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[HOWTO] Set apps to put data on SD card

Phones, especially the low-end kind, have limited internal memory nowadays. Now this didn’t used to be a huge problem, but with some of the latest android games coming in at over 1GB, that limited internal memory soon becomes a restriction, while that 16, 32 or even 64GB microSD card is sitting there barely utilised. Wouldn’t it be great if you could force apps to read their data from your external microSD card rather than from your internal memory? Well… now you can!
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A great tool called DirectoryBind from fellow XDA member slig allows you to bind directories located on your external memory to directories on your internal memory. It basically moves app or game data from you internal memory to your external memory, and then forces those apps or games to read the new external location rather than the now empty internal location.
Installation is as easy as installing the app's apk and providing root or superuser privileges to the app. You can then simply provide the internal and external locations, click to automatically move the data and wait till it completes! Give the app a go by grabbing the latest version from the XDA thread, and feel free to ask me or him any questions via PM or replying.

SammyDroidWiz said:
Phones, especially the low-end kind, have limited internal memory nowadays. Now this didn’t used to be a huge problem, but with some of the latest android games coming in at over 1GB, that limited internal memory soon becomes a restriction, while that 16, 32 or even 64GB microSD card is sitting there barely utilised. Wouldn’t it be great if you could force apps to read their data from your external microSD card rather than from your internal memory? Well… now you can!
A great tool called DirectoryBind from fellow XDA member slig allows you to bind directories located on your external memory to directories on your internal memory. It basically moves app or game data from you internal memory to your external memory, and then forces those apps or games to read the new external location rather than the now empty internal location.
Installation is as easy as installing the app's apk and providing root or superuser privileges to the app. You can then simply provide the internal and external locations, click to automatically move the data and wait till it completes! Give the app a go by grabbing the latest version from the XDA thread, and feel free to ask me or him any questions via PM or replying.
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But this doesn't work on 4.2.2,I'm correct?
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moliverac8 said:
But this doesn't work on 4.2.2,I'm correct?
Enviado desde mi GT-P3110 usando Tapatalk 2
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Click to collapse
correct, you need an app called FolderMount for 4.2.2

Music stored on the External SD Card is removed from playlists at reboot

So I'm getting a really frustrating issue happening with my phone wherein any .mp3 files stored on my external SD card are removed from their playlists whenever I restart my phone. Any music stored on the internal phone storage still remains in the playlists but everything else gets cleared out of them. I've taken a look into the Media Store's SQL logs and found this:
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Basically, I cleared the Media Store's data to reset the Android media database, then I rebooted. On the first reboot, all my playlists displayed perfectly (external SD music AND internal SD music). This produced the 3 log lines above the highlighted line in the image. Then I restarted my phone again and once again all the music on the external SD card was erased from my playlists. Restarting gave the log lines below and including the highlighted line. What seems to be happening is Android is removing any reference to files stored on my external SD from the Media Store database at reboot, then it rescans when the phone starts, but it generates the playlists BEFORE it scans the external SD for media, so it just thinks there's loads of missing media in the playlists and removes any reference to external SD music. Then it scans the external SD for music and finds all my media there.
So in the end I can still access all the music stored on my external SD and my phone sees it just fine, it's just that it's never maintained in any playlists. If anyone has any method of fixing this or any advice at all, I'd really appreciate it! I don't have enough room on my internal SD to store all my music.
Thanks!
(I'm on a Google Play Edition Galaxy S4 running Android 5.1)
EDIT:
After more experimentation, I've made a breakthrough. Ultimately, this all happens cause Android's Media Scanner will scan the internal SD for media at startup. When it finds Playlist files it attempts to import them into the system database but because the SD card takes a while to mount at startup and is temporarily unreadable for a while at boottime, when it tries to follow the path back to the music on the SD card it can't find the music since the SD card is still mounting. Instead of, yknow, doing anything logical like waiting for the SD to mount, it just erases the entries from the playlist. So to get around this stupid flaw in the system, you need to move all your playlists (.m3u/.pla/etc files) from the internal SD to the external SD card.
By moving the playlist files to the SD card, it ensures that they only ever get read once the SD card has finished mounting and the Media Scanner then attempts to scan the external SD for media. At this point it finds the playlists and follows their mp3 file paths back to the finally loaded Music folder on the external SD.

I had that happen to me

SD card problem

I can't get Google play music to play my music from my card reader worked on my Nexus 6p but can't get it to work on my pixel anyone got a idea why it wouldn't work?

I had trouble with a usb flash stick. My Pixel couldn't read the Fat32 partitioned stick wanted to format it to some Android format format, so I did. Then it wouldn't play the mp3s from my phone on my friend's amp that accepts Fat32.
You might have luck if you format the SD card with the Pixel then put the files back on it.
I had lots of issues with my Mac Pro connecting to Pixel as MTP or PTP. I hope for bug fixes and performance improvement in 7.1.1
:Alwayshopingforfixesandimprovement:
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I've just plugged a couple of FAT32 USB thumb driver into my Pixel via a USB C to USB 3.0 adaptor (which Choetech kindly sent me to review), and they worked absolutely fine. Wanted to format an NTFS formatted drive, but that was to be expected.

