[Q] Can I get rid of the internal "SD card" altogether? - Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hey there,
Basically, the Galaxy S2's internal SD card makes no sense. I'd rather combine it with the other internal storage partition and use my 32GB external SD card as the only SD card. Is there any way of doing this?
If you're interested in the reason I want to do this: Firstly, I have a pretty big music collection and making Play Music store downloaded tracks on the external SD card is a pain in the ass. Secondly, it's just damned messy having two SD cards present.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1485500
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1814046
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2049436

immortalneo said:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1485500
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1814046
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2049436
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd found all of those posts myself. You misunderstand my problem.
In those posts, OP wants to combine the internal and external SD cards. I don't want to do that. My GS2, at least, has two chunks of internal storage, one ~2GB block (where apps are installed) and one ~11GB block (which it treats as the SD card). I want to combine the 2GB and 11GB blocks and use my actual external SD as the SD card.

You can't.

Related

[Q] what is the point of having an external micro sd card in this phone???

if you cant put apps and save pics and it doesnt function like a normal android device sd card
care to answer?
More storage space? a lot of programs let you set the storage location, which you can change to the external.
also great for media like music and movies since it's removable. Works just like any sd card i've ever used in a phone. Just a different directory name.
you are wrong when you save you cannot save pictrures to it and that it does not fucntion like a normal android sd card. Of course you can save music, video, and pictures to the external sd card. it functions just like any other sd card. if you phone happens to die, you can remove the sdcard and still retreive those media files. if you keep everything on the internal sd card, if your phone dies, how do you expect to retrieve those files?
extremely useful.
it does not let me use my sd storage says no storage is there when i unmount my internal Sd how do you guys have it setup. my sd is under sd ext in astro whan i take a pic it says cannot save to sd its probably mounted wrong but it still saves the pic to the external sd but really its annoying and it does not function properly
it does not let me move to SD card just to MEDIA which is still the internal so....
Did you make sure the sd card is formatted correctly? Also with an app you can move some appz to the sd card I believe. also you can 100% back up your contacts as vcards on the sd card which I think is pretty nifty
Sent from my MB860 using XDA Premium App
Try to use sdtools and use the external and tell me what it does
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
This phone has 16gb internal plus whatever size your sd card is. When I set mine up I formated the card and pushed my music to what the phone calls the media area. The music ended up on the phone internal memory and all apps only have the option to go to the media area in app manager. So I just manually moved the music to the sd card. But I am guessing it wont start using the sd card until the internal 16gb is filled up. The memory setting has an option for windows sync to go to either the internal mem or sd card.
What I think they should add is the option to fill up the sd card first then the internal memory if the card fills up.
I'm lost? The external SD card option is great because once that 16GB is filled up, you have the option to add upto 32GB of memory to your phone. If you don't see that as a good thing, then you don't need to put in an SD card. I got an Atrix over the Nexus S because of the lack of external SD card on the phone. I like it when I have options. I have pictures and musics on my SD card.
you dont need to fill up internal storage; i made a folder in the SD root directory called music, added music to that file with windows media player, and they were found right off the bat. did the same with movies, ringtones, and pictures; everything goes to my SD card, all my fresh downloads of movies pics and music go to the phones internal storage, so when i hook up my atrix to my PC i sync all other media to the memory card and my pc gets all the new data off my atrix. i have about 10GB open on the atrix and 4GB open on the microSD card.
i just hate the fact everything goes to internal first then you transfer later that sucks
lorijuan1024 said:
i just hate the fact everything goes to internal first then you transfer later that sucks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you're referring to the camera and other things, no, you're wrong. There must be some issue with your micro SD card and the phone. On my Atrix, if I choose SD card for storage in the Camera's settings, all pictures I take go to the dcim folder on the SD card immediately. I don't have to move anything. Similarly, when syncing my music, I go into the Device menu in Motorola Media Link and choose my SD card. All the music, photos and videos go immediately there. I never have to copy things over manually.
I'd suggest trying another brand of SD card, or reformatting your card (use FAT32 as the format type).

How do I actually use my micro SD card?

