It's a noobish question, but I'm still a bit confused as to the internal vs external sd card usage. I know that in some ROMs (currently using SHOstock) the internal 12GB sd is under /mnt/sdcard and the external is under /mnt/sdcard/external_sd, but I never can get anything to use the external card. Why do we have the ability to stick one in our phones if none of our apps can be moved there? The only thing I've been able to use it for is Vignette or things like that where the app configuration allows you to browse to what folder you'd like to use for storage.
What I'm getting at, is that I'd like to move the apps themselves to the external SD, because I have the ability to put a 32GB card in, as opposed to the 12GB internal. Is this possible?
Another related question - TiBu sees my external card's free space, but whenever I use the App2SD function to move it to the "external" card, it moves it to the internal card. Anyone know how to fix this? I'm guessing that it has to do with no ext4 partition on the external SD, but I could be wrong. If that's the case, we're out of luck unless we're running Linux boxes, correct? If that's the case, then I return to my original question - what is the point of having an external SD card if the only thing you can put on it is pictures and/or manually move stuff over using a file explorer app?
The point is to store large media files like movies.
TiBu will also save to external SD.
Note that some apps use the newer Android standard for internal/sdcard mountpoints (/emmc for internal, /sdcard for external), which Samsung does NOT follow. (CyanogenMod, however, does follow this standard.)
Entropy512 said:
TiBu will also save to external SD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats a negative. TiBu save files are stored in internal.
Main bonus for having external sdcard for me, is the abilitiy to store pictures and videos. Anything that is no on external sdcard will be lost if the phone gets broken.
They save to internal as default but you can change it to the external SD in the settings options.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
MotoMudder77 said:
Thats a negative. TiBu save files are stored in internal.
Main bonus for having external sdcard for me, is the abilitiy to store pictures and videos. Anything that is no on external sdcard will be lost if the phone gets broken.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you noticed he said "will" which means it has the capability. It's in TiBu settings.. You can move them to your external sdcard with TiBu as well...
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using xda premium
MotoMudder77 said:
Thats a negative. TiBu save files are stored in internal.
Main bonus for having external sdcard for me, is the abilitiy to store pictures and videos. Anything that is no on external sdcard will be lost if the phone gets broken.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's not true - you can have TiBu save backups to external storage in the settings menu - you just browse to where you want it to save it.
In either case, so really, just to move movies and other large media over to it? Nothing (aside from the few cases) automatically? Like I can't move apps over to it? It has to be the internal? To me that mostly defeats the purpose of having external storage.
DJLittleMike said:
That's not true - you can have TiBu save backups to external storage in the settings menu - you just browse to where you want it to save it.
In either case, so really, just to move movies and other large media over to it? Nothing (aside from the few cases) automatically? Like I can't move apps over to it? It has to be the internal? To me that mostly defeats the purpose of having external storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Where do you store your. Nandroid backups? I use the external card for that as well, along with TiBu backups, photos and videos. I sure as hell would not want all of that stuff on the internal storage?
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium
... I'll try to answer the OP question. However, I haven't been around android long enough for this to be an authoritive answer. It's more along the lines of a guess...
The reason for the whacky naming is historical. Back in the early days of android, devices only had a small amount of user storage. It was generally mounted as "/data" and was probably 1-2 GB in size. This area was limited to storing application specific data (and downloaded applications.) Same examples might be your contacts list, your high score in angry birds, etc.
Many of those phones had a SDCard slot, however. Actually, many of the phones not only had the slot, but came with a card as well. The idea was that you could put music files, photo's, etc on this extra sdcard. A user could easily upgrade the card to whatever size was supported by android. In development terms, this became known as the external sdcard (or external memory) because it was user accessible and not required for the device to function. Traditionally, it was mounted as "/sdcard"
As time went on, more and more phones came with this extra storage. At some point, it was no longer user accessible or removable. However, it was still used the same way and for the same purpose (afterall, why would you need more than 1-2 GB for just app storage?) It's still mounted as /sdcard. When you move applications from "internal storage" to "external storage" you are really moving the bulk of the app data from /data to /sdcard.