I'm trying to back up photos from my camera, and I can't get my 64gb SD card to work. It's formatted as exFAT since that is standard for SDXC cards. A smaller FAT32 SD card works most of the time if I tap the right settings after I plug it in.
I am using the included OTG dongle, and I tried a couple different SD card readers. All the combinations of cards and readers work on my computer.
I was able to get it to work using Solid Explorer and the Solid Explorer USB OTG Plugin, but the transfer speed was like 48kb/sec, and it was going to take 300 hours to back up the photos on my SD card at that rate. It's worth a try, and you can get a refund for the plugin if it's extremely slow for you too.

.. and here we see why many phone manufacturers are opt'n not to include removeable storage, even without an sd card, people have issues with their sd card.
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clockcycle said:
.. and here we see why many phone manufacturers are opt'n not to include removeable storage, even without an sd card, people have issues with their sd card.
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There may be reasons not to have internal SD storage, like profit, performance, and maintaining control of the file structure. But that's not a good reason not to have external storage work. For example, many laptops now come with proprietary or soldered internal SSDs and no way to add internal storage. But you would definitely expect to be able to use SD cards with them, for example to get photos off your camera. It seemed to work most of the time for phones that had microSD slots, so there's no reason why it shouldn't work now.
Finally, when the iPad came out, being able to edit photos from your camera was a selling point. I would expect that to work on the latest Android phones 6 years later.

Splitting SD card for internal and general storage?

Hi,
I have Moto 4G Plus, with latest Android. It has 16Gb internal memory which is not enough.
I bought good samsung SD card for 128Gb and now I have a choice
1) Use it as general purpose storage. Pros: Can copy movies, audio easily Cons: Cannot move apps, still not enough space,
2) Use it as internal storage. Opposite as 1.
Is it possible to split 128Gb, sd card and use 20 Gb as internal storage and the rest as general purpose SD card?
What would be the best strategy here? If I make it as internal storage, then moving and managing audiobooks, movies and music would be quite hard (maybe there is a better way)?
Also, I would prefer not to root my android.
Many thanks for all advices in advance.

SiTox said:
Hi,
I have Moto 4G Plus, with latest Android. It has 16Gb internal memory which is not enough.
I bought good samsung SD card for 128Gb and now I have a choice
1) Use it as general purpose storage. Pros: Can copy movies, audio easily Cons: Cannot move apps, still not enough space,
2) Use it as internal storage. Opposite as 1.
Is it possible to split 128Gb, sd card and use 20 Gb as internal storage and the rest as general purpose SD card?
What would be the best strategy here? If I make it as internal storage, then moving and managing audiobooks, movies and music would be quite hard (maybe there is a better way)?
Also, I would prefer not to root my android.
Many thanks for all advices in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can do it using ADB shell (without root) or a terminal emulator (if you have root):
http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/145457/how-to-split-adopted-storage
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DodoGTA said:
You can do it using ADB shell (without root) or a terminal emulator (if you have root):
http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/145457/how-to-split-adopted-storage
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Thank you! It seems it worked! Only thing that it's showing unmounted sd card. But I guess I can live with it.
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SD installed as internal storage, internal storage full, SD nearly empty, WTF?

I installed a 128gb MicroSD card in my Shield tablet and thought everything was setup, it formatted and encrypted the card to my tablet and when using a file manager app it shows one big honking storage drive, however when I go through settings I can see that my microSD card is barely touched and the internal drive is full, so full that I can't install anything else unless I delete something.
WTF is the point of having the microSD setup as internal storage if it doesn't share the install load?
Now I am trying to migrate data to the microSD card and I get the error that there is not enough storage space.
What can I do to fix this? :crying:
Screenshot:
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P.S. as an aside, could this be happening because the microSD card is a fake?
I don't think it is, but can't figure out why I am having this issue
I should add, I purchased this microSD
Lexar High-Performance microSDXC 633x 128GB UHS-I Card

Please XDA, you're my only hope

I don't think your SD is set up as adoptable storage yet. When it is it should look something like this:
This SD is set up as adoptable plus removable though, usually you will only see the adoptable part of it. As I will never fill the entire SD with "internal" content this way was better for me :good:

Interesting, begs the question, how did you set that up?
I just looked through my options, im not seeing it

Just looked it up, i followed those steps, my card has been formatted as internal and i moved data to new storage

Just formatted the card on my PC (the long way), then formatted as portable on tablet, restart, then format as internal, restart, then move data, and nothing has changed.
I am using android 7.

Not sure if you resolved this, but if you select the SD card the screen will switch. The 3 dots in the top right corner, then select migrate data. All the apps that can be moved will be moved.