Changing sd card!!! Correct way to do this? - Vibrant Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

This might have been asked before but I have some specific questions I need to ask.
I bought a bigger sd card for my vibrant. What do I need to do before and after mounting the new sd card so that I dont loose any data that is on my previous sd card.
I found these instructions in another thread. Wondering if its safe to follow these and if I need to do anything else.
1. Using usb cable connect your phone to a pc as a hard-drive. Copy all the files on the phone into a folder on the pc.
2. On your phone, go to settings > SD & Phone storage > Unmount SD card
Turn off your phone, open up the back remove battery and SD card.
3. Insert new card, replace battery and cover. Turn phone back on.
Settings> SD & Phone Storage > Format SD Card
4. Once formatted then copy and paste all the files on your pc back into your phone.
Other questions I have:
How do I make sure I dont loose my nandroid backups and titanium backups?
Also, How can I make sure camera/gallery saves all of the newly taken photos and videos to the new sd card?

You could just turn the phone off completely and switch out the cards.
- As to nandroids and TB they default to the internal SD so they should still be there unless you move them urself.
- For new pics and videos. In the camera app change the settings to save to SDcard its default set to phone Good luck!

^^Agreed.
Everything that apps store on your phone defaults to your internal SD card. So unless you manually moved stuff to your external MicroSD, there probably isn't very much on there, except maybe the avatar movie if you still have the original 2gb external card that came with the phone.
But seeing as you're upgrading your external SD card and will be at a computer, I suggest making a backup of everything on your internal SD card too, just for safe keeping. I have a backup of both my internal and external SD cards on my computer, and every once in a while I copy over any new files just to keep an updated record. It gives me peace of mind knowing that I'm ready for any unexpected SD corruptions. I think it's a good habit to get into.
Good Luck!

^^Agreed^^
Backing up to PC is always a good idea. I backup my nandroids and TB's as well. I also hide them on my friends and families PC'sshhh, they'll never know.

Related

RQ: List of the contents of the SD Card

Hi,
I was wandering if anyone could have a list or even better a screenshot of the contents of the SD Card, supplied with the phone, when the phone has nothing installed or changed (Out of the box condition).
I am about to reset the factory defaults, but i guess this would only affect the internal memory, and if i wipe out all of the data from the sd card i could probably delete something importnat, this is why i need this information.
Thanks in advnace.
I believe that the sd card is empty out of the box and the phone will recreate folders on the sd card when you start it up after reformat. You are correct that you will lose your personal settings if you delete sd card contents. If you don't care about personal settings and want to make the phone like out of the box, then I think you can just wipe everything. I don't know what you're trying to fix, but you could do a selective backup of the data you want to restore with Titanium Backup. Like messages, phonebook, pics, call log, voice mail, apps. Then make a copy of the backup on your pc, and put it back on sd card once it's reformatted and do restore. I would also make a copy of the entire sd card before reformatting.
Yeah that is correct, the memory card is empty, however the phone will recreate the folders, you may however need to recreate the Music Folder but Im not too sure as when my memory card failed, I was using a custom rom. however make your backup via titnanium or my preferred method, MyBackup Root, then back up all contents of the sd card on your computer, once you formatted your sd then just insert it back into the phone, wait a while and then mount to the pc to see whats there and whats not
Out of box sd is formatted and blank, phone creates folders it needs. Have deleted many of these by trial and error and phone just recreates them on reboot.
Sent from my X10i running freeX10 b4

Install new SD card

Ive done some looking around and cat get answers to my specific questions.
When installing a new sd card, do I turn off phone, pull old sd card, put new one in, then boot up phone, connect to pc and format and then copy my backup of old card to new card?
My main concern is booting up phone with the new sd card that isnt formatted yet and has no data yet on it. Will that effect me when I bootup phone to connect to pc to format?
And lastly, do I need to do any cache clearing or factory resets in this process anywhere?
Thanks for any help/advice.
You can format the new memory card right from the phone itself. Shouldn't affect any bootups, but obviously if you have apps on the old memory card you won't be able to use them.

SD card help / question.

