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Proper care and feeding of external Micro SD cards

Please forgive me should a similar thread exist somewhere on these forums; if one does, I have yet to find it after several weeks of poring through the various threads.
What I am looking for is some insight and/or suggestions regarding the proper uses of the external microSD card that can be inserted into the Viewsonic G-tablet. When I look at "Settings"-->"SD card & device settings" there appears to be two distinct memory options; 1) An SD card with ~13 GB of available space and 2) Internal storage with ~1.5GB of available space. What I do not see, is my 8GB microSD card that I've inserted into the tablet.
I have ES File Explorer installed and it recognizes SDCARD and SDCARD2 when I explore and navigate to find them. Again, I do not seem to be able to see the 8GB microSD card I've inserted into the tablet.
I know the 8GB microSD card works as I've tested it using my computer.
Once I solve this problem, I'm looking for best practices for how to use the external microSD card to store music and video files in order to keep internal space available as necessary.
Any assistance or insight would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

SDCARD2 is your external micro sdcard

thebadfrog said:
SDCARD2 is your external micro sdcard
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, if that is the case, why is my 8GB microSD card showing us as having ~13 GB of available space?

You have 16gb internal on the tablet. 2gb is reserved for system/apps and 13gb is for additional file storage. Settings does not display your microsd card storage at all.

Here's how I understand Gtab storage
adamczykon said:
Well, if that is the case, why is my 8GB microSD card showing us as having ~13 GB of available space?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The G-tablet is unlike other Android devices in the way it uses and reports internal storage. It allows users access to ~13GB of internal storage and refers to that location as /sdcard. I think that the remaining storage space is partitioned for system files and applications, and is not available through the /sdcard location.
The external microSD card slot is available in a folder named /sdcard2. The card MUST be formatted in FAT32, or it won't read. If you use the ES file manager, you should be able to see it.
Now here's the rub... you can't access /sdcard2 through most apps. Android apps are generally designed to only access /sdcard, (which, on most devices, is the external microSD card).
Now here's the OTHER RUB:
When you plug your g-tab into a PC via usb, it automatically mounts the /sdcard folder. You need special software and tricks to access the /sdcard2 location through USB. I've never done this.
And here's my advice for using the external microSD card:
1. Format it using FAT32
2. Use ES File manager to access it
3. To transfer files to it you can connect to a shared folder over a wireless LAN using ES, or you can use a card reader and transfer directly from your PC
4. MortPlayer is a music player that can access /sdcard2
5. To play video from /sdcard2, browse to your movie file with ES and then select your media player (I use Rockplayer)
6. NEVER feed your /sdcard2 after midnight
Have fun!

I Like how cyanogen rom had Evreything displayed right. Too bad it has too many bugs for my tastes :s

[Q] SD Card mounting internal/external default directory

*I have searched for this and only come up with posts related to the Galaxy S I9000*
if this is not development please advise and move, thanks
I do like and prefer "sdcard' and "sdcard2" method of mounting the internal and external sdcards instead of the emmc and sdcard method.
However
Can the cards mounting be reversed external sdcard be "sdcard" and the internal one be "sdcard2"
and
in doing this making the default directory for storage on the tablet to sdcard be the external card.
in all my current and past roms i have ran so far all my default storage for CWM, apps and downloads have been on the internal card or 'sdcard' and not the external or "sdcard2"
I for one and may be the only one who would prefer my storage for CWM, apps and downloads etc. to be on the external card and leave the internal card for extra storage and backups copied to etc.
if a Con to this method is that the internal card would then be hard to access via pc because the internal sdcard would not mount via usb then I already have a method to access both internal and external cards via pc and usb with two apps from Market so this Con is already solved
any other Pros, Cons or opinions?
would this be able to be changed via update.zip like format in recovery or no?
I am no ways near being a Dev and respect and appreciate what the Devs here are doing, and the moderators for keeping the peace between novices and Devs.
Thanks to all and any input you have on the matter

possible half-solution
my solution (running VEGAN) has been to install Multi Mount SD-Card and instead of using the typical native android mount, you create a widget on a home screen that allows you to mount your drives. In the app's settings, specify which card you want to mount (to further the confusion, the external microSD aka SDCARD2 is actually "SD-Card One" in this particular app), choose if you want it to auto-mount (I chose not to auto-mount), plug the G Tab into the mini-USB cable, click the aforementioned widget and the drive appears on my Windows PC.
The option of mounting both memory banks is available within the app's settings via "SD-Cards One & Two", however when I selected that option, I got a message "You can't mount your SDCards at the same time". I don't know if it's specific to the GTab or VEGAN or whatever, but you can't mount both cards simultaneously through this app. However, if you want need to mount internal memory (known to this app as SD-Card Two), you can just use the native android mount and you're not affected by the app.
As far as installing the apps to the external drive, I don't have any help for you on that one, although I'd love to know if it's possible to be done.

Any way to make the sd card and internal storage have proper labeling?

I've recently rooted and flashed Team EOS nightlies to my Xoom and noticed that my internal storage is /sdcard and my actual sd card is /external1. This is kind of annoying and I'd like to set it back to how it used to be. Downloads through GooManager will be sent to /sdcard, my internal storage, and I will have wasted time booting into recovery trying to flash something as it is not on my card...

In Root Explorer, look in your media folderon the root directory-you should see internal, sdcard and usb folders. You also may see your sdcard listed as external1 elsewhere...there are many roads to Rome...just sayin'.

[Q] Cant mount internet SD?

When I mount my phone, it gives me only my external SD card. But I want to mount my internet SD card. Because I want to flash cm9.
Anyone know how to mount internal SD?

JohnnyP.akaJP said:
When I mount my phone, it gives me only my external SD card. But I want to mount my internal SD card. Because I want to flash cm9.
Anyone know how to mount internal SD?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
MT4GS doesn't have any internal SD Card

Oh...Well My external SD card 1 was a FAT32 system. Couldnt mount on Clockworkmod, I used my SD card2 with FAT system and it worked(But ran out of space when backing up..). Tried using my SDcard1 and it couldnt create a path for nandroid. So basically my SDcard1 is corrupted :\

TWRP won't read External SD Card or /mnt

I've been rooted for a while without any issues, until recently I'm not sure what happened but suddenly TWRP won't show the /mnt folder or be able to access anything on my SD Card, I've tried mounting and selecting the SD Card in TWRP settings but it displays 0MB and won't select it. All I see is my Internal Storage files, which means I can't flash anything easily. I don't know when it happened but it was working about a week ago. I formatted my SD Card as ext4 in TWRP itself and also tried NTFS on Windows.
NOTE: I can view the SD Card in Solid Explorer and on my computer, TWRP is the only one that can't mount/read any SD Card files or even recognize it.
Is there any way I can work around this without formatting the SD Card?