Related
This is my first tablet and I'm new to Android (always had Windows Mobile phones) so maybe this is common knowledge to Android users but I sure as hell can't find the answer via searching.
I finally bought a microSD card for my Prime but can't figure out how to use it efficiently. I can access it an copy files and folders to it via the File Manager so I know it works. However, I can't figure out how to make the camera save pictures and videos to it by default. After looking at that for a while I looked at my other apps and none of my programs seem to have an option to make use of the microSD card. Took me a while to figure out I can't even install programs to the SD card like I can with my Windows Mobile phone. I can deal with that last part though with 32 gigs on the internal card but if the only way to use the microSD card is to manually copy files over to it where those files are then inaccessible for all the apps so I have to manually copy them back over every time I need to use them, that's not acceptable.
What am I missing here? I can't believe this was intentionally designed this way. Is there some global setting that I'm missing to open things up?
I think most use the external card for music & vids and such that they carry over TO the tablet. I also noticed you cannot set apps to save there and I have an app that monitors apps when they install. & if they are SD compatible it alerts you.... it never works in this setup. No doubt you could - if rooted - move apps to SD card as I do this on my Droid all the time.
As for camera & vids no way to set SD as default.
Unless there been a change since honeycomb saving and running apps to sd is not native. Most people state that due to all the space the device comes with you don't need it since apk are so small. But I had 4 games take up 4.5 gb of space on my device so that rational does not float.
If you ever root your device there is app called gl to sd
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1328053
worked great on honycomb (waiting till i get home to use new root so have not tried on ICS yet) I moved all my games to SD and they ran fine .. games like shadow Gun GTA III DeadSpace Backstab 9mm.
Just my two cents if there is way for using the sd card natively in ICS I also wold love to know.
On my measly 512mb OG Droid I have 110 apps on the SD card. Ahhhh thank God root.
For this 32gb beast I decided to forgo SD card apps as it does slow the app down (has to r/w from slower card) and Widgets can bust.
It is lame though that we cannot set cameras & vids to auto save but again you'd get a performance hit to a small degree.
The situation was worse before Honeycomb, in Gingerbread you could have a 16GB phone but the way it was partitioned only 1GB to 2GB was considered "internal memory" for app installation space/data while the rest was partitioned into a virtual "sdcard" folder that you needed things like App2SD to move over to that parition space (and not even fully, portions of app/data/cache would stay in the internal memory space). With HoneyComb/ICS the full 32GB or 64GB storage space is visible and useable between the internal/sdcard mounts. I got the 64GB Prime so I wouldn't have to worry about app install space any more since I like to load hundreds of apps/games. I also have a 64GB microSDHC card which I use to store a bunch of videos/music.
Thanks for the reply guys. Surprised that Android is built to limit itself like that. Really though, 32 gigs is a lot of space for the apps themselves. If it was just a matter of having to install the apps on the internal card, I wouldn't even bother cause I know with my use I'd never approach the limit if that was the only limitation.
However, not being able to save data used by the apps to external SD card is an issue as I see it. Will probably get around to rooting my Prime just so I can move some of the apps to the external SD card so they'll, hopefully, save and use the data there to keep my internal card free. I have a few aviation chart based apps that will be taking up quite a bit of space. I don't think it will max it out on their own but I like having plenty of extra space.
Not being able to save the video and pics from the camera directly to the external card is a bit ridiculous though. Perhaps a developer can fix that? In the mean time, I've thought of a work around that, while not perfect, will work for me I think in regards to keeping the camera videos and pics from clogging up my internal drive. I've installed an app called SyncMe that syncs via wifi network to my computer. I'll set it automatically to move all the camera data from my internal card to my computer and then I'll have another event that syncs the files on my computer to my tablet external SD card. The effect will be a daily transfer of all my camera activity to my external SD card while also making them available on my computer until I have time to sort through them.
Yea, once you play around with it a bit you'll find what works best for you. Some apps wont install on the external sd card and a lot of apps behave better when install on internal memory. Apps to SD is great for some but not all apps. Now separating the data from the apps that are internal to the external ? I'm not sure how well that will work.
Oh wait. I just re-read what you wrote. Yes - you can save the data to the external sd card and you will want to. There are lots of apps that do that, our Primes came with a backup app that will allow you to select apps to backup and/or apps with data. Sometimes you only want to restore apps and not data.
Your work around for storing pictures and video to external sd sounds like it will work well. 32gb is a lot of space. It's also really easy to use the File Manager to copy them over. I can't speak for everyone, but I'm guessing a lot of us here, especially if we rooted our phones, have grown accustom to setting schedules for apps to backup or data and for me - that includes things like pictures. Some of these backups will sync to a cloud so the data/pictures are safe and wont get lost. With 32gb I'm not concerned about space.