Of course, competition goes on, and everyone wants to have the biggest and greatest phone. So, why not do something done before and go BACK to adding a user accessible memory card slot in ADDITION to the existing /sdcard "external memory"? The only problem is that android doesn't really have a proper way to address that, so different phones mount it in different ways. For some, it might be "/sdcard2". For others, it might be mounted as a sub directory of /sdcard (sdcard/ext_storage, etc)
Of course, this causes all kind of problems for programs designed to work on both older phones (where /sdcard was actually external) and newer phones (where /sdcard is built in.)
There are efforts with newer versions of android to try and correct this, but legacy stuff holds us back. In honeycomb (and ICS), "/data" and "/sdcard" are actually the same partition. In fact, "/sdcard" actually points to "/data/media." They use the same space, however. There's no longer a concept of "external memory." (However, its still confusing because programs are usually written to work for many different versions of android.)
Want to make things more confusing? Add in CWM Recovery. In that recovery, "sdcard" refers to the /sdcard partition that is often called "external" memory in android development. Then it refers to "internal sdcard" when talking about any additional memory card that is user accessible. (so "sdcard" is built in memory, and "internal sdcard" is the sdcard that's physically external.)
Confused yet? Me too.
Gary
garyd9 said:
... I'll try to answer the OP question. However, I haven't been around android long enough for this to be an authoritive answer. It's more along the lines of a guess...
The reason for the whacky naming is historical. Back in the early days of android, devices only had a small amount of user storage. It was generally mounted as "/data" and was probably 1-2 GB in size. This area was limited to storing application specific data (and downloaded applications.) Same examples might be your contacts list, your high score in angry birds, etc.
Many of those phones had a SDCard slot, however. Actually, many of the phones not only had the slot, but came with a card as well. The idea was that you could put music files, photo's, etc on this extra sdcard. A user could easily upgrade the card to whatever size was supported by android. In development terms, this became known as the external sdcard (or external memory) because it was user accessible and not required for the device to function. Traditionally, it was mounted as "/sdcard"
As time went on, more and more phones came with this extra storage. At some point, it was no longer user accessible or removable. However, it was still used the same way and for the same purpose (afterall, why would you need more than 1-2 GB for just app storage?) It's still mounted as /sdcard. When you move applications from "internal storage" to "external storage" you are really moving the bulk of the app data from /data to /sdcard.
Of course, competition goes on, and everyone wants to have the biggest and greatest phone. So, why not do something done before and go BACK to adding a user accessible memory card slot in ADDITION to the existing /sdcard "external memory"? The only problem is that android doesn't really have a proper way to address that, so different phones mount it in different ways. For some, it might be "/sdcard2". For others, it might be mounted as a sub directory of /sdcard (sdcard/ext_storage, etc)
Of course, this causes all kind of problems for programs designed to work on both older phones (where /sdcard was actually external) and newer phones (where /sdcard is built in.)
There are efforts with newer versions of android to try and correct this, but legacy stuff holds us back. In honeycomb (and ICS), "/data" and "/sdcard" are actually the same partition. In fact, "/sdcard" actually points to "/data/media." They use the same space, however. There's no longer a concept of "external memory." (However, its still confusing because programs are usually written to work for many different versions of android.)
Want to make things more confusing? Add in CWM Recovery. In that recovery, "sdcard" refers to the /sdcard partition that is often called "external" memory in android development. Then it refers to "internal sdcard" when talking about any additional memory card that is user accessible. (so "sdcard" is built in memory, and "internal sdcard" is the sdcard that's physically external.)
Confused yet? Me too.
Gary
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To expand on Gary's comments here a little bit - I came to the SGS2 from an HTC Aria, which was released roughly 18 months ago (I didn't bother to look up the exact date). This was the first 'decent' Android device available on AT&T.
*ducks the flamethrower blasts from backflip owners*
The Aria had no internal SD storage (or more appropriately named EMMC I guess) and stock had 185MB - yes MB - user available app storage on /data. Needless to say, that is pretty severely limiting as far as app storage goes. To make this even more fun, the phone shipped with Android 2.1 (Eclair) which had NO built in provisions for apps to SD.
Thankfully, the dev community got us a FroYo port fairly quickly - so at least we had Android built-in apps to SD at that point. However, if you take a look at any apps you have Apps2SD'ed on your device, you'll see that in many cases, only about half of the storage cost of these apps actually gets moved to your SD card (internal in the case of the SGS2, external on the Aria).