Okay, first of all, I have done a lot of search on this topic over various forums and google. Some topic pops up occasionally, but never got answered, strange...
Basically I am trying to figure out two things:
1. How to move apps to microSD card? Not a single definitive answer or tutorial would allow me to move apps to external SD card. I've tried app2sd, link2sd also the stock CM7 application manager, which all of them would only allow to move apps to internal storage of the phone which is called SD card for Galaxy SII. Also the microsd card is under the diretory of mnt/emmc. Some other tutorials suggesting moving game data over /sdcard/external_sd/, I tried as well, but my microSD's storage doens't go down so I assume the data is still on internal SD card.
2. How to enable apps to save user data automatically on micro sd card? For example, I have lots of camera apps, which automatically save photos that I took on /sdcard/DCIM, I want them to be on my micro SD card AUTOMATICALLY, is there a way of doing this?
Many thanks, oh btw, I am using cyanogenmod 7 on Galaxy SII
I cannot see much reason to move apps to external sd card with a sgs2, that is something for inferior phones , there is a lot of space on application storage and internal sd card for that.
Most people are fine by just moving media files to the external card.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
how about my second question, i shot a lot of photos and hd videos daily, i know i can manully move them to external, but that Kinda make my gallery look clustered if you know what i mean.
Have you tried doin it internally via your phone:settings-applications-running services.On the top left touch on "downloaded" and all your downloaded apps will appear.Touch on whatever app you like and you will get the option to move,uninstall or clear data.Remember that not all downloaded apps are able to be moved to external sd and if the app you would like to move is unmovable by default then you will see that.
The problem is Android only likes one sd card. So when you have an internal SD card like the sg2 the system doesn't take advantage of your external sd card.
imolared333 said:
how about my second question, i shot a lot of photos and hd videos daily, i know i can manully move them to external, but that Kinda make my gallery look clustered if you know what i mean.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can change storage area in camera settings (with stock camera app).

[Q] Help me understand the difference between the storage options on the rezound

Hey all,
I did a quick search in our forum and found a few early threads but nothing that explained the differences to me... This is my first android.
My questions are around this menu:
Settings -> Applications -> Storage Use.
on the 'Downloaded' and 'All' tab, at the bottom it says "Internal Storage"
with what looks like a max of ~2.3GB.. at least mine says 790MB Used, 1.6GB Free.
On the 'On SD Card' tab it says "SD card storage" and a max ~10.5GB or so... (1.3gb used 9.2gb free)
I know I put a 32GB SD card in my phone.... and under phone & SD Storage, I see these three different storage points.
What's what here? Is there an internal mounted SD card in our phones that I can't remove?
When I "Move to SD" card, is the app only moving to this other 'internal' storage?
I was a little confused by this, but if my removable 32GB SD card literally is just extended storage that I put my own music/movies/videos...etc. on, then that's cool...
I just want to understand that 'move to SD' isn't actually moving it to my SD card at all... And then, how many of you move your apps to this other 'internal' SD card, or do you actually have a way to put them on your 'removable' SD card.
Don't know whether this is your first Android phone or, like me, you migrated to the Rezound from another phone, but here's the scoop. What used to be called \emmc on the Incredible, or the "internal" drive of 8 gigabytes is now mounted on the Rezound as \sdcard. Many applications think that your "external memory" is what is actually this "internal" 16 gb drive on the Rezound.
Your removable microsd card is mounted both as \sdcard2 and as \sdcard\ext_sd. For applications which enable you to designate a data directory, e.g. Titanium Backup, My Backup Pro, XDA Premium, Tapatalk, etc., you can redirect the app to store its data on the "real" external drive. Otherwise, your "external" data will really be stored on the "internal", nonremovable 16gb drive.
The other space (I believe it's 8gb) is for applications and ROM. It's so capacious, right now at least, that the necessity we faced on the Incredible and other phones to: (1) "move apps" to SD; or (2) use an ext3 partition and link2sd, is not as pressing. For instance, I easily have >100 apps installed and I still have nearly 2 gigabytes free in that space.
Hope this helps.
This part confused me and seems redundant. Coming from the Inc1 and 2 I never use the internal memory. With a 32gb card I want everything automatically saved on that. Now I have to deal with sdcard sdcard and ext_sd. I'm not enjoying this part of the phone but at least we have an sd
What your phone calls "sdcard" is actually your internal storage, most apps look at "sdcard" as your actual removable card, on this phone it is not. What your phone calls "sdcard2" is your removable sd card. If you want an app to store things on your removable sd card you have to either change the path in the app itself(of course most apps don't have this function) or move the data there manually. Its completely stupid and I hate it, but no phone is perfect.
once everything is fully unlocked we can edit things to switch the 2 around
sent from my rezound using tapatalk