I wasn't really concerned about space that much until I recorded some video of my son's basketball game. Just over 6 min and the video was well over 800mb.
I could see that adding up real quick if I didn't stay on top of it and I know I won't without some 'auto' help. Got concerned that I might clog up my internal card with personal stuff that would inhibit my work stuff, which is what this is was for in the first place.
Haven't looked at the backup utility yet but every other app I've tried, I can't see a selectable option for getting choosing where to save and access data. Well, except for the SyncMe and File Manager I already mentioned. Oh, and I noticed that the gallery can see the photos and videos I moved to the external card so that's good.
Well, I found another reason to not like the microSD card option but this time, it's directly related to the Prime rather than a generic Android problem.
Took my prime out for work. First full day with hotel stay since buying the microSD card. By the time I get back to the hotel to settle in for the night, I notice the microSD card is missing. WTH!!!
Now, there wasn't anything on it that I don't have on the computer at home BUT, that card wasn't cheap. If it comes out of that slot so easy as to be gone after my first full day away from home with the Prime, I can't trust it at all.
First question, is there an easily accecible log file that would show when the card was unmounted? If so, that might narrow down where to look for it. Might actually be able to find it if I know when it came out.
Second question, does anyone know if the SD card slot on the dock is more secure? I would really like more space but I'm not paying for another microSD card.
To answer one of your questions, the dock SD card is much more secure, it does not stick out of the dock at all unlike the Micro SD in the tablet
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
I would definitely recommend you have at least a sleeve for your Prime. That will help with the microSD not popping out, too. I have been carrying mine with me for weeks and haven't had mine pop out at all. No, I'm not aware of a way to find out when it was unmounted.
And yes - the dock has a SD card reader, so it's bigger and it will insert flush as opposed to sticking out a little due to the beveled design of the sides of the Prime. And with the usb port......well it's limitless really - maybe not to carry for every outing, but at home it's so easy to contect to the external hard drive and transfer movies and pictures that way. I really like the dock. Also, the prices of microSD cards have come waaaaay down. Sandisk, class 6, 16gb, $20.
"Haven't looked at the backup utility yet but every other app I've tried, I can't see a selectable option for getting choosing where to save and access data. Well, except for the SyncMe and File Manager I already mentioned. Oh, and I noticed that the gallery can see the photos and videos I moved to the external card so that's good."
The built in app backup does save your data to either or both places. This is data from your apps. Not things like downloads or pictures. It saves your apps too but you don't really have to do that since as soon as you sign into the market your apps are there. I have 2 other 3rd party apps that do the same thing with more features (schedules, bookmarks, etc)
Yep - the gallery and video player are going to find the pictures and videos/movies that you put on the removable sd card. The built in media player lets you tell it where to look for movies/videos. There really is plenty of room in the 32gb for most of your needs. Unless you root and start storing multiple weekly nandroid backups, you'll likely only need to manage your files when you "want to" - i.e. when you want to transfer pictures and videos on and off the Prime and/or when you back the Prime up. I have a 16gb $20 sandisk class 6 microsd that I've loaded up with 10 movies, but now I only have 4 gb left. I have over 80 3rd party apps installed to internal, that combined with the apps that came with it amount to only about 5gb, (plus misc pictures, videos, several hundred books, etc) and I still have 22 gb left. So I'm moving more movies to internal. I didn't get a 32gb tablet to leave a bunch of dead air
I have a TON of pictures and videos in my gallery. TONS. Thousands. But I've been using an android phone for several years so I'm synced with Google and the Cloud. Every picture I take with my phone or tablet is stored in the Cloud, private, available only to me unless I choose to make it public. I can access them anywhere from any computer within seconds of taking them. So they don't take up any space at all on any of my devices. Neither does my music anymore
Yeah, the 32 gigs is good for my needs. Not for my wants. I justified buying this thing to carry aeronautical chart which takes up several gigabits of space. Quite a bit of space but not so much that it overwhelms the internal card. However, when using it for secondary tasks like an HD video recorder, that space get chewed up fast. MicroSD was my plan for stuff like that. Will have to rethink that now.
Was planning on getting a sleeve or a case once I had the tab and keyboard and could figure out exaclty what I wanted for it (just got the keyboard) but that card got lost way too easy. Not buying another one even with the sleeve/case.
Well, the card showed up. Well, more accurately, it was sitting in a convenient place for me to stumble across it this morning.
Lucky for me for now.
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
I've 16gb class 10 sd installed in SIII. Can browse it using My files (stock filemanagr) but can't see the external sd in OIbrowser or when trying to move apps from internal to external. In app manager it doesn show the option to move. Also tried app2sd but the option of moving doesn't show.