Later, via CM6 and still later in CM7 we got the ability to move apps to an ext partition on SD cards (this may have eventually been possible at some point on HTC based roms as well, I can't recall). The downside to this was the requirement to "trick" the OS into seeing that ext partition on the external SD card as part of the device's internal storage, and it also meant that putting apps there was an all-or-nothing option. Therefore, if you wanted to switch external SD cards, you had to have a linux box to make a copy of the ext partition on one card, and put it on the other card, or all your apps were gone. This was a royal pain in the arse. On the Aria, I typically ran a 1 GB ext partition on an 8Gb card, and stored both my apps and dalvik cache there.
I currently have a bunch of apps on my SGS2 that I never use, but since I'm only using about 500MB of the available 2GB of internal app storage, I dont' bother to delete them. I don't run a ton of games, but the only time I'd think you'd even want to consider the hassle of moving apps to an ext partion on an external card with the SGS2 would be if you are running out of the internal app storage on /data. It's not getting used for anything at all if you move apps to the external card. If you're committed to doing this though, I'd guess if you grabbed a CM7 build for the SGS2 and an app called S2E in the market, you could probably do it.
sorry for the novel.....
DD
garyd9 said:
... I'll try to answer the OP question. However, I haven't been around android long enough for this to be an authoritive answer. It's more along the lines of a guess...
The reason for the whacky naming is historical. Back in the early days of android, devices only had a small amount of user storage. It was generally mounted as "/data" and was probably 1-2 GB in size. This area was limited to storing application specific data (and downloaded applications.) Same examples might be your contacts list, your high score in angry birds, etc.
Many of those phones had a SDCard slot, however. Actually, many of the phones not only had the slot, but came with a card as well. The idea was that you could put music files, photo's, etc on this extra sdcard. A user could easily upgrade the card to whatever size was supported by android. In development terms, this became known as the external sdcard (or external memory) because it was user accessible and not required for the device to function. Traditionally, it was mounted as "/sdcard"
As time went on, more and more phones came with this extra storage. At some point, it was no longer user accessible or removable. However, it was still used the same way and for the same purpose (afterall, why would you need more than 1-2 GB for just app storage?) It's still mounted as /sdcard. When you move applications from "internal storage" to "external storage" you are really moving the bulk of the app data from /data to /sdcard.
Of course, competition goes on, and everyone wants to have the biggest and greatest phone. So, why not do something done before and go BACK to adding a user accessible memory card slot in ADDITION to the existing /sdcard "external memory"? The only problem is that android doesn't really have a proper way to address that, so different phones mount it in different ways. For some, it might be "/sdcard2". For others, it might be mounted as a sub directory of /sdcard (sdcard/ext_storage, etc)
Of course, this causes all kind of problems for programs designed to work on both older phones (where /sdcard was actually external) and newer phones (where /sdcard is built in.)
There are efforts with newer versions of android to try and correct this, but legacy stuff holds us back. In honeycomb (and ICS), "/data" and "/sdcard" are actually the same partition. In fact, "/sdcard" actually points to "/data/media." They use the same space, however. There's no longer a concept of "external memory." (However, its still confusing because programs are usually written to work for many different versions of android.)
Want to make things more confusing? Add in CWM Recovery. In that recovery, "sdcard" refers to the /sdcard partition that is often called "external" memory in android development. Then it refers to "internal sdcard" when talking about any additional memory card that is user accessible. (so "sdcard" is built in memory, and "internal sdcard" is the sdcard that's physically external.)
Confused yet? Me too.
Gary
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey Gary,
Makes sense, but at the same time, you can mount a share however you'd like in Linux and therefore should be able to do the same in Android. Phones that have two SD cards obviously are able to mount both, and it would make sense to have software use Android's internal mapping for them.
So I guess the real answer is a) I can't move apps to the *external* SD card, b) the mount points differ by phone manufacturer/ROM used, and c) because there is no standard, it's impossible to do everything I want automatically, but for most things I can still move them myself. Does that sound about right?
We need to mount another 16GB card and figure a way to RAID em for faster access..
Edit: yeah been drinking again...