Ok, so i have my atrix. Now i dont really get this part.. when i use efile for instance or anything like it. I already had a mnt/sdcard with stuff on it before i even had a sd card. All i had was the internal memory the phone came with. Why is it under sd card?
So i have 2 folders
sdcard
and
sdcard-ext which is my new card i take it because there is nothing in it yet.
Question should i transfer everything to my actual sd card? like backup it all? any info on how to do this or if i should is a good idea. Should i keep my internal memory clean as possible? thanks.
the atrix treats the internal 16gb memory as an SD card hence the SD card name. Now to differentiate between the Internal and External the other is called SD-EXT. Basically what ever you place in the SD slot, be it 16gb 32gb etc, it will show as the SD ext. Where you palce your files is up to you. By default most Apps will use your SD folder instead of SD EXT (titanium backup for example)
tjjensen23 said:
the atrix treats the internal 16gb memory as an SD card hence the SD card name. Now to differentiate between the Internal and External the other is called SD-EXT. Basically what ever you place in the SD slot, be it 16gb 32gb etc, it will show as the SD ext. Where you place your files is up to you. By default most Apps will use your SD folder instead of SD EXT (titanium backup for example)
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So how would i go about transferring everything from my internal to my external sd card? Should i do it and can it be done? Or should i just leave it how it is? Plus for titanium backup should i backup my stuff on my external card for that or what? im kinda confused. ANy help would be appreciated. thanks
wishb0n3 said:
So how would i go about transferring everything from my internal to my external sd card? Should i do it and can it be done? Or should i just leave it how it is? Plus for titanium backup should i backup my stuff on my external card for that or what? im kinda confused. ANy help would be appreciated. thanks
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Well you can use your computer to move files if you place your phone in mass storage mode, or if you are rooted you can use a program like root explorer. The only things you should need to transfer would be backups of programs or music. everything else is fine on the internal storage. The only things I put on my actual sdcard are my music and documents. I would not worry about transferring anything, internal storage is really just as safe as an sdcard unless you brick your phone.

SD Card Swap and Lost Apps

I used the instructions from iJimaniac to swap my storage from internal to external (love the mass storage now!) however all my apps that I originally had moved to the SD card have suddenly disappeared and now i have to remember and re-install them. I made a copy of everything under /mnt/sdcard and moved it to my external SD card before making the switch so that everything would still be linked ok. Any ideas on what went wrong? Note: i took everything on my external SD card and put it in a separate folder on my external SD card so I wouldn't lose any of that.
Well, I used a PC to copy .android_secure folder from the real external_SD to the new "fake" external_SD. If that doesn't work, I would copy back the original vold.fstab then move all apps to internal, then use modified vold.fstab and move your apps back to sd if you want. Remember to reboot after making a change. Several reboots might even be needed for all apps to show up (might want to try that before anything). Hope this helps!
Ok well the problem is apparently that the .android_secure folder on the sd card is empty. Strangely it also has no permissions and refuses to let me change it. Whenever i try to replace it with the full .android_secure folder it gives me a black screen and i have to restart. Any idea what might be wrong?
Well, it might not actually be empty, it looks empty when viewed with an android file browser, but when you look at it on a computer (might need to disable "hide protected system files" in windows folder options) you should see stuff in it. So, you need to copy the .android_secure folder FROM your REAL microSD card TO your REAL internal memory using a pc, not an android file browser. To be clear, I have figured out that android transfers the app to your sd card when you select "move to usb storage", so that can be deceiving. Your apps were on the sd card, but now you need to transfer them to your usb storage by moving the .android_secure folder. Hope you figure it out!
Ah something decided to start working again and all my apps came back! Thanks for your help!
No problem! What was probably wrong was your player was rebuilding the dalvik-cache. It sometimes takes a while I find. Glad you got it working.

Confused about internal and external SD card

This is probably a dumb question, but I am confused a little about the SD card situation. I have a Verizon S3. I see the phone comes with 16gb of storage that is in the folder SD Card, and that when I put my own SD card into the phone that I can find it under the mnt folder in the root directory. My question, is the SD memory that came with the phone built in, like a virtual SD card, or is that a card that is removeable? If it is not removeable, how do I setup my phone to make my personal SD card the one is being shown when I go to /SD Card/? I have a class 10 and prefer to have easy removable access to my default SD card, and having it under mnt/extsdcard is a bit annoying.
The sdcard is internal storage. All your apps etc will be saved there. If go to /mnt/extsdxard that's your memory card. Apps can no longer be downloaded to your extsd. Your camera has an option to make pics taken save to your sdcard. You'll find the pics in /extsdxard/dcim/camera
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda premium
PulseMonkey said:
The sdcard is internal storage. All your apps etc will be saved there. If go to /mnt/extsdxard that's your memory card. Apps can no longer be downloaded to your extsd. Your camera has an option to make pics taken save to your sdcard. You'll find the pics in /extsdxard/dcim/camera
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda premium
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Ok so then I guess my best solution is for anything I want to know I can access with my personal SD card is to just redirect things to it. I don't put installed apps on SD but figured a lot of things are better on a removeable card incase my phone breaks or bricks and I want access to those files. I can just configure apps that allow me to choose where to save things to save them on my external card if I think I want that. Thanks for the info.

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