SD Card (internal and external) - G Tablet Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I think I'm just looking for some validation here.
I've been struggling with music and video files. So I've occasionally wanted to format my micro SD card (external). I was using the G-Tab's settings - SD card and Device Settings - Unmount SD Card - Format SD Card.
Call me dense, but I assumed that I was un-mounting the external SD card and formatting that. Paying closer attention, I'm actually wiping the INTERNAL SD storage area! Lesson learned. No harm, no foul since I haven't put anything of substance ON the tablet yet.
I pulled the external micro SD Card and formatted it FAT32 and it's working like a champ. I have media on both external and internal which didn't show up immediately, but as others have stated, it's important in Vegan-Tab to reboot when you make a change to the SD Cards before stuff shows up correctly. I did this (rebooted) and Voila! all media is showing up in the player.
If anyone with more knowledge wants to chime in, it's appreciated!

That.....Sucks....
SDCARD2 is the external....

It's all good... now I know. Hopefully someone searching here will learn from it.
I really hadn't put diddly on the internal SD card and the format actually only clears the user data space, not the ROM/Kernel.
Once I get some "personal" stability with the G-Tablet, I'll worry about keeping my data backed up!

Read this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1010943
There are a lot of other stickies that various ones of us have put
together trying to anticipate what would help.........
Rev

butchconner said:
Read this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1010943
There are a lot of other stickies that various ones of us have put
together trying to anticipate what would help.........
Rev
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I actually had read this (and most of the other stickies). Thanks a ton for posting the information!
What I didn't find was specific information about the disappearing media files as it relates to the /sdcard and /sdcard2 directories and the implications of .nomedia.
I was running loose without a .nomedia "lock" and it deleted a couple of MP4 movies I had installed on the external card. I reloaded them (Windows found errors on the card) and installed the card. I rescanned until the files showed up and added a .nomedia folder to see if that keeps them put. So far so good.
It's a drag to pull out the tablet and brag about how cool it is and have the movies gone for the demo!
Thanks to all for the valuable input.

G-Tab,
I hear you. But I personally never get into helping folks with video, sound, music
etc.
Usually the people I work with are at the crash and burn stage and need the most
basic info.
Maybe you can gather the info and put together a post on the video/music/etc.
side of it?
Rev

Rev,
You're right, a consolidated thread might be helpful.
I actually tagged onto one here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=895340
The issue is interesting because it seems to be just the video files. My MP3 files are left alone. Makes me wonder if it has something to do with the size of the file? The MP4's I had are over 750meg in size. I will experiment a bit and see if different sized MP4's make a difference as well as .AVI.

Related

[Q] (Q) Why does my Gtab not see my microsd card?