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using xda premium
garyd9 said:
Want to make things more confusing? Add in CWM Recovery. In that recovery, "sdcard" refers to the /sdcard partition that is often called "external" memory in android development. Then it refers to "internal sdcard" when talking about any additional memory card that is user accessible. (so "sdcard" is built in memory, and "internal sdcard" is the sdcard that's physically external.)
Confused yet? Me too.
Gary
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This was mainly due to the fact that the Android standards got firmed up during the development of CWM 5.x (which is where support for the "internal" sdcard was first implemented)
Initially, CWM only supported one sdcard - and nearly all integrators chose this to be the internal memory.
Then later in 5.x, CWM added support for external/internal sdcards, following the new Android standard of internal on /emmc and external (but not labeled as such) on /sdcard
The problem is - almost all CWM implementations at this point used /sdcard for the internal mount point.
So the choice when I upgraded to CWM 5.0.2.7 was:
Leave things swapped as is and have the "internal" mislabeled (I had not yet figured out how to build CWM from source at this point)
Swap things and have tons of people be like, "WHERE MAI BACKUPZ?"
I'm thinking of doing the swap next time I update CWM - which might be later this weekend.
Entropy512 said:
I'm thinking of doing the swap next time I update CWM - which might be later this weekend.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd suggest not directly swapping. The confusion for people switching between different devices with CWM Recovery would be annoying. (I could even see it confusing an experienced user when they jump between different devices that both have CWM Recovery, but use opposite labels.)
Instead of redefining existing terms, it might make things easier to understand if you replace the string "internal sdcard" with a different, but non-conflicting term, such as: "microSD card" or "replaceable sdcard." When a user sees two options, such as "backup to sdcard" and "backup to replaceable sdcard", it's more obvious which one is which. (Of course, "backup to built-in memory" would be even more clear for the former option.)
Take care
Gary
Great info, thanks to all. Now let me throw in another term, "USB Storage." I ran across this in file manager after I had done a complete factory wipe, cache wipe, format, et al. In "USB Storage" was several files I had thought were on the 16Mb Class 6 microSDHC I had just formatted. So, where does this fit in the grand scheme?
BadElf said:
Great info, thanks to all. Now let me throw in another term, "USB Storage." I ran across this in file manager after I had done a complete factory wipe, cache wipe, format, et al. In "USB Storage" was several files I had thought were on the 16Mb Class 6 microSDHC I had just formatted. So, where does this fit in the grand scheme?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oo! Oo! I can actually answer this one. USB storage is the "internal" SD card. I know this because I added labels to them in Windows and tested this myself. So you have 2GB of internal storage (not an SD card) SD Card (the user-replaceable one) and then USB storage (the internal SD card.)
Yes, very confusing, and I'm glad I made this thread, because I found out I'm not an idiot. Okay, I still may be but not because I don't know the difference and/or usage. It seems there are at least a few others that got confused as well.
Entropy, so the naming convention is controlled by kernel and you can name that whatever you want? I'm for the switch, but maybe make two versions available? One with the old naming convention and one with the new. For the new, my suggestion would be to name all three something descriptive. IE:
internal storage = internal storage (it's 2GB, I don't think people confuse this much)
USB storage = permanent SD card or non-removable SD card
SD Card = external SD card or even removable SD card
I think that should be clear enough. One is internal storage... not an SD card. Out of the two SD cards, one is removable and the other is not. Simple enough.
resurrecting a dead thread
I'm curious why this has not been brought up...It appears with Custom ROMs we can have apps install direct from Play store to removable sd. We just need to properly partition the removable sd : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1158993 .
I am actually looking into this practice. Does Shostock v4 not support such thing?
Also, folks who do partition their removable sd seem to favor amonRA over CWM...
Can someone shed some lights on this?
tora67 said:
I'm curious why this has not been brought up...It appears with Custom ROMs we can have apps install direct from Play store to removable sd. We just need to properly partition the removable sd : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1158993 .
I am actually looking into this practice. Does Shostock v4 not support such thing?
Also, folks who do partition their removable sd seem to favor amonRA over CWM...
Can someone shed some lights on this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For starters that's a completely different device. Different manufacturer. HTC does things differently. They used to ship their phones with little storage like 4gb for OS and app install. They didn't provide gobs of onboard storage like Samsung.
Secondly that thread is over a year old.
AmonRA isn't available on this device. Again completely different devices, different methodologies.
