Database Info

Issues with sdcard vs _EXTERNALSD

I know that LG chose to have this stupid method of utilizing there internal memory and naming it (sdcard) and then making our ACTUAL sdcards (_ExternalSD), but I'm getting super annoyed at the issues that are occurring due to this ridiculous method of partitioning.
Main Issues:
> Apps not looking at the correct place
> ROM manager only able to access ACTUAL sdcard but things are put in "sdcard" not _EXTERNALSD
> Files don't transfer between the two places (sdcard v _EXTERNALSD)
This is just a big cluster F#$*.
Does anyone know if there is a way to partition the "sdcard" internal phone memory and make the ACTUAL sdcard used the way it is on other phones?

I found a temporary solution. If you go into X app, X being whichever app uses storage or the ACTUAL sdcard, you can switch the storage to sdcard instead of phone.
Apps that have option:
> Browser (stock)
> Titanium Backup
> Camera App (stock)

I thought it was just me.. but i hate this implementation. This is my first phone having built in storage and I actually thought that was the way it was supposed to work.. and thought it was pretty lame. So when I switched to a CM7 rom.. i was totally thrown. LOL. but I agree. the whole "_External..." thing is lame..
DOPE phone otherwise tho.

Not a big deal for me
Sent from my LG-P999 using Tapatalk

It really is highly annoying. Especially since I am coming from an HTC Inc.
I don't know what genius thought this was a good idea.

I agree and also think its cause some of the issues when loading rom's back and forth with CWM

As you can see from my sig, I've been almost exclusively HTC and this was a super weird thing for me to get used to. I'll flash CM7 once it's RC or stable, just because of this.

hekticpr21 said:
As you can see from my sig, I've been almost exclusively HTC and this was a super weird thing for me to get used to. I'll flash CM7 once it's RC or stable, just because of this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ditto.. i've always love htc hardware man. quality stuff. I came off of a G2 and bought this thinking it would be a big step up (you know.. dual cores n all).. it's an incremental update with some drawbacks. don't get me wrong.. i like the g2x.. but it has some flaws. meh. I'm here now... nothing I can do about it.. cuz i'm certainly NOT going to sell it to go back to the g2 just for netflix when the future of smartphones is clearly headed the g2x direction.

I also agree...it isn't a deal breaker, but it certainly is a strange approach.

I can only assume they wanted the internal storage to be the "main" and any external just to be extra space that the phone wasn't dependent on.

the GOOD thing about it is that is doesn't wipe when you format the phone.. the bad thing is... you can't get to it in CWM

I haven't fought with CWM, but how is this different than other Android phones?
My G1 had nothing, so no issue. But, the Vibrant did essentially the same thing - it had a different naming structure, but the effect was the same.
-bZj

down8 said:
I haven't fought with CWM, but how is this different than other Android phones?
My G1 had nothing, so no issue. But, the Vibrant did essentially the same thing - it had a different naming structure, but the effect was the same.
-bZj
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On my HTC Inc., they were completely separate. The external SD card's path was not through the internal. When you downloaded an app., all files for that app. went on the external SD card and not on the internal. It left the internal clean for music, photos and videos.

has anyone figured out an appropriate method of sorting this out,
i have a few apps which rely on content that is stored on my actual sd card about 10gb of content, but the internal memory takes the /sdcard ,, while the sd card is /sdcard/ext this is so aggravating, are there any customs build which target this?

I am having issues with this as well. When I boot into CWM to flash a kernel for example CWM only sees what is on the External SD not the internal so I have to transfer kernels that I have downloaded on the phone to my extern SD. The only problem is every time I try and copy and paste something from sdcard to External SD Astro tells me there was a ' move error' and I am unable to move anything....
anyone have this problem?

Make sure you are copying and not cutting (moving). Android doesn't like to move things between file systems.

[poll]Do you want A2SD (apps2sd)?

Figured it would be good to see how much interest there is in it so maybe a dev will see the point of taking it on.....

