the gun and bought one for $44 because they work in the Incredible 2.
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http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1841317
My phone has 16GB of internal storage, so there's definitely enough space to store a lot of apps. The problem is, only 2GB of it is actually allocated for the apps storage. So I thought about moving all of my apps, whichever ones possible, to the larger 14GB partition. My question is will there be any negative impacts on the phone?
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Mostly no
Most apps will run fine from wherever you put them, some, like facebook for example, want to be on the main partition so that they can always be accessed, when you move them to the other partition the app thinks you've moved it to an external sd card, which again is why facebook wants to be on the main one, so when ever you take your card out facebook is still running, gathering information, I mean connecting you to your friends.
I suggest downloading an app called APP2SD, or even paying for APP2SD Pro. It will tell you which apps you can move and which you shouldn't. It also alerts you when you install a new app if it can moved to the sd card right away.
Hope that all helps.