The gs2 has plenty of storage and app install space available. Why does everyone think that installing your apps to external SD is a good thing?
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
we want more space
I bet many like the OP would like apps and app data stored on their removable sd especially nowadays you can get a class 10 sd for cheap.
Have you noticed how many apps will not work at all with apps on the SD card?
If you have the apps installed on the sdcard and you plug into your computer the apps become unavailable and Widgets for those apps stop working.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
Pirateghost said:
. . . Widgets for those apps stop working.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And I'm pretty sure you have to re-add them.
Related
I just bought a new SGSII and I'm finding the storage mounts a bit strange. I'm seeing that there is a "usb storage" on the phone as well as the external SD storage. However, it is not allowing me to "Move to SD Card" for the phone's storage and requiring me to use my (slower) external SD card. I've tried to use the ADB "pm setInstallLocation" command to force it internal, but that doesn't seem to work either. Is there any way to use the USB storage on the phone for "app 2 sd"?
Thanks,
Craig
Did you read the FAQ?
I did (before I rooted), but even reviewing again now I'm not seeing anything relative to this. What am I missing?
That there's no benefit to moving apps to the external SD with this phone's file system and amount of built-in storage. Save the ext_SD for your data, movie and music files.
I didn't see that. However, I'm confused by this. I was not being allowed to reinstall some of the apps I had installed on my Captivate since I was out of space. Move to SD cleared up space so that I could finish restoring my apps.
I wonder if something is not set up quite right on my device?
Which app are you trying to move?
Everything should be installed on your phone automatically unless you change it to your card. Unless a Rom you are using has it set differently, I think ShoStock has an option to do that automatically.
I don't think I was entirely clear in my question. My device has:
1) Internal Phone Storage
2) Internal "USB" Phone Storage
3) External SD Card Storage
By default, applications are installed to #1 which is a smaller partition and bound to fill up. If I chose "Move to SD Card", it automatically goes to #3 and yet I want to put it on #2 and I'm not allowed to do that. If I pull out my external SD card, those applications will disappear. I'd like to be able to have "Move to SD Card" use #2 instead of #3, as that storage is not removable and will also (theoretically) be faster.
This is how it worked on my Captivate (both stock and Cyanogenmod), so I'm very confused about what is going on with this and I'd really like to change things up to work as I'd like.
Thanks for insights,
Craig
The Captivate uses a different file system and mounting system than the SGSII. You would be better off to redownload the apps from the Market, then restore just the data for those apps. I had major problem with restoring my Captivate TiBU backup to my SGSII until I did this. Your problem is that the apps that were installed to the SD card on the Cappy do not have the same corresponding place on the SGSII. Trust me, reinstalling from the Market and then restoring the data is the best bet.
That is exactly what I did. However, it still does not change the fact that I'm not allowed to use internal SD storage when I move applications.
Considering that the internal USB storage is not an actual SD card, the App to SD function is working properly. The SGSII considers that to be extended system storage, not an actual SD card.
What is extended system storage supposed to be used for? This is new to me.
User generated data like photos, music, videos, downloads. Just not apps.
OK. Thanks. I guess I'm not thrilled with the way this is being done now, but it sounds like I don't have much of a choice on top of stock ROM.
How many other phones give you 32gb of internal storage separate from RAM and the option to add another 32gb externally? Be happy.
Sorry... Didn't mean to sound completely unhappy... Just forces me to re-think my use of storage... To some extent it may actually *reverse* my previous use of storage.
No worries. I came to Android from years with WinMo devices. This is my 2nd Android phone and it always takes a little while to adjust.
This is my second Android phone as well.... along with multiple ROMs on the last phone. Which is why I'm always amazed at the number of different ways these things get partitioned.
Just got my E4GLTE and of course the first thing I did was root it, unlock it, and make a nandroid backup. I just moved from a Motorola Photon 4G and on that device the internal memory (pseudo sdcard) is mounted on /mnt/emmc and the external card is on /mnt/sdcard. Assuming you run out of app space in base memory, you can always move most of your app to the SD Card. Since the E4GLTE mounts the external SD Card on /mnt/sdcard/ext_sd, it appears that actual external storage can only be used for media or data where the app (or the system using the Storage tool) has a function to map to a different directory.
