[Q] External SD Card Usage - Sprint HTC EVO 4G LTE

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

Related

[Q] app install location

I have a few questions about app install locations for the g-tablet. There are three places where apps can go: 1. internal memory, 2. internal sd card, 3. external sd card.
For internal memory, I can see the installed apps (the apk files) at /data/app. I cannot find any evidence of any apps installed on the internal sd card (do they stay packaged in the apk file or get exploded out). What directory do they get put into on the internal sd card? In case you're wondering, according to App 2 SD Pro, I have 10 apps installed on the sd card.
Is there a way to install apps on the external sd card? Everything that I've read about and the sd card app managers that I've tried only work between the internal memory and the internal sd card.
Hmmm...nothing but crickets. Not even a question for more information? Well, here is a little more anyway. The tablet is rooted and I have tnt-lite 4.4.0 installed. I'm using Root Explorer to browse around in the file system.
This discussion might help, somewhat.
Yes, that other post was somewhat helpful. I can see the apps that have been moved to the "internal" SD card are at /mnt/asec with Root Explorer (I didn't have to unmount either...but the .android_secure folder did show as empty).
A couple of other questions for you:
1. Are you using a remote Linux machine to do those find commands or is there a way to get to that command line on the g tablet? I only have Windows so I may be stuck there.
2. Unmounting the SD card in the Settings will unmount the "external" SD card, right? not the "internal" SD card?
3. Do you know anything on my other original question about the "external" SD card? Can we move apps there some how? If not, I'd be game to try to write an app that will do it but my guess is that if there isn't an app that does it already, its probably harder than it seems that it should be.
Puhn said:
(I didn't have to unmount either...but the .android_secure folder did show as empty).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you unmount the SD card (internal or external -- depends on the ROM), you will see stuff in /mnt/sdcard/.android_secure/.
1. Are you using a remote Linux machine to do those find commands or is there a way to get to that command line on the g tablet?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use a telnet session into the gTablet, but, you can run the commands either inside a Terminal emulator or via adb. It usually doesn't matter how you run the commands.
2. Unmounting the SD card in the Settings will unmount the "external" SD card, right? not the "internal" SD card?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Depends on the ROM. In CyanogenMod, the SD card is the removable SD card. The internal non-removable one is called "emmc" (mounted under /mnt/emmc). Other ROMs have /mnt/sdcard and /mnt/sdcard2 (Froyo/GB) or /mnt/sdcard and /mnt/external_sd (Honeycomb ROMs).
3. Do you know anything on my other original question about the "external" SD card? Can we move apps there some how? If not, I'd be game to try to write an app that will do it but my guess is that if there isn't an app that does it already, its probably harder than it seems that it should be.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
CyanogenMod does what you want by default. As I mentioned above, for it /mnt/sdcard is always the external removable SD card. So, everything "moved to SD card" ends up on the external SD. If you want other ROMs to behave this way, you'll have to change some of the /init*.rc files and the /system/etc/vold.fstab file and change what gets mounted as /mnt/sdcard (ie, which device is assigned the "sdcard" label). Look around, the changes are fairly obvious.
My recommedation, however, is to just install CyanogenMod and avoid the /init*.rc and vold/fstab hackery.
Good information. Huge THANKS !
One last question (hopefully)...if the SD card in CyanogenMod is the external SD card, I guess I have the reverse question for it. Can/how do you move apps to the non-removable SD card?
I guess what I'm getting at is I have a 16 GB internal, non-removable SD card and a 16 GB removable SD card that I'd like to maximize the use of. I'm not stuck with only being able to put apps on one or the other depending on the installed ROM am I?
Puhn said:
I guess what I'm getting at is I have a 16 GB internal, non-removable SD card and a 16 GB removable SD card that I'd like to maximize the use of. I'm not stuck with only being able to put apps on one or the other depending on the installed ROM am I?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Heh. What started as a simple question about App install locations has now progressed to low-level mucking about with the system. What next--RAID using the SD cards?
To answer your question, with the standard, unmodified ROM you are stuck with only using either one or the other. But, since Android is based on Linux, (and since we have the source code for most of the programs on the system), it can be made to do a lot of non-standard things.
I'm pretty sure that the system can be modified to use both the internal and external SD cards for App installations, but, this will need a fair bit of customization of the ROM. Which means that if you switch ROMs or even upgrade the current one, the setup will have to be redone again.
Therefore, my recommendation, is that you use one of the SD cards solely for app installs and the other only for storing media/books/whatever. 16GB only for apps is a fair bit of space, I feel.
rajeevvp said:
Heh. What started as a simple question about App install locations has now progressed to low-level mucking about with the system.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I had hoped to avoid the mucking about part and that one of the available ROMs already had the ability to put apps anywhere but it sounds like that is not the case. I guess I wasn't clear with my original question.
Anyway, thanks for all of the answers. I'll stick with what I've got for now. At some point I may play around with some things and see how thoroughly mucked up I can get it.

