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[Q] What is USB Storage?

Hi everyone,
My Galaxy Ace Plus is my first Android phone, and since I bought it several months ago I was confused because I found 3 memory locations on my device: the Internal Storage, USB Storage, and the External Memory card that I added.
I can't really understand what the USB Storage is?
In fact I made a factory reset few days ago as the device was freezing a lot, and it asked me whether I want to format the USB storage or not, stating that if I chose to format it I will lose all my music and pictures and other files. So I became more confused because all my media files, ebooks, etc. are placed in the External Memory card! so why it would consume space of both storage locations!!
can anyone explain that please?
Also what will I lose if I formated the USB Storage only? would it improve the device performance anyway?
Thanks!
- Ramy

Internal storage , Usb storage & SD storage
internal storage is the one reserved for system, i.e 1.5 GB on Note, or in another words it is the flash memory of the device. It stores the components of ROM or the ANDROID OS. Applications get installed on this memory.
USB storage is the rest of the original storage on Note (i.e around 9.5 GB). In common language an Internal Memory where all your files are saved by default. This memory is used by most of the applications for storage of their data.
Most of the move2sd apps move apps from internal to SD Storage which means the USB Storage.
external SD Card storage, on the other hand, is the storage which relies on another SD Card put into the phone, e.g....external SD Card.
That's before you put external SD card..
If you put another SD Card in the phone, it will read as external SD Card. In the file system, it is known as external_sd.
Now, the answer to your next question.. Formatting the USB Storage of the phone is simply formatting your internal memory. It has nothing to do with PERFORMANCE. it just makes space available on your device's internal memory. :good:

Thanks a lot!
mht.msr said:
internal storage is the one reserved for system, i.e 1.5 GB on Note, or in another words it is the flash memory of the device. It stores the components of ROM or the ANDROID OS. Applications get installed on this memory.
USB storage is the rest of the original storage on Note (i.e around 9.5 GB). In common language an Internal Memory where all your files are saved by default. This memory is used by most of the applications for storage of their data.
Most of the move2sd apps move apps from internal to SD Storage which means the USB Storage.
external SD Card storage, on the other hand, is the storage which relies on another SD Card put into the phone, e.g....external SD Card.
That's before you put external SD card..
If you put another SD Card in the phone, it will read as external SD Card. In the file system, it is known as external_sd.
Now, the answer to your next question.. Formatting the USB Storage of the phone is simply formatting your internal memory. It has nothing to do with PERFORMANCE. it just makes space available on your device's internal memory. :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! now I got it :good:

swap external sd with emulated drive- help

Hi all,
I am using a XOLO Q700 smartphone and tried all possible efforts using xda developer and other sites to swap internal storage to emulated storage. (not to confuse with internal sd to external sd).
I already tried vold.fstab method for all possible combinations to swap sd in addition to mentioned in so many tutorials.
The main problem is my phone has a emulated drive as internal storage and there is no internal sd for apps seperately. I have also attached screenshots for understanding.
link2sd is working for me but data of applications like sygic cant be moved as data files is placed in root of internal sd and not in /android/data/
so only way is to swap sd
Is there any way to swap sd with emulated storage?? please let me know if its there. thanks in advance

Make all my apps movable

Hello again Android Guru's.
It seems that some apps can't move to SD Card by default and some can. Is there any possibility to change the storage that an app will be installed?
As you might imagine I have already root my phone and switched my ext_sdcard as sdcard (internal storage). My problem is that my apps install to my phone storage and SOME OF THEM can't be moved to my Internal Storage (which my phone reads as SDCARD).
Further details:
Phone: Tipo (Rooted)
Phone Storage: 750MB (where my apps install by default)
Internal Storage: 16GB (former "ext_sdcard)
SD Card : 2,5GB (former internal storage "sdcard")

microzett said:
Hello again Android Guru's.
It seems that some apps can't move to SD Card by default and some can. Is there any possibility to change the storage that an app will be installed?
As you might imagine I have already root my phone and switched my ext_sdcard as sdcard (internal storage). My problem is that my apps install to my phone storage and SOME OF THEM can't be moved to my Internal Storage (which my phone reads as SDCARD).
Further details:
Phone: Tipo (Rooted)
Phone Storage: 750MB (where my apps install by default)
Internal Storage: 16GB (former "ext_sdcard)
SD Card : 2,5GB (former internal storage "sdcard")
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is an app on the market called Link2sd which can force apps to move to the sd card. You need to be careful though, some apps will break if moved completely. The best option if you are not sure is to link them to the sd using this app rather than moving them completely. More info can be found here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.buak.Link2SD
Don't forget to hit thanks if I've helped!

Need Help with a Rooted LG Volt

Ok I have an LG Volt thats running Android Kitkat 4.4.2. it has like 4gb of internakl memory and I have a 32gb SD Card in it thats not being utilized. I rooted it because I read with a rooted phone you can move apps to SD Card and clear out bloatware, and I need to make space on my internal memory. I have 1gig of free space left and a game on my phone (that i actually want) is taking up another gig. I want to move that to my SD card but it only moves the app (which is only taking 3mb) it wont move the app data which is taking 1gig. How do I move that data to my Sd card?
Ive tried titanium backup but that doesnt list a move to Sd Card option. Ive tried link2sd, but link 2 SD card is greyd out and it says second partition not found (do i really need to make multiple partition on an SD card to do that? Why not just use the free space thats on its default partition?) and when I try to move it