Have I described the situation properly? Does anybody else see the limitations this might pose or suggest workarounds?
..rob
bitbearmi said:
Just got my E4GLTE and of course the first thing I did was root it, unlock it, and make a nandroid backup. I just moved from a Motorola Photon 4G and on that device the internal memory (pseudo sdcard) is mounted on /mnt/emmc and the external card is on /mnt/sdcard. Assuming you run out of app space in base memory, you can always move most of your app to the SD Card. Since the E4GLTE mounts the external SD Card on /mnt/sdcard/ext_sd, it appears that actual external storage can only be used for media or data where the app (or the system using the Storage tool) has a function to map to a different directory.
Have I described the situation properly? Does anybody else see the limitations this might pose or suggest workarounds?
..rob
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes I see this as a problem as well. I have looked into the vold.fstab file (where the system looks to see how it should mount partitions) but changing them just makes neither partition mount. I have a feeling that it might be something in the kernel but I will keep digging around.
Also if someone does figure it out how do you prefer them to be mounted? Internal as /emmc and external as /sdcard? Internal as /sdcard/int_sd and external as /sdcard? Maybe something else?
I guess it would depend how the apps and the kernel handle it, which of course, would vary with a custom ROM. Early builds of CM9 for the MoPho alternated back and forth, but there is also an option to swap what is internal and external as well. When it wasn't mounting at all, you could edit the vold.fstab, which would be my first inclination, so thanks for saving me that step!
I think, from most implementations I've seen, when a device has internal and external storage its been mounted as /mnt/emmc and /mnt/sdcard. Its like that on most of the custom ROMs I've used (on Nook, OG EVO, Hero, MoPho).
..rob
Im really lost on the whole external sd thing. I just want to be able to have my apps on there but android has made it seemingly impossible to do so anymore. Is there a write up or something on how this can be done with todays ICS?
Sent from my EVO using xda premium
I went into root explorer.
I went into /mnt/
And I noticed there's two options....
/Extsdcard and /sdcard
Seems like all my downloads, music, and everything is getting saved to /sdcard
What does this mean?
P.s. I have a 64gb micro sdcard card.
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda premium
your extsdcard is your external one in your phone you can remove. i would recomend saving most your files like your music and such to that. sdcard is your internal memory of your phone. you have less space there and should save it for more important things. hope that helped
It means everything is being saved to your Internal Storage. I haven't quite figured out how to default everything to the ExtSdcard yet. I know the camera can. The phone will read everything from the ExtSdcard fine though, such as music and other files.
The ext sd card can be used for the camera/video, CWM backups, music files you copy from your computer, and you can move most any files there that you download.
The internal sd card will be used for all of your apps, there's no way to 'move to sd card', you just have the full 16/32gb internal sd for all of it. Since you will always be forced to use the internal sd card for all app needs, I just try to keep everything on my ext sd card I can (my cwm backups are 1.7gb!). Not that it really matters for me though, I downloaded every app I ever use and a few games and only hit 1.2gb used on my internal sd card.
You can also go to th advanced tab within the stock browser and select memory card for default storage. I am guessing that is ext SD as the other option is "Phone".
Thanks for the information!
This was quite confusing at first. Time to start moving files
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda premium
permanent fix for this?
My issue is that everything defaults to the /sdcard (internal partition - i'm calling it that for ease of terminology) and some apps just don't give you another option of where to save the media to (or don't let you browse over to the right thing). as it stands, the phone seems to be mounting that internal /sdcard partition as if it were external media, ie in android's default location for external media. thus, apps are looking ofr the REAL SD card and think they've found it but they haven't.
the reason this is a problem for me is 1. i have to change this in every app that allows me to, and 2. CWM sends backups to the internal one automatically and i can't change it and have to manually move the backup images to my external.
the reason i'm going into all of this is i'd like to find a way to entirely get rid of the /sdcard folder representing the internal memory and have the external card take its place. I'd like the rest of my 29ish GB of internal storage to be part of the system partition - where apps go, etc. it's not that i want to use that space, it's that i want to "move to SD" to the right SD. i just don't want the apps and system to treat ANY internal space as if it were external or mounted or anything of the sort.
my last phone, Atrix 2, had like 2-4gb internal. I'm just suggesting stretching that amount all the way to 32gbs and using the SD card as an SD card.
the question, basically, is whether there is any way to make this happen? i came across a thread (google "sd card mount point modification" as i can't post external links yet) elsewhere that discusses doing this with a VTAB and was wondering if this is something that is addressing my (our?) issue, whether it's a recommended solution, and whether it would work on the S3. i'm fine following technical instructions but I have very limited knowledge of the way addressing etc. works on Android and this filesystem. any help (or a redirect to a thread where this is more appropriate to ask) would be greatly appreciated.
