EDIT: Could this please be moved to the T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II Q&A section? I just found it. Sorry for the error.
I have a Telus Galaxy S II X (same as T-Mobile S2) running 2.3.5 not rooted that was bought on October 28th 2011. I do not want to use an SD card since I have almost 12GB of built in storage available. I had originally inserted an 8GB microSD and had music and images on it. I have since put that SD into my wife's phone since she only had a 2GB card and I have lots of internal space available.
When I put music and pictures in the external_sd or USB_storage folders which are the 11.54GB partition of my phone, the default music app and the 3 music app do not see the music. Pictures are also not seen by the gallery. If the music and picture folders are moved to the internal 2GB system partition, both music apps see the music and gallery sees the images. If I move the 2 folders back to the external_sd partition they are no longer seen. When I move an MP3 to the internal 2GB and started the 3 app, in settings, the storage section shows External 11GB (11GB free) since I moved my test MP3 to the internal memory. In the directory filter setting it shows external_sd and USB_storage as music directories. Something is definately wrong here.
I have defaulted my phone 3 times via hardware keys, via the OS, formatted USB storage and no change.
I called Samsung and this is what I was told...
"The USB Storage and external_sd are only for downloaded content via the phone (apps and other) and not for music and photos. You must use an SD card for music and other items."
This was after registering my Telus Galaxy S II X on the Samsung Canada Webs site. It is possible that the Telus version is different than other versions, but I find this ridiculous.
I cleared the music app cache, no change. Telus confirmed that the Samsung rep confirmed that ICS will be out for my phone in March/April. This will completely rewrite the system and will change everything, but I would like to know if what is happening right now is normal or if Samsung is feeding me a line. Any help/feedback is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
I'm little confused of what you said, the phone (SGS2) has normaly ~ 11.3GB of internal storage allocated or mounted as /sdcard, regardless of the name this is the internal storage, then the external SD card is mounted as external_sd within the same folder structure (/sdcard/external_sd), if you don't have any SD installed the external_sd this not used. You may want to add your music in the internal storage (e.g. /sdcard/media/music) then you may want to make sure you don't have a .nomedia file in the folder (nor in the folder tree) specially in the root (/sdcard).
elbermu said:
I'm little confused of what you said, the phone (SGS2) has normaly ~ 11.3GB of internal storage allocated or mounted as /sdcard, regardless of the name this is the internal storage, then the external SD card is mounted as external_sd within the same folder structure (/sdcard/external_sd), if you don't have any SD installed the external_sd this not used. You may want to add your music in the internal storage (e.g. /sdcard/media/music) then you may want to make sure you don't have a .nomedia file in the folder (nor in the folder tree) specially in the root (/sdcard).
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I thought the same thing, but after reading this is what I have come to understand. The Galaxy S2 4G has 16GB of memory. Some is OS, 2GB is internal use and 11.25GB is called USB storage (also has a directory called external_SD). The 11.25GB is part of \sdcard, but used or seen separately. The actual SD card is not the external_sd folder on the phone. I can't recall what the name was, but it is something else. See the attached screenshot from my phone. I will get my 2GB SD out and plug it in to see the name it is given.
When I refer to external_SD and USB_storage I am referring to the 11.25GB of storage availble in the phone.
EDIT: When I put an MP3 in the system storage 2GB everything is fine, but when I put it in the USB storage partition nothing is seen.
OK, seems that I remember incorrectly. When a microSD card is inserted it is seen in the external_sd folder. The problem that I have with that is the folders that I had placed in that directory before inserting the card, were stored in the 11.25GB portion, but no longer show up!
Here is more information on my issue.
When I insert a microSD card it appears as external_sd
With the card inserted the folders (music and images) that were in the external_sd folder which was part of the 11.25GB, were no longer visible
I removed the card, the music and images folders reappeared in external_sd. I moved them to the usb_storage folder and reinserted the microSD
I have attached 2 screenshots.
If I move MP3s and images to the microSD (external_sd) files are seen. If the microSD is not in the phone and the 11.25GB is used for external_sd then why are the music and pictures not being seen by the apps? Even with the folders and files in usb_storage they are not seen. It is ridiculous that 11.25GB of space would only be available for app data when installing apps.
EDIT: When files are in the \sdcard they are seen, there is no problem with that aspect, only when in the usbstorage 11.25GB portion. How can I see if there is a .nomedia file?
Xerses_frm_HoFo said:
Here is more information on my issue.
When I insert a microSD card it appears as external_sd
With the card inserted the folders (music and images) that were in the external_sd folder which was part of the 11.25GB, were no longer visible
I removed the card, the music and images folders reappeared in external_sd. I moved them to the usb_storage folder and reinserted the microSD
I have attached 2 screenshots.