Whether I personally use enough apps to fill up internal memory or not, A2EXT is a nice option to have and I miss it. I remember in the past, when implented properly, I had apps on ext and when I would install a rom the apps I had on ext would already be waiting for me on first boot rather than having to wait for them to redownload from the market or restore from Titanium. My vote is yes, if a dev is willing to spend some time to bring that feature to us it can only enrich our experience and would be welcome.
Sent from my myTouch_4G_Slide using xda premium

while we are wishing
Id prefer a data2ext that also takes none vital system app files and places them on a partition in the sd card, and ability to make the extension around 2 or 4 gigs, for those of us with 32 gig sdcards that can afford the lost space. with dual mount sd card function should never have to worry about removing or mounting the sd card to where its unreadable to the system. thats my vote

I've never really used A2SD even with my G1, however, having all my apps on a fresh install does seem like a nice feature. Personally, the internal memory is more than enough for me.
I guess its more of a nuisance than anything though (regarding installing apps on fresh boots).

Yes.
1) Make easier backups with A2EXT.
2) A2EXT loads faster than the laggy A2FAT.
3) You can always resize the partitions via Gparted.
4) Unlocks the full potential of Android devices.
Anyone who has an argument against A2EXT should stick with the iPhone.

Absolutely A2EXT,Data2EXT is very nice. being able to have all the apps and data ready to go for the same 15-40 apps with data i use on every rom.
depending on which rom im using equals more or less, but that would make things alot faster.
but its still fun individually installing each one.
Ive had this phone for a couple months now and have been doing more reading and research and have just begun to flash all the roms. having a few of them now, it would be nice to have A2EXT,DATA2EXT.
I thank everyone for their hard work and have a great day!! (baby cries gotta run)

sorry for the newbish question, but in Settings->Applications->Manage Applications, what does the "Move to SD Card" option do? Is that only to move the app's data to the SD Card? I've never used it before.

mat_oli said:
sorry for the newbish question, but in Settings->Applications->Manage Applications, what does the "Move to SD Card" option do? Is that only to move the app's data to the SD Card? I've never used it before.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cyanogen explains it best. A2SD is where you move it to a part of the SD card formatted to EXT format. What Google calls "A2SD" is the result of a symlink-at-best feature that forces a placeholder for each app on the phone's internal memory with the added drawback that (unlike the real A2SD), when mounted to the hard drive, the apps on the Fat partition are unusable.

There was actually a "no" vote? What does it matter to the people who don't want it?

[email protected] said:
Absolutely A2EXT,Data2EXT is very nice. being able to have all the apps and data ready to go for the same 15-40 apps with data i use on every rom.
depending on which rom im using equals more or less, but that would make things alot faster.
but its still fun individually installing each one.
Ive had this phone for a couple months now and have been doing more reading and research and have just begun to flash all the roms. having a few of them now, it would be nice to have A2EXT,DATA2EXT.
I thank everyone for their hard work and have a great day!! (baby cries gotta run)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No rom I've flashed has wiped /data.

certainly not a top priority but why not?

verne2k said:
certainly not a top priority but why not?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is what I'm thinking.

Same here
Sent from my Senseless Doubleshot using xda premium

I'm surprised people actually care enough to vote "no." If you don't want A2EXT, let the grown-ups who know how to set it up partition their own SD cards and run the apps off of the EXT partition.

Low internal storage (surprise!)

So I've spent the past day re-searching all over these forums and on the internet trying to find a way to get past the low internal storage issue. From what I've read, I read that it is able to install your applications on your SD, which is what I do. However my internal storage still fills up somehow. So I assumed this is the application's data that cannot be moved from internal to SD.
However, further reading has brought me to partitioning and I tried installing several different ROMs on my Chacha, then using CWN Recovery I partitioned my SD which I thought would result in being able to move applications AND the data completely to the SD partition. However, using Link2SD or App2SD and even Darktremor, my internal memory still keeps filling up.
Am I doing something wrong? Or if all this fails, is there anyway to completely omit the use of the internal storage and run everything from my SD?
The fact I can only install like 6 applications is driving me up the wall. Thank you.

Use SuperOSR with Darktremor.
The only way of getting space back with the stock ROM is by resetting your phone to factory data. Otherwise, use CWM to clear the dalvik-cache when needed.

Hi there.
I found it very frustrating to run quickly out of storage as well.
Since a few weeks I use TitaniumBackup on this application rocks! It allows to move any application and its data to the SD. It even allows to integrate the updates into the ROM. The application is not free but cost only about 50HKD (abt 5EUR) and considering the great job it does it is more than worth it!
Hope this can help.
BR

Really? Titanium Backup does that? Wow, fascinating.