I am a new owner of this tablet and have gotten as far as I could on my own. I have read several threads about how to mount the ext sd card, but I have not seen any directly referring to the card not being visible from the start.
I have cwm, titanianbackup, vegan5.1.1 incl supl installed and have even found how to tether my tabler to my captivate.
I have tried 4 different microsd cards(all new)Transcend 16gb, Patriot 16gb, Kingston 8gb and Sandisk 8 gb and none of them show up under settings after several reboots each. What am I doing wrong? I have not even got to the point of getting any option to mount the ext card yet, I am just seeing the internal sd when in settings.
I know I am just overlooking something that is obvious to veterans, so if someone can share a possible solution or suggestion I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks
Tina
The different cards I have won't work once I go up to the class 8 cards... otherwise, they need to be FAT32
compmomnc,
The disk structure and USB stuff on the G-Tablet leaves a lot to be deserved -- although I believe it probably is the same with a lot of other Android stuff too.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1010943
The above should give you some file system basics. You can always go into your
file manager (I use Root Explorer) and check to find /sdcard, /sdcard2 and /usbdisk.
Then select them and see what's on that device.
I have several miniSDHC cards from 4- to 16-gigs and have not had trouble with any
of them.
You could have a read problem, but make sure they are not showing up as above and
are not there.
Rev
I had the same problem, thought it was a format problem, formatted twice to fat32, still no joy.
Finally rebooted with the sd card in place and the tab recognized it.
Rev interesting reading and suggestions, but alas no help for my problem.
Metal I tried reformatting all 4 microsd cards multiple times followed by a reboot and they still do not show.
Well my solution for right now is to use multi mount and will continue to explore for a more permanent solution. I can see the ext sd now, but if I transfer anything to it(like mp3's) winamp or poweramp do not see the additional files whether it is mounted or not. So for right now my music is on internal sd and I will have to watch the space for movie files. I am traveling later this week and aside for this little hiccup, the tablet is working fine. I should also add using Esfilexplorer, I can see the sd2 with any files on it and play each mp3 individually. I will continue to search and see what other suggestions other tablet owners might suggest for this issue.
Thanks for the help.
Tina
Tina - I have some music in a folder I created on my external sdcard (sdcard2) and poweramp does see it. In poweramp go to Settings - Music Folders and check the folders you want poweramp to scan. Folders on sdcard2 should show up.
Don't forget to rescan folders after you transfer new music and reboot.
compmomnc said:
Rev interesting reading and suggestions, but alas no help for my problem.
Metal I tried reformatting all 4 microsd cards multiple times followed by a reboot and they still do not show.
Well my solution for right now is to use multi mount and will continue to explore for a more permanent solution. I can see the ext sd now, but if I transfer anything to it(like mp3's) winamp or poweramp do not see the additional files whether it is mounted or not. So for right now my music is on internal sd and I will have to watch the space for movie files. I am traveling later this week and aside for this little hiccup, the tablet is working fine. I should also add using Esfilexplorer, I can see the sd2 with any files on it and play each mp3 individually. I will continue to search and see what other suggestions other tablet owners might suggest for this issue.
Thanks for the help.
Tina
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you are using the ".nomedia" work around to protect your media files then they won't show up in the players. The .nomedia file prevents the system from scanning any deeper in the directory tree so the media lists never get built. File managers will still work just fine though.