Q. internal & mounted sd cards

is it possible to swap the internal & mounted sd cards so that i can make better use of the available space on my 32gb external card rather than be limited to the 8ish gb currently in use?
i've tried directory bind - which seems like the long way round the houses.
put simply: can i allocate the mounted/3rd party card as the primary sd?
gascomm said:
is it possible to swap the internal & mounted sd cards so that i can make better use of the available space on my 32gb external card rather than be limited to the 8ish gb currently in use?
i've tried directory bind - which seems like the long way round the houses.
put simply: can i allocate the mounted/3rd party card as the primary sd?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, maybe it is but then it will work badly, you must just manage e.g. all your apps on the internal ROM, Music and Videos on your ex_sd and Documents & Downloads on your in_sd, I can't imagine you have problems with that much storage. I have a 32GB ext_sd too and I have got it like this:
EX_SD: 30GB Music and 2GB Data (ROM ZIP's etc.)
IN_SD: 4GB Ringtones, Data, Pictures etc.
Internal Storage: 820MB Apps
I hope my information was helpful
@DonUber
helpful, thanks. i've torrents & ftp'd music & films on the external card which is i guess always going to be the biggest type of memory hog.
just curious what is possible. i've gotten used to single large drives on pc's & although rarely an issue on a rooted phone the very concept of receiving a low memory warning seems daft in the 21st century

Limited Storage Workaround

Hi All,
I've got an A21S for my Daughter and she's unable to properly use the SD Card for app storage are there any ROMs which allow moving apps to the SDCard.
Tia
Why is she doing that?
What's taking up all the internal storage space?
She should store data, music, movies, images, etc on the SD card not in the internal memory.
The SD Card won't format as internal storage it only formats as external so we can't move the apps to it. The only thing you can store in the SDCard is photos which makes it kind of pointless.
I read the Samsung forum and it's a known issue. I just wondered if there's a ROM that will do away with this limitation they've suggested putting it into Dev mode and allowing adoptable storage but I'd rather just install a ROM that doesn't have this silly limitation.
Thanks
blackhawk said:
Why is she doing that?
What's taking up all the internal storage space?
She should store data, music, movies, images, etc on the SD card not in the internal memory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
blackhawk said:
Why is she doing that?
What's taking up all the internal storage space?
She should store data, music, movies, images, etc on the SD card not in the internal memory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mashed said:
The SD Card won't format as internal storage it only formats as external so we can't move the apps to it. The only thing you can store in the SDCard is photos which makes it kind of pointless.
I read the Samsung forum and it's a known issue. I just wondered if there's a ROM that will do away with this limitation they've suggested putting it into Dev mode and allowing adoptable storage but I'd rather just install a ROM that doesn't have this silly limitation.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's far from pointless.
Just like on a PC you use the faster bus/memory of the internal memory for the apps as they benefit most from it.
The SD card is best suited for use as a data drive, not the primary drive as it's memory/bus speeds are substantially slower.
Music, pics, vids, documents, backups and downloads should be kept here.
The size of the internal memory defines how many apps you can or can't load.
You need at least 1gb headroom preferably 2gb or more.
My internal memory holds about 20gb including the Download folder. I have a fair amount of apps loaded including 4 browsers, 3 of which are heavily used.
My SD card holds 335gb of data.
Unfortunately she has outgrown that phone. Consider using less or lighter apps to regain the headroom you need.
These are lessons I learned the hard way about settings up a platform long ago in my XPx64 days. For a phone my minimum now is 128gb internal (preferabley more) and an SD card is mandatory.

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