Any help would be appreciated.
Samsung changed the mount location for the external SD card, will be a problem for lots of apps until they update to support the new location (I confirmed this in my hands-on with the S3 last weekend - details @ AndroidNZ.net). Can you not do it with the native a2sd function from Settings --> Apps --> Manage apps though?
NZtechfreak said:
Samsung changed the mount location for the external SD card, will be a problem for lots of apps until they update to support the new location (I confirmed this in my hands-on with the S3 last weekend - details @ AndroidNZ.net). Can you not do it with the native a2sd function from Settings --> Apps --> Manage apps though?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
NOpes appmanager doesnt show move option in SIII.
This is not good can this be changed by a dev?
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA
Why would you want to do it? GS3 has a single partition for all data, you'll never run out of the 16GB (11 usable) space you have to store apps. And it's faster memory than your sdcard.
ECrispy said:
Why would you want to do it? GS3 has a single partition for all data, you'll never run out of the 16GB (11 usable) space you have to store apps. And it's faster memory than your sdcard.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, i understood this after reading more posts. This way is much better. 11gb itself + 50GB dropbox + wahtever you can throw in extSD
That's correct. You can read all about this in the excellent article by Chainfire on his blog entry: "Is Google blocking apps writing to SD cards?". In summary; it is not yet clear whether or not this is a (Google) feature or bug. But although Samsung is trying to work around the issue, they do so in a very sloppy way...
:?
Thanks for the link to the article. clarifies a lot. Got my SGS3 yesterday & I freaked out when I couldn't find the "Move to SDcard" link in the app manager...
I don't really like that method...
who needs to move apps to sd card if u got a freaking 11 gb of storage in the 16 gb version or any other .....!!
jithendra194 said:
who needs to move apps to sd card if u got a freaking 11 gb of storage in the 16 gb version or any other .....!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if that is the case, then what is the point of the freakin SD card???? for show??
or for MP3 and movies only?
vasp3690 said:
if that is the case, then what is the point of the freakin SD card???? for show??
or for MP3 and movies only?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed this is not what I was expecting, the question is can it be changed?
Or have I just wasted my money on a 64gb sdxc card?
the phone has 11 gb to store music and files, or it has 11 to install app's (internal memory, like the s1 had 1.9 gb to store apps and 5.6 to store files)?
according to the above, i would say that internal memory is used for apps and the external(SD) for music/video or non app.
im wondering if you can store maps for navigation there as they do take quite a bit of space.
Apollondor said:
as
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is this some sort of code ?
I've been using my SGS3 for 3 days now. 16GB internal +32GB external SD
So far:
- device memory total space 11.35GB & available 1.65GB (downloaded my Google Play Music collection, went straight to internal memory, no choice)
- SD card total space 29.71GB & available 29.71GB
What I hope is happening:
the data is being distributed somehow between both cards and it just doesn't show, OR as someone stated above, the internal storage has 11GB dedicated to apps & music and what-not, and once that is used up, any additions will be moved to the external SD
What I think will happen:
"You have run out of memory, please remove some files or apps to proceed", in a typical Microsoft moment...
I was prompted only once to install stuff on the external SD; those were additional files (250MB) that needed to be downloaded for a game I had just installed. Of course I chose external SD but it doesn't look like it worked...
Some positive indications
Camera app allows me to chose the default save location. I chose external SD and now I see it has created the DCIM folder there with some pics.
My internal card is almost full. I've been making a few little downloads. Using the default file explorer I checked the external card folder, and found another new folder called Downloads with my recent stuff in there.
As explained by Chainfire (the way I understood it), the combined space from both cards works together as one.
Dropbox as well it would seem. Not that I tried that.
This isn't an issue for me. I already have a 64gb card with all my music stored on it. I will most likely never download anymore. The rest of the memory card will be for roms kernels themes and backups and an occasional movie.
_______________
Just Flash It !!!
vasp3690 said:
or for MP3 and movies only?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Spot on
Storage is shared for everything from Honeycomb onwards. Many ICS phones don't have sd cards.
EDIT: Oh I see the problem, many apps aren't being given permission to write to the primary external flash storage (16/32/64Gb etc...) and are then failing. That sounds like a bug to me. They've got to be able to write their app data somewhere.
Alright, this is not working properly.
I filled up my internal SD with my Google Play music. Downloaded an app which requires additional data, and it wouldn't download it until I freed up space, even though my external SD is practically untouched.
Freed up just the right amount of space by removing some of my music and I was able to download the extra data for the app.
Went back to Google Play Music to see if a Google product would know how to manage between both cards. I re-check all the music I deleted to download it again, and it tells me my memory is full...
