Mount external sd - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I am trying to mount an external sd card that is ext4 file system. I am mounting it on a directory of my internal sd card. It seems only root sees this. If I transfer a file to this directory as normal user it gets stored on internal sd. If I run df as normal user I don't see the ext4 mount, but if I su then df, I can see the mount. Basically what I'm trying to accomplish is using my external sd with ext4 instead of exfat.
Also if I insert my 128gb sd into my Linux computer it only shows I think 25gb? If I put it in phone I see 128gb? Do I need a new card reader for my computer?
I download a lot of stuff onto phone and sync with computer, using mtp sometimes crashes, that's why I'd like to use ext4 and just toss my sd into computer and transfer.
I don't know why Android wants to use exfat when ext4 is so much better and native already. Maybe just to keep support for windows?

Related

[Q] How to mount microSD card to /sdcard?

As I was rooting my device, I realized the external microSD card is not the /sdcard and is actually /sdcard2 or /sdcard/ext_sd. I haven't pulled my microSD card to check, but I'm willing to bet its probably blank.
I'd like to have all data saved to my external microSD card versus the internal partitioned memory. Is that possible?
I'm not very familiar with linux. Is it as simple as modifying the vold.fstab so that microsd card is mounted as sdcard? And the internal memory is mounted as /int_sd? Obviously, I'd have to copy all the data from the current /sdcard to /sdcard2 for things to work properly after the edit.
Thanks in advance!

[Q]Winamp WiFi sync to External SD Card

Hey guys!
I've searched through the forum, and Google, but I've not found anything of help
Is there any setting, any hack or customization of any kind, to make Winamp store the WiFi sync songs to a custom folder? It's putting them on the phone right now, but I'd like them on the External SD card.
Thanks for your help!
+1 on this.
Wifi Sync only syncs data to /sdcard/music folder no matter what we do...
In Samsung Galaxy SL (I9003), /sdcard is internal sdcard and /sd (~/external_sd) is external sd.
I tried to create a symlink to ~/external_sd/Music in /sdcard/music using terminal emulator so that /sdcard/music points to ~/external_sd/Music (or /sd/Music)
But it says operation not permitted.
After a bit of research, it was clear why it was not allowing.
Our external sd card is fat32 filesystem and its not possible to create symlinks on that filesystem.
I was thinking why do we need external sd to be fat32, wasnt it just fine to use ext3 or some other linux friendly file system?
And maybe change fstab to mount it as ext3. smthing like that?
Just checking possiblity.

[Q] File system formats

I've been trying to format my 32GB sdcard to a filesystem that can read files over 4GB. Main reason being I use HDMI connection to view 1080p movies on TV.
Anyway, I've tried EXT2, 3, 4, NTFS, exFAT, and all of them come up with the "broken sdcard" message from android when I try to mount the sdcard.
I'm using kernel version 2.6.32.59-MB860-MROM and using the lastest MROM based off CM7. Anyone have any insight on where I can go from here? Thanks.
The whole entire Android system assumes the user storage (internal or external) is formatted as FAT32. This is much harder to change than you think. A simple reformat won't do.
You need to have at least part of your SD card to be FAT32 because many applications are using it to store configuration and data. You can have two partitions on your SD card, but I am not sure if video player will be able to use any partitions other than FAT32.
I found a way to format my external 32GB sdcard to NTFS and still have it mounted on the phone. Pretty easy actually. I'll post it here for those that might be interested:
-Used Paragon Partition Manager 12 on my Windows machine to format my external SD to NTFS
-Atrix wasn't reading the card so I tried a program called Paragon exFAT, NTFS, & HFS+ by Paragon Software. Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/...251bGwsMSwxLDMsImNvbS5wYXJhZ29uLm1vdW50ZXIiXQ..
-Paragon was not able to mount my sdcard automatically as it just gave me an error, so what I did with the rom im using was mount manually to /mnt/sdcard-ext. Should be good to go after this.
Been using it for a few days and everything is working well so far. Only annoying thing is everytime I connect by usb to my comp and enable usb storage I have to manually remount once I disconnect.

help format internal sdcard (24gb) to ext4?