Internal SD vs External SD

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.

Extsdcard vs sd card. How is it saving?

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.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium
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.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.

SD Card, EXTSD, SDCard2, etc.

As quickly as possible, could someone explain to me why this phone has so many different storage locations? What's the difference? What's the difference between phone storage, and internal storage? I hate having to look for some pics that my phone decided to save where-ever on the phone sometimes.
Sent from my EVO using xda app-developers app
The only place pictures will be saved are on either your internal SD card or the external SD card, depending on where you've selected in the camera app.
/sdcard/ext_sd is the same as /sdcard2. They are just two separate references to the same folder (the root of your external SD card).
I think this confusion is probably one of the reasons they stopped making devices with an SD card slot. That, and the way they partitioned the nand on this device was poor.
Okay, thanks Captain. Two more questions: what is the difference between phone storage and internal storage?
And, what is sdcard0? sdcard?
Sent from my EVO using xda app-developers app
I honestly don't remember which is which, but one of them is your /data partition, where app data is stored. The other is your internal SD, which is mounted at /storage/sdcard0, and symlinked to /sdcard.

[Q] CM11 Help?

I've got CM11 on my S7-303u.
Seems to work pretty well but I'm running into the problem that made me end up having to put CM on it in the first place since I couldn't reinstall the stock ICS firmware. (I'm still fairly new to Android)
The problem I have is storage. 1 of the storage problems is I want the external 32g sd I have as my primary instead of the 16g internal so I can have more room for the loads of apps I want to put on it again.
With the stock ICS when I switched the primary from internal to external I could still see both with ES file manager but with CM11's KK I can only see both storage cards when the primary is set to internal. The external seems to disappear when I switch primary to external.
The reason I know this is because since I originally couldn't tell which was which, while I had it working right I put zero byte files on each of my storage cards and drives named for where they reside. i.e. '32g-External.nomedia' on the external sdcard.
Is there a way I can fix it so when it's set to external for the primary to show both internal and external?
If not I will see if I can get around it with the 'FolderMount [ROOT]' app by madmack.
The other storage question I have is what is the best app to use for mounting external usb sdcards and usb flash drives that won't interfere with Androids stock configuration on how it accesses it's internal and external cards. Meaning I don't want whatever app I use to give new mounting point names for the int/ext cards.
Can someone give me some insight?
LunaEros said:
I've got CM11 on my S7-303u.
Seems to work pretty well but I'm running into the problem that made me end up having to put CM on it in the first place since I couldn't reinstall the stock ICS firmware. (I'm still fairly new to Android)
The problem I have is storage. 1 of the storage problems is I want the external 32g sd I have as my primary instead of the 16g internal so I can have more room for the loads of apps I want to put on it again.
With the stock ICS when I switched the primary from internal to external I could still see both with ES file manager but with CM11's KK I can only see both storage cards when the primary is set to internal. The external seems to disappear when I switch primary to external.
The reason I know this is because since I originally couldn't tell which was which, while I had it working right I put zero byte files on each of my storage cards and drives named for where they reside. i.e. '32g-External.nomedia' on the external sdcard.
Is there a way I can fix it so when it's set to external for the primary to show both internal and external?
If not I will see if I can get around it with the 'FolderMount [ROOT]' app by madmack.
The other storage question I have is what is the best app to use for mounting external usb sdcards and usb flash drives that won't interfere with Androids stock configuration on how it accesses it's internal and external cards. Meaning I don't want whatever app I use to give new mounting point names for the int/ext cards.
Can someone give me some insight?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
StickMount works. It will mount the USB device. Though I have been having some issues with some mounting and some not. Granted I am running a different device and it may depend on Kernel support. But, you can try it. Then the device should be viewable through file manager.

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