Does this issue persist with custom roms? Is it an Ics bug that won't let you install apps to extsdcard or a Samsung intentional crap? I know one other android phones I had I could save apps to sd card no issues.
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sabre31 said:
Does this issue persist with custom roms? Is it an Ics bug that won't let you install apps to extsdcard or a Samsung intentional crap? I know one other android phones I had I could save apps to sd card no issues.
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haven't tried any, waiting for something where key things like camera, LTE, etc all work. It's not that I can't install to extSD, it's that the default is "sdcard" (ie the internal space allocated). it's really a function of the way the system/phone allocates that extra internal space - rather than calling it "internal storage/system storage", they are calling it the "primary sd card" and the actual sd card is being called "2nd sd card". it's this treatment of the spaces by the system that i'm unhappy about, i guess.
that's a good point though, and i am hoping that a custom ROM will do this differently. will update when i find one i like
EDIT: gonna do the Task & Ktoonsez AKOP Rom this weekend, should know how the spaces are treated. again, will update.
Hi, I'm currently running Firmware MediaPad ICS 4.0.3 HWMOD C232B005 which supposedly is pretty similar to stock. My problem is that the internal memory which apps are installed to, ae on the very same partition as the intenal sd card (mounted as /sdcard). Thus the andoird a2sd does not work, I get no "move to sd card option in Settings->Apps. With several games exceeding 500MB with the texture for the high resolution on the MediaPad, I need to be able to move some of them to SD. Also, I need the ames that store their data on /sdcard even if they shouldn't by Android standards (boo, Gameloft) to be stored on the REAL sdcard, whic is mounted as sdcard2. Preferably, I'd be able to do this without mucking about too much. Maybe the best option is to use CM10 if it's about ready for prime time? I guess it'll give me the choice of using /sdcard or /emmc as main storage. (Though it IS annoying CM by default incorrectly labels the sdcard as emmc and the internal memory as mmc - strictly opposite of defined standards for embedded devices.)
naguz said:
Hi, I'm currently running Firmware MediaPad ICS 4.0.3 HWMOD C232B005 which supposedly is pretty similar to stock. My problem is that the internal memory which apps are installed to, ae on the very same partition as the intenal sd card (mounted as /sdcard). Thus the andoird a2sd does not work, I get no "move to sd card option in Settings->Apps. With several games exceeding 500MB with the texture for the high resolution on the MediaPad, I need to be able to move some of them to SD. Also, I need the ames that store their data on /sdcard even if they shouldn't by Android standards (boo, Gameloft) to be stored on the REAL sdcard, whic is mounted as sdcard2. Preferably, I'd be able to do this without mucking about too much. Maybe the best option is to use CM10 if it's about ready for prime time? I guess it'll give me the choice of using /sdcard or /emmc as main storage. (Though it IS annoying CM by default incorrectly labels the sdcard as emmc and the internal memory as mmc - strictly opposite of defined standards for embedded devices.)
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It's really easy, do this
settings > storage > set primary storage > SD card > restart tablet
all apps will be moved to external sd card, and hopefully also games data like gameloft files. if this didn't happen then do it manualy. if none of that worked well... just download the data again
I think even if you set primary storage to SD, your apps remain on internal. However it will force the Gameloft etc /sdcard storage to external.
I thought the old native apps to external SD functionality was deprecated from ICS onwards? But I could be wrong...
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Setting the primary storage is the only option ICS provides, no other apps like app2sd work actualy, i tried them
but... root opens new doors remember, i'm sure there are some apps that can move all apps to external sd, although i son't think that's possible when it comes to system apps.
and here i have a question: is it possible to set en ext3 partition on the external sd so that apps can be moved there? i did this on my beloved "dead" htc wildfire and i tell you I LOVE IT! all apps on ext3 partition (256 mb) but when looking at storage settings they appear in internal memory!! crazy right? and that makes those apps load really fast whenturning the phone on.