I recently tried decompressing a file that was just under 4gb to the internal sdcard. the decompression stopped at 52% (about 2gb) Think it's a fat32 file sytem with 2gb file limit. . booting to recovery and using ubuntu I can only connect via mtp from the mounts menu. Gparted cannot see the device. I'm thinking gparted does not view mtp as a local block device. any ideas how to format the 24gb internal sdcard to ext4 or reasons why I shouldn't ? thanks.
rp201 said:
I recently tried decompressing a file that was just under 4gb to the internal sdcard. the decompression stopped at 52% (about 2gb) Think it's a fat32 file sytem with 2gb file limit. . booting to recovery and using ubuntu I can only connect via mtp from the mounts menu. Gparted cannot see the device. I'm thinking gparted does not view mtp as a local block device. any ideas how to format the 24gb internal sdcard to ext4 or reasons why I shouldn't ? thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
MTP is a real PITA, imho. I'm pretty sure that GParted would not recognize an MTP or PTP connected device as local block storage; the device handles its own disk management with these protocols.
How were you decompressing the file to the device? It might be better to decompress on your Ubuntu box, then transfer the file through MTP, ADB push, or cloud storage service.
Do you have enough storage available on the destination device to accommodate the decompressed file size? Try this in a terminal on the device:, look at the line for either /sdcard in TWRP or /data in the ROM, respectively.
Code:
df
Have you tried going into either an ADB shell or terminal session on the device to check the file system type?
If you are in TWRP, what is the output of the following in the device terminal?:
Code:
mount | grep /sdcard
Can you still get into a ROM? If you are there, what is the output of the following in an terminal or ADB shell?:
Code:
mount | grep /data
Thanks for responding. I can't say I diddn't think of decompressing on the pc and then transfering but I just felt like moving down the path of converting to ext2 for it's resiliency . as far as space available I had at least 12gb. Im also running multi-rom and I also kinda wanted to see how that was going to work out. The multirom directory contents are not visible from the internal rom they can only be seen from recovery and copied there.
rp201 said:
Thanks for responding. I can't say I diddn't think of decompressing on the pc and then transfering but I just felt like moving down the path of converting to ext2 for it's resiliency . as far as space available I had at least 12gb. Im also running multi-rom and I also kinda wanted to see how that was going to work out. The multirom directory contents are not visible from the internal rom they can only be seen from recovery and copied there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting... EXT2? The only application I have seen that for recently is a dual boot scenario where Win7 and Linux share a common data partition and you want to use something better than FAT or NTFS. EXT4 is journalled and is more the standard of late, for most partitions under Linux.
Not sure Android even supports EXT2 and even if it does, how would you go about formatting an internal sdcard partition to it. I have used Gparted to redo external cards in a card reader, but how would you do the internal partition, especially since it seems to be mounted at /data/media and /data is ext4?
epidenimus said:
Interesting... EXT2? The only application I have seen that for recently is a dual boot scenario where Win7 and Linux share a common data partition and you want to use something better than FAT or NTFS. EXT4 is journalled and is more the standard of late, for most partitions under Linux.
Not sure Android even supports EXT2 and even if it does, how would you go about formatting an internal sdcard partition to it. I have used Gparted to redo external cards in a card reader, but how would you do the internal partition, especially since it seems to be mounted at /data/media and /data is ext4?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2126363
netookska05 said:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2126363
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right.... I am familiar with that...
Internal /sdcard/ is not a physical MicroSD card, nor is it mountable as USB storage media, to my knowledge, just as an MTP/PTP or ADB device through the ROM or TWRP, respectively. That is why I am asking why and how you might go about formatting it to ext2. Not that it's impossible, just don't see why you'd want to do that...
reason for formatting to ext4... (I mistakenly wrote ext2 instead of ext4 on my previous post)
1. to possibly solve file size limitations of 2gb for fat32,
2. ext4 (yes ext4 not ext2) is a journald file system
3. it would give my phone wings as if I poured redbull on it. (not really... I just needed a 3rd reason)
My phone is 32gb. I believe it is 8gb emmc and 24gb sdcard_internal. (I also have an Sdcard_external which is the removable micro sdcard but I'm not asking about that) Doing this ext4 formatting May be more of a hassle with permissions issues when running multiple roms anyways. if it can't be done then no biggie. I was wondering if twrp or philz had the capability
rp201 said:
reason for formatting to ext4... (I mistakenly wrote ext2 instead of ext4 on my previous post)
My phone is 32gb. I believe it is 8gb emmc and 24gb sdcard_internal. (I also have an Sdcard_external which is the removable micro sdcard but I'm not asking about that) Doing this ext4 formatting May be more of a hassle with permissions issues when running multiple roms anyways. if it can't be done then no biggie. I was wondering if twrp or philz had the capability
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ext4 makes far more sense. Not that there isn't a part of me that now wants to figure out how to make it ext2, just for the exercise....
You still didn't answer my original troubleshooting questions though... What happens when you try the df and mount commands I referenced? This may be a moot point after that.
Here u go
Alright, this is telling me that the /data partition, where the internal SD card is mounted, is already ext4. It has 6 GB free.
I am unable to see the filesystem on the external SD card with this output, but it has just 3.5 GB free.
So again, I think you would need to decompress the file on the Ubuntu box, determine its uncompressed file size, then transfer. Depending on the compression ratio, you may be over the 6 GB. Either way, you are cutting very close and not allowing much room for new software or local files.
Can you guys speak in English please
Can I or can I not claim all of the 30 GB of storage
Thnx