[Q] Recovering Nandroid backup from LOST.DIR

I recently lost a lot of the data on my external SD card after restoring a CWM 6 backup from the external card. Several folders have had the first letter of their name replaced with μ (mu), the rest capitalized, and contents emptied, others are simply missing. For example "μOWNLOAD." Sadly my clockworkmod folder has become an empty "µLOCKW~1," and I had 3 backups included, most importantly my stock root backup.
I noticed that my LOST.DIR folder had 259 new random number files and is nearly 4 GB, suggesting that the files are stuck in there, but I have no idea how to figure out what is what or even if it is possible to save any of them. I tried the suggestion posted here, but nothing in the clockwork folder was found. I can pick out what I think are the 3 pairs of "system.ext4.tar.a" and "data.ext4.tar.a" files based on them being several megabytes larger than everything else, but I have no idea how to separate them or how to pick out the right "boot.img", "recovery.img", and "cache.ext4.tar.a." I'm assuming that I don't need "cache.ext4.tar,"data.ext4.tar," and "system.ext4.tar," because they all show 0 bytes in the new backup that I made on the internal card.
Does anyone have any ideas on how I might be able to save the backup?
EDIT: Also is it "safer" to keep important things on my internal or external card? I kept all of my backups on the external card specifically to avoid something like this happening during a flash or at some other time, but googling tell me that several people have had seemingly random issues with SD cards and the S3.

From my experience everything in the lost. Dir gets its file extension stripped. I had this happen to my music folder and I had to change all the files to mp3. It may be more of a pain than its worth to change every file back. And because there not all the same type who knows what file is suppose to be what
I would move any data off and reformat the card
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium

I had everything of import other than nandroids backed up offsite so the remaining data doesn't matter, and I expect that everything is gone, but no harm in trying.
Also, if you ever need to rename a lot of files at once again, you might want to try File Renamer Basic, it is extremely useful for batch operations like that.

Yea I just used the command line built into windows. I was surprised it had the option to do it. Ever since they stopped basing windows off Dos they got rid of some commands. I thought I was gonna have to get a live version of linux. But if there isn't anything wrong with the current rom I would just make a new backup. Format the card first before you move anything back on it
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium

I was having terrible battery drain when first got the phone, took out my SD-Card and now get nearly 5-6 hours screen on time!
I don't know if it was the SD-Card or the new modem/rpm (I'm still on the OTA ICS one)
but for me I use google play and I keep a copy of all my nandroids on my computer for safe keeping. and keep only the ones I need recently on the internal, and I have plenty of space left, so for me it was better to just keep the SD-Card out, it was making it hard to choose to put on sd-card or internal LOL

Maybe I've been lucky, but coming from the Droid 2 the battery life on this seems amazing (CleanROM), I have had the external card in since I bought it however.
I was mainly worried about stability issues, mainly I was always worried that a factory reset or changing roms would affect the internal card, so it would be safer to keep things on the external card.

I'm sorry if i have mistakes in this text . i'm persian . i don't know english well/
I have a solution for this problem:
I've lost my data twice. first time i thought that it is virus so i format my SD card .
this time I LOST some important data therefore i tried to get them back.
I noticed that LOST.DIR is included my data.
I connect my phone to PC (galaxy s4) then i copied all LOST.DIR files in to my PC.
then i opened one of them with windows photo viewer. ( right click -> open -> choose windows photo viwer) then i saw one of me missing photos (luckly).
however it will take a long time to take back all of your missing photos but still you will get it.
(sorry for mistakes)

[Completed] [Mod] Maximizing relocating internal data to external SD, LG Optimus Fuel L34C KitKat