If I move MP3s and images to the microSD (external_sd) files are seen. If the microSD is not in the phone and the 11.25GB is used for external_sd then why are the music and pictures not being seen by the apps? Even with the folders and files in usb_storage they are not seen. It is ridiculous that 11.25GB of space would only be available for app data when installing apps.
EDIT: When files are in the \sdcard they are seen, there is no problem with that aspect, only when in the usbstorage 11.25GB portion. How can I see if there is a .nomedia file?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Forget the external_sd folder, it is used for the external sd card when inserted. As what you refer to the USB Storage in the screenshot is the actual /sdcard or the 11.3GB, so when you write in the /sdcard you are you are using this 11.3GB portion. As you said when you put files in the /sdcard folder you should be able to "see" them. You can put music files in the /sdcard/media/music/ and the pictures in /sdcard/DCIM/pictures (just a suggestion).
There is another folder /sdcard/usbstorage, i'm not sure but this is used when mounted USB OTG (like putting a card reader).
---------- Post added at 03:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:51 PM ----------
And when I said "is the actual /sdcard" is the /sdcard folder.
OK, I am going to try to put more than 2GB in and see what the storage meters say. My original understanding was that the full 11.25GB was only available via the usbstorage folder and the 2GB Internal Storage was \sdcard.
Will try and post back. This phone storage description should be made more clear somewhere!
Eureka!!!
Finally someone who understands how the storage system works in the S II X!
I dropped about 1GB of music into \sdcard\Media\Music and the USB Storage meter is the one that goes up. The Internal Storage meter stays at 673MB.
Thank you once again, this finally clears up how internal storage on this phone works. I can't believe that the Samsung support was unable to explain this to me when I told him what I wanted to do!
I will be putting this information (referring to you) in my post on Android Forums!
Thanks again!
Glad I could help...
Regards,
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 have just noticed that all of my data on both my SGS2 internal memory and my SD card has gone!
It's totally bizarre! All my apps are fine, my home screens are fine, but all photos, music, and other files are gone.
My internal storage now only contains .android_secure and LOST.DIR, but the weirdest thing is the SD card. It contains all of the default and app folders that were previously on the internal drive, except without any of the user data (e.g. DCIM is empty where it should have photos & videos galore in there). However, the SD card does now contain 9 files called "FILL0", "FILL1"... through to "FILL9" and all of them are 1GB in size. These "FILL" files have no windows file extension.
Does anybody know what has happened here? It looks like the phone has suddenly taken all the internal data and copied it to the SD, while at the same time removing anything in any way precious to me and possibly storing it in these "FILL" files.
Can anybody make sense of this?
One correction to make on what I said above. I mislabeled my drives, so it's actually the SD card which has the 2 default files on it, and the phone memory that has the rest. There was no copying from the phone memory to SD after all, there was purely deletion of the entire SD, and then deletion & this weird dump of everything into "FILL" files on the phone memory.
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.
Hi i currently have the 16gb sgs3, and ive installed a few hd games aswell as other stuff and my internal storange is almost full, i cant seem to find any option that will allow me to get extra space back on the internal storage. all my personal files pictures etc are on the external 16gb sd card i have, is there a way around do make external sd the default storage location for all data?
Check out Directory Bind (search XDA, not the play store). It let's you mount folders meaning that you can show the contents of your sd card in a sub folder of the internal memory. That way you can move your game folders to the external sdcard card and they are still shown as if they are still where they used to be. The game won't notice the difference and you safe some internal storage space.
More information here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=27493839
Sent from my GT-I9300
Recently, I've realized that my internal SD card's free space was going down fast, which shouldn't be happening as all my recent downloads are stored in the external_ sd section. Weird thing though, the more files I downloaded to my external SD card, the less space there is available in my internal SD card.
Checking out settings > storage I then realized, my internal sd card was being filled up under the category labelled "misc". After entering the misc section, the specifications showed that external_sd was taking up a big chunk of my internal SD.
I don't think this used to happen. I only discovered it recently after I had reformatted my phone and flashed with a official Samsung 4.03 software. My phone is on 4.04 now with an update from KIES. I've also rooted my phone with CWM-SuperSU-0.96.
Is external_sd taking up space in the internal sd an issue, or has it always been happening?
Hope you can help me on this.
No, external_sd on your internal SD is just a shortcut and not an actual folder.
If you want to know what folders are taking up most space use a program from market, there are various ones that can scan cards.
It's weird though. It seems to be virtually taking up space on my I9100. I'm pretty sure my game files aren't that big.
It's actually sort of synchronized with my internal sd. Doesn't seem like a shortcut anymore.