External SD card always mounted as read only - no more ideas

4K android media box with AML812 chip. 2 USB ports, 1 USB OTG port and one SD card slot. Android 4.4.2 (KitKat?)
USB drive connected with FAT system is mounted as read/write device, all SD card I have tested were mounted as read only.
At first I wanted to make firefox to download files to SD card. But firefox had no rights to write to SD.
At second I thought that firefox can't write to SD because new privilages system in KitKat. So I found a solution on the web and have added media_rw entries in permission.xml file in WRITE_EXTERNAL_SD section. But it didn't help.
Then I have found out, that SD card is always mounted as read only by default (by terminal and mount command) - i tried 3 different SD cards, no success.
I have checked SD card with fsck_msdos and externally on my desktop PC - SD card had no errors.
I tried to remount SD as read/write with mount -o remount,rw device from terminal and it worked but apparently only apps with root privilages can write to SD. Firefox still can't write to SD.
And if I close terminal the SD returns to read only state.
Don't know what to do, where to find the solution.
In vold.fstab there is only one command with dev_mount, and this command doesn't have read/write or read only flags (checked dev_mount in the web).
There is no fstab.device files on the box, which are common? in KitKat (above android 4.3) so I am not so sure that this is KitKat device.
Please help to unlock SD card write rights.
EDIT: formatting to exFAT, NTFS or FAT32 with 32KB chunk size didn't resolve anything (advice from some android forum). My device doesn't recognize exFAT, and the rest give me read only mount point.
I installed Paragon exFat, NTFS app. It can't mount SD correctly at all. It unmounts mounted SD very good though. It can't check and fix SD because /dev/block/mmcblk0p1 is read-only file system.
The same goes for format - Error 0x1e from mkhfs.
When I try to mount SD with Paragon nothing happens (the mount button is still active, and unmount is inactive), and android memory settings show that SD card has been mounted as 803 MB card, not 16 GB card (14,84 GB exact capacity). Paragon can only unmount SD.
Now I see that I can't even format SD card from android memory settings. When I choose format, it unmounts SD card but then nothing happens. There is no format operation going on.
Really I don't have any more idea.

Categories

Resources