Can you please help a noob figure out where this post belongs?
I make no pretense to being a developer, and I was very hesitant to join XDA, but these are questions concerning modding which I have not found answers to, despite posting to a number of other Android forums, so I was forced to "raise my sights."
I have an LG Optimus Fuel L34C (KitKat). I am an Android noob but I have a history with Linux, so I know just enough about what goes on behind the KitKat curtain to make me dangerous. So yes, I also care about the journey. And I'm already heavily invested in this quest, so despite my lack of expertise, I'm willing to do the leg work to make it happen.
My one saving grace is I have a backup fetish. And I want to continue to make Nandroid backups even when the L34C's puny internal storage (1790 MB usable) is maxed out (or nearly so). But I don't want to resort to backups to the cloud because 1) it offends my inner geek that I have to rely on someone else for backup support, and 2) as a delusional paranoid, the concept of "the cloud" gives me the willies.
I'm using TWRP Manager (Root) for Nandroid backups now, but TWRP only can write to the internal SD. Which means that once internal storage is about half full, there's no longer enough space remaining for any more Nandroids. And a bare bones installation with just enough additional apps installed to perform the Nandroid already takes up about 700 MB. So there's no chance of any further Nandroid backups after downloading or installing just two or three hundred more MB.
So my primary goal is to be able to write Nandroid backups to the external SD card (or, pipe dream, to write them to USB). If this also allows me to install apps or store other (internal) data on the external card, so much the better.
I just bought a second L34C because the WiFi on the original L34C pooped the bed. So now I have a new and unmodded L34C to experiment on. I had (towel) rooted the old phone, write-enabled the external SD card and installed the TeamWin open recovery image v2.8. And I replaced the OE 4GB external SD card with a 16GB class 4 card, partitioned half in Fat32 and half in Ext3.
The primary obstacle was that I could never get the second partition on the 16GB card to mount, which prevented me even from experimenting with symlinks. I also installed the latest version of Link2SD, but when I tried to use it to move an app that Link2SD labeled as movable, I got this:
!Failure
App2SD is not supported by your device. Because your device has a primary external storage which is emulated from the internal storage. You can link the app in order to move its files to the SD card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dunno why it's blaming Apps2SD unless Link2 is built around Apps2.
Curiously, I installed Aparted, too, and it was able to access (and process) the 2nd partition, even though it wasn't mounted. I've not heard this definitively but I'm led to believe this is down to the L34C's lack of support for init.d. So I downloaded a copy of daishi4u's custom boot image, which includes support for init.d, but the old phone crapped out before I could try it.
So with background in place, and a spanking new L34C in hand, on to the questions.
#1. With the current state of L34C/KitKat development, is what I'm asking even possible? Once the internal SD card has got too crowded for a Nandroid, is there a solution that will allow me to continue making local Nandroid backups? In particular, I'm thinking there might be another Nandroid backup app that I am unaware of that can write its backups to some location other than the internal SD card.
If this already has been accomplished (and is documented online), please just point me to the details and I'll get out of your hair.
2. I picked daishi4u's custom boot image because the reputation of daishi4u's work is known to me, and because it offered init.d support. If you think another boot image is preferable, please enlighten me.
3. Is Link2SD's problem with the L34C truly the emulated storage? I ask because I know developers typically code apps to make a best guess as to the cause of an error, but despite their best efforts, an app still is liable to be exposed to unanticipated conditions, resulting in a problem that might be beyond the scope of their programming to understand and enunciate.
4. Is the lack of init.d support in fact what prevents an L34C mounting additional partitions on the external SD card? Or am I barking up the wrong tree?
5.a. I found a post in another forum that was near three years old stating that the extra partition on an Android external SD card must be no more than 2GB, and preferably just 1GB. If this ever was true, is it still the case for KitKat? And what is the source of the limitation?
5.b. If there is a 2GB partition limit, is there a limit to how many 2GB partitions can be externally mounted? A Nandroid backup of a heavily configured L34C could take up most of 2GB, so it would be especially useful work-around if there were one (additional) partition for the Nandroid and a second (or third, or fourth, ...) for moving apps and random data off the internal SD.
6. Which app(s) would you suggest I try for moving apps/data/folders to the external SD? There are so many available, and I have not been able to find any comparisons/contrasts of their relative merits, so I would appreciate your recommendations to avoid having to resort to the 'shotgun' approach. This is presuming I'm able to get more than one partition on the external SD card to mount.
I've not lost sight of the fact that some of these apps do not require a second partition on the SD card (creating something functionally akin to an iSCSI partition on it?), but I'm not counting on finding a solution in one of them.
Thank you for taking the time to read my long-winded post.

Well personally I don't keep more than one nandroid on my phone but what you may wish to do is transfer them to your pc for safe keeping and not have to worry about it. You could also try inserting your sd card into your pc and manually transferring the nandroids from your pc to your sd card afterwards. It may work.
Now with regards to the sd card write protection issue, I could not locate anything for your device in particular but if you register you can ask your question here and someone may be able to help you.