Not happy
If you cannot even save apps on the internal SD card, then that is def. a problem and a bug. But i would doubt that is happening, otherwise all the already pre-installed software would have taken all the space.
Hey guys,
i think compared to my previous mobilephones the storage management of the atrix 4g is pretty confusing or i just didnt understand its behaviour.
how are you managing your files? i tried to safe all my music to my 16gb sd card, so i have had the internal storage left for all my apps and everything i needed additionally. but since some of those hd games (or other apps, camera apps for example) wont let you choose wether you want to safe those bytes to your internal storage or to the external one, this wont do anymore. well, i dont know, maybe im just stupid, but ive got the feeling im doing something wrong because i never really know where the files im looking for are. :silly:
im on epinters cm10 with the oc1300 kernel. btw, is there anybody playing nfs most wanted smoothly without hwa?
thanks for paying me attention
I was keeping the same layout. All the music on the external sdcard and all the other stuff on the internal. I moved all my music to Google Music now so now I only use the insternal sdcard.
ALl the apps should point to the internal sdcard/emmc as it is the default for our phone. Although this can be switches based on each rom.There are some hacks that you can do to have more usage in your external sdcard. Like App2sd.
Ever since first phones with huge internal storage ( >= 8 GB) came out, things with managing user storage started being complicated. Originally, Android phones had DATA storage (for apps) and USER storage (for pics, videos, music, documents, whatever). Phones with large storage brough in another user storage, so now we have DATA, PRIMARY and SECONDARY. The reason the two user storages are not treated equally is exactly because of the first phones - many apps were (and still are) made with the assumption there is only ONE storage. For those apps, the storage you select as PRIMARY will be their only storage. Other apps might be able to make use of both storages, but those are normally quite rare. Bottom line is, the way things are at the moment, it is ultimately up to you to manage your user storage(s), any way you prefer.
Another note: using your external storage as primary so as to leave the internal one for apps makes less sense than you'd think - unless we're talking about games and navigation apps and such, apps already have their dedicated storage (DATA).
ravilov said:
Ever since first phones with huge internal storage ( >= 8 GB) came out, things with managing user storage started being complicated. Originally, Android phones had DATA storage (for apps) and USER storage (for pics, videos, music, documents, whatever). Phones with large storage brough in another user storage, so now we have DATA, PRIMARY and SECONDARY. The reason the two user storages are not treated equally is exactly because of the first phones - many apps were (and still are) made with the assumption there is only ONE storage. For those apps, the storage you select as PRIMARY will be their only storage. Other apps might be able to make use of both storages, but those are normally quite rare. Bottom line is, the way things are at the moment, it is ultimately up to you to manage your user storage(s), any way you prefer.
Another note: using your external storage as primary so as to leave the internal one for apps makes less sense than you'd think - unless we're talking about games and navigation apps and such, apps already have their dedicated storage (DATA).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So the only way to solve my problem, to keep 16gb music at just one storage instead of having to split them into two folders+playing some fancy hd games, to buy another 32gb sd card? too bad
anyway, thanks for your requests, maybe this thread can help other confused people too :good:
I have a sprint Evo 3D, rooted with the SmoothCriminal rom.
The miniscule internal memory drove me crazy, it got to the point where after the ICS update I coudlen't update a SINGLE app because the internal memory always had under 10 megs free, no matter how much I deleted it would eat it up again, so I rooted it, and started re-installing everything.
I even set up a 4GB (Wish I could make it bigger) EXT4 partition to use with Link2SD.
For those that haven't heard of the Humble Indie Bundles, they allow you to purchase a set of apps (usually on Steam, but sometimes they do Android bundles) as a set for a price you decide, with a percentage going to charity.
Anyway, for Android, since these don't use the Google Play store, they are side-loaded from their own app (though they also let you just download the APK directly).
Now, the problem is that none of the games from this bundle seem to install to the SD card. I know that not all apps can be moved there, but if the "Move to SD" option is enabled instead of greyed out, that means they can, right? Also, many of these are large games, some of them 400MB, I am surprised it even defaults to internal instead of SD and would be shocked if they are the kind of apps that cannot be installed to SD considering their size.
Anyway, while Link2SD has no problem linking them to the 4ext partition on the SD card, I am unable to move these to "external" either by the built-in app manager, or the Link2SD app (apps installed using other methods, wheather they are linked or really on internal memory, don't seem to have this issue, such as Apps installed through Google Play whether they were linked to the 4ext partition or installed to the real internal memory). With the App manager it just says "Coulden't move app" (what a helpful error message) while trying from Link2SD gives me the error "INSTALL_FAILED_CONTAINER_ERROR".
Thanks to these massive apps forcing themselves on internal, the 4GB 4ext partition is actually full!
Any ideas what I can do? This is making me pull my hair out.