Don't bother trying to use old a2sd hacks that were designed for Gingerbread and Froyo phones with only a few hundred MB of internal storage.
But I did verify, yes, if you select the option to designate primary (/sdcard) storage as the external SD, the option to move apps to SD reappears. I prefer to store as much as possible on internal rather than external, because the read/write speeds are faster. Of course, regardless of which you select, any app that does allow you to change its storage directory can have a path entered that locates the correct place.
Thanks for the replies everypne! My CM9 Galaxy S II does have an option for moving apps to sd card in the settings->apps menu for compatilbe apps, so I don't think this has been discontinued in ICS+?
Anyway, I figured there WAS enough space on the internal memory for the app I was installing when I got the insufficient space error. I also noticed I had different available memory on sdcard0 (internal storage) and /data (also the same partition of the internal storage) when I ran df in a terminal, and figured something was off, so I ditched the ROM I was using, wiped it all form recovery, and installed CM9. Seems to be working OK for now.
I'll still run out of space in the internal sd card - but for the huge data guzzlers like gameloft I'll try to use Directory Bind which I vaguely remembered reading about and so googled up. As mentioned, it is not really an option to have all apps default to save stuff on the external sd card for security reasons. But if directory bind works (or manually editing in bind mounts in init files), and hopefully it should still be smooth sailing.
Still not sure whether I want to trade it in for a 10" though. Such a pity I can't find any 10" without acceptable resolution, gps, 3g and a price I can justify. The Mediapad sure is a nifty device with a good screen, even though it is a little heavy. But no I'm going way of topic.
I first saw this whole "sdcard/sdcard0" and "extsdcard" mess with the Motorola RAZR, the first Smartphone I used which had a large amount of internal memory.
Personally, I found this maddeningly annoying, many apps were confused and assumed they were installing or writing to the SD card when they were just writing to internal. The whole point of a SD card (to me at least) is to have REMOVABLE memory.
I then found out when considering the Galaxy S3 and later S4 that they also did the same, I wondered why Samsung would do such an annoying thing.
Now, I finally upgraded my three-year-old EVO 3D running Gingerbread/ICS for a M8 running KitKat.... and was even assured it didn't perform such ridiculous stupidity as mounting the internal memory as a SD card (especially when I was told the EVO 4G LTE originally did this, but got an update that actually re-partitioned the flash memory to undo that). So when I installed a filemanager to remove some junk files from the SD card, I was pretty angry to see a "sdcard0" and "extsdcard" folder, though since there wasn't much I could do about that I just ignored it for the time and tried to delete the junk files from the SD card and move some to external...... when I got my next nasty surprise.
So then, is this whole primary/sdcard0 and secondary/extsdcard thing actually something that Google is pushing/forcing rather than stupidity of manufacturers? Are they required now to emulate the internal as a sdcard on KitKat devices so Google can indulge in their anti-sd card mentality and force people to use their cloud storage while turning Android into iPhone provide security and make Android less complicated because clearly Android is insecure and confusing to use and this isn't a coverup on their part? Or is there something in Android's design that prevents just having the 32 GIGS of internal memory (minus whatever is partitioned off to the system, boot, cache, etc) as one large chunk of internal and not emulate a SD card? Especially since their silly restrictions in KitKat only effect "secondary" memory and technically would not effect the SD card if there was no emulated one taking it's place as primary? (funny how this whole clutter and security issue isn't applying to internal memory, there it would be an even bigger problem...)
Or are manufacturers doing this anyway (the whole making the actual physical sdcard a secondary storage and tricking apps into thinking the internal memory is a sd card so they install and write to there when you tell them to use external memory) based on their own mentality? If this is a requirement from Google, then how did HTC get away with actually UN-DOING this exact thing on the 4G LTE?
Again, the whole point of having apps save their data and exported settings/whatever to the sdcard is so I am not dependant on the data being locked onto the internal memory and only accessible if the phone wants me to access it and is working. Even the downloads folder is on the internal, which some of my apps by default export saved settings to, and I cannot move it or even any of the files in it to the external sdcard because of the changes in KitKat, which is kinda the entire $#^^$^#^&#$^^$ point of exporting your saved settings.