[Q] Music Files and folders

Having a problem here and I hope someone can help.
Problem 1:
I have the Sandisk 64GB SD card. I have copied all my music to it. For the most part everything is fine. The strange thing is that it doesn't report all my songs. I did a search and the names are coming up strangely.
For example: What reports on my computer is "Strange Eyes.MP3". What reports on my phone when I search using My Files or look at the file with ES File Explorer is "Strange Eyes.MP3e.MP3". Some files are also changing to .mp3p. That's just what I have found so far.
Problem 2:
The other strange thing that if I read the SD card on my computer while it is in the phone it only shows the folders of my music up to the J's. If I use a SD card reader, I can see only up to the J's. If I use My Files or ES File Explorer I can see them all. This makes it extremely hard to copy the songs. For the one song I was able to fix (see below) I used Dropbox. BTW, I did try breaking up the music into folders like A2F, J2O, etc.
Other info:
Now, all the files look fine. All the tags, file names, etc. they are all MP3's that I had ripped from my own CD. I fixed one of the songs by going into (I know) iTunes and converting it to a MP3 (which it already was) and copied that file over. Now the phone sees it. There are a total of 4,167 songs and my phone is only seeing 4,087+1.
I originally had not formatted the card from when I had gotten it and had this issue, so I reformatted in the phone and still it persists. My old phone had no problems reading the music. It was a Thrill 4G.
Does anyone have any ideas on either of these issues? Thanks in advance.
EnderXXI said:
Having a problem here and I hope someone can help.
Problem 1:
I have the Sandisk 64GB SD card. I have copied all my music to it. For the most part everything is fine. The strange thing is that it doesn't report all my songs. I did a search and the names are coming up strangely.
For example: What reports on my computer is "Strange Eyes.MP3". What reports on my phone when I search using My Files or look at the file with ES File Explorer is "Strange Eyes.MP3e.MP3". Some files are also changing to .mp3p. That's just what I have found so far.
Problem 2:
The other strange thing that if I read the SD card on my computer while it is in the phone it only shows the folders of my music up to the J's. If I use a SD card reader, I can see only up to the J's. If I use My Files or ES File Explorer I can see them all. This makes it extremely hard to copy the songs. For the one song I was able to fix (see below) I used Dropbox. BTW, I did try breaking up the music into folders like A2F, J2O, etc.
Other info:
Now, all the files look fine. All the tags, file names, etc. they are all MP3's that I had ripped from my own CD. I fixed one of the songs by going into (I know) iTunes and converting it to a MP3 (which it already was) and copied that file over. Now the phone sees it. There are a total of 4,167 songs and my phone is only seeing 4,087+1.
I originally had not formatted the card from when I had gotten it and had this issue, so I reformatted in the phone and still it persists. My old phone had no problems reading the music. It was a Thrill 4G.
Does anyone have any ideas on either of these issues? Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is the exact same problem I'm having also with a SanDisk 64 gb card, files with weird extensions that I can't change and files, folders not showing up in Windows. I have no clue how to fix it but I was hoping that reformatting the card in the phone would work but it looks like it didn't for you. All the files worked fine with my Infuse but with a 32 gb card. Hope someone knows what's up with this.
I took my old 32GB card from my thrill and copied my music to it. Put it in my GS3 and it has no issues with any of the music.
The difference (besides size) is it is formatted Fat32. I'll format my 64GB card at work today to Fat32 and see if I have the same issues.
Stay tuned Tryptonite.
EnderXXI said:
I took my old 32GB card from my thrill and copied my music to it. Put it in my GS3 and it has no issues with any of the music.
The difference (besides size) is it is formatted Fat32. I'll format my 64GB card at work today to Fat32 and see if I have the same issues.
Stay tuned Tryptonite.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool, let me know how it goes and I'll end up doing the same thing when I get back from work.
Formatted my card on a Mac at work to Fat.
Copied all my music to it with the SD card reader.
Checked on my PC. Shows as Fat32 and sees all the folders.
Checked on my phone. Sees all the folders when plugged into my computer.
As of right now everything is 100%.
You may loose a little space because of the allocation size, but it's worth it is it works.
Go for it.
Thanks, I was thinking I would need to return the card. One less thing to worry about.
No problem. I hope other see this that may have the same issues.

[Q] sd card problems??

Hi everyone,
Looking for some input and advice. Last week I bought a Samsung Galaxy Player 4.2 from Amazon.uk. I also bought a 64gb class 10 sandisk microSD after reading about so many people having success with them.
I cannot seem to make it work properly. I first format the SD to fat32 using the player, loaded 45gb of music onto it and everything seemed to work properly for 1 day. Now however everytime I turn on the player i'm greeted with a little Sdcard icon with an ! mark in it. I have to go to settings and manually mount the card everytime. Even then in Total Space and Available Space it says 'oo' If I unmount and remount it eventually shows as 59.4GB total space.
Im using poweramp but after it scans the folder I have music stored in it dumps most of the music into a folder named 'unknown artist' even though I have all artist, album, album art tags filled in perfectly.
When I try to play some music it says "Too many failed files, playing will stop now" and 30gb of music all gets renamed and dumped into the LOST.DIR folder. 4Gb of music has totally disappeared from the Sdcard. I dont know where that went?
I tried formatting the card with multiple programmes on my laptop but problems still occur. Tried checking the disk for errors....nothing. Tried different music players.
The SDcard works perfect in my laptop. I can add and remove files no problem, which really confuses me. I also tried an 8gb class 6 Sdcard in the player and it has been working flawlessly.
Is there something I'm doing wrong? Is the SD card corrupt? Is poweramp at fault? Is it the player itself? Do I return the card to Amazon for a replacement?
Really sorry for the questions and long post but this is driving me crazy. Hopefully somebody can give some advice.
Thanks.
Regarding the 59.4 Gb, that's normal. IIRC it's a mixture of the overhead of the file system and the difference between the marketing definition of Gigabyte and the technical definition of it.
Regarding your other problems, I did manage to find some other people having similar issues with different devices:
http://forums.androidcentral.com/sa...-s3-samsungs-insane-response.html#post2509743
http://forums.androidcentral.com/sprint-galaxy-s-iii/240489-sd-card-unmounting-itself.html
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=13726990
Do those sound similar to what you're experiencing?
I also have bought it from Amazon UK. The manual clearly says that 32G is the max it can accept. Have you tried partitioning the new card in two slices of 32G each?
I also would like to know if you have unmounted the old card safely and how you have recreated the filesystem structure on the new card. Thanks
In regard to your SD card mounting issue, my modification for swapping the mounting location of internal memory with your external SD card at boot may be able to fix your issue. Here is a link to my post: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2234907. I really hope this helps!
~MetaMav

Storage confusion question.. (0:

I use AndroZip. And I am really confused about the different folders..
I included 2 screenshots for this part of my question..
First one.. can someone tell me what those folders mean..
Second picture.. what the heck are all those folders..
Is the actual external SD card one of those folders. I figured it would be the obvious one but I swear I had more stuff in that folder and Its not there...
Is there a way to make the external sd card the default to where all pics and stuff are saved??
Seems I am running out of storage space on my phone already for some reason.
3rd picture is of a screenshot of my storage use.. ridiculous. I dont understand why everything is on my phone and nothing is on the card..
It was worse a few days ago. My phone kept telling me I had no space left.. it was at like
System storge was 15.23gb/16.00gb
Sd card was 2.20gb/29.71gb
Sorry my question is kinda lame. Im just not good at this stuff.
Thanks for your guys help I really appreciate it
Sent from my SCH-I545 using xda app-developers app
Not sure what all those folders mean, but emulated sd is actually still internal...your "ext sd" is your external sd. when you open your camera for the first time, it should give the option to save all photos to ext sd. If you missed it, you should be able to hit the menu button, go into settings and change it within a secondary settings menu in there. I use es file explorer or astro typically and have never seen all those usb folders. Perhaps you are plugged into a desktop?
Mount Points
For whatever reason, the Galaxy S4 has many, many mount points for its emulated SD Card. If you're rooted, the actual path to it is "/data/media/0/"
However, the folders in the first picture are ALL paths to your internal or emulated SD Card. sdcard0, ext_sdcard, emulated, legacy, etc.
In the second picture, those look like pre-created mount points for... multiple flash drives? Either way, no reason to worry about them unless you somehow manage to plug up about 7 flash drives or SD Cards to your device.
And as for the space issue... That really is a good question. Factory resetting is never out of the question if you're up for it, however, assuming you're not, the only explanation I could come up with is just a ton of apps with big extra files. Like Minecraft, Call of Duty Black Ops Zombies, Temple Run 2.
Hope I helped, sorry if I didn't. I'm new to Android this year, so I haven't thoroughly looked at all of the quirky stuff it tends to do, but your data usage has to be from something, and if it's not from stuff you put on your emulated SD Card, it has to be from big apps or malware, assuming you didn't tamper with anything in a root file explorer. Are you sure you haven't messed around and copied files to some directory you thought was the emulated SD?
As far as the internal storage, the OS and "most" of your downloaded apps will go here, unless you use foldermount ("move to sd" only moves part of the file). Anyways, I have about 60 apps on my phone and am running hyperdrive and have about the same amount of internal storage left as you. After formatting and whatnot, the device does not have 16gb internal memory...it's more like 11 or 12. Before I was running hyperdrive and was just stock rooted, on that same screen as your 3rd picture, it showed me that I had 9.82gb of internal memory TOTAL, but I had way less used (I currently have no more or no less than I did then, but shows I have 8.23gb out of 16, instead of the 3.9gb out of 9.82 it used to show). Most of which is under "miscellaneous" files and when you go in there to see whats actually there via phone settings, you can't really see what's using all the space. You really need to be rooted and use root explorer (or similar) to see whats using all the storage.

Renaming pic on SD card 4.4.4

First let me preface my inquiry with a few statements.
Renaming pics was previously an inconvenience but now I make my living with these photos so this has become an absolute nightmare.
I am absolutely so frustrated with what I can only describe as Google's stupidity. For being some of the smartest people in the world they do some things that a three year old would know better.
Also I have tried to do research on this before posting a new thread here, but all I find is outdated piecemeal information .
So please don't judge me. I've tried my best to figure this out without creating a new and/or redundant thread but I need someone who actually knows what is going on and who can explain to me what I can and can't do and how to fix what I've already done and how to set up my process in the future so as to complete my task as efficiently as possible. I mean really, isn't that what the goal of all this digital interaction is supposed to be about?
Now that I got that off my chest, here's my situation:
I work in what I call a "fun" business. I take pics and videos of guests on my phone (Android 4.4.4).
Not being able to rename the pics on the SD card from a garble of random letters and numbers to something identifiable is so STUPID it's incomprehensible. The devices are designed to take thousands of pics and we're told to store the pics on the SD card to save storage space on our devices, but we then can't rename them to something we can identify? Whether this was an accidental oversight or on purpose, my three year old niece would know better than that.
That being said, I do understand that the limitations of 4.4 don't allow third party apps to make certain changes to files on the external storage (SD) card.
So here's my delimma: I moved my pics to the SD card before I realized this limitation. So now I have hundreds of pics I need to post to Facebook, etc., but I need to rename them so I can identify them before I start posting.
Also I'm ASSUMING that I CAN rename a pic that is stored on my device's internal storage. If I am incorrect about that please correct me on that issue before moving forward with a solution.
If that assumption is correct I then am assuming that the easiest fix would be to transfer the pics back to the native internal storage and rename them there.
But again 4.4.4 seems to also limit my ability to move/transfer/copy/paste the pics from the SD card back onto the phone's internal storage.
I have thought about transferring the pics to cloud storage where I can rename them, but then I have two copies of the same pics but with different names, which is another nightmare scenario. (In the end I would like to have a renamed (identifiable) copy of the pics on my phone (SD card preferably, but if not practical, then on my phone's internal storage) and one on the cloud. (Any suggestions on the best cloud storage for pics and videos?)
Then I could (can I?) transfer the renamed pics back to my SD card so I have offline access to the pics. But this seems highly inefficient and time consuming. And then if I did this process then I would need to then continually delete the unrenamed pics because of storage issues on the phone, again inefficient.
And using a desktop is not practical as I'm working remotely and I really need to rename immediately as the pics start piling up quickly.
So my first step is going to be to change the default storage location of the pics to the internal storage of the device so I can test whether or not I can rename the pics immediately.
Whether or not this adjustment works for my future pics, I still have the issue of renaming the pics I have already moved to my SD card.
So........
1. Is there a workaround for renaming the pics on the SD card?
2. If not, is there a workaround for moving the pics back to internal storage? In this case I could use a Windows desktop to facilitate this operation as it should be a one-time operation, assuming I can immediately rename my future pics that I'm now going to store by default on the device's internal storage.
I would greatly appreciate any complete and consider suggestions on how to best address my problems. Thanking you in advance.
Vincent
You are correct that Google revoked the permission for third party apps to write to external storage. The only permanent fix seems to be patching your platform.xml to include media_rw group. Do you have root? If so install sdfix: kitkat writable microsd from the play store, follow the prompts and reboot. As always backup first just in case something goes wrong in the process. And you don't need to keep the app. Worked for me on both 4.4.2 and 5.1.1. Hopefully this helps.
You are also correct that you can copy or move the pictures to internal memory and rename them from there, but you should also be able to use your phone's built-in file manager to rename them on the SD card.
I just can't believe it was that simple. I have several File Manager apps on my phone.
I didn't really think about an Android stock File Manager.
I didn't know which one it even was.
I should have picked up on the error message specific verbiage about "third party apps".
I ran a test on what I believe is the Android stock File Manager app and I think it worked.
I'll test it again later and post back the results.
That was the solution. Just using the stock file manager allowed me to rename pics on the SD card.
Thanx for the help. My life is so much easier now!
Sent from my Z987 using XDA-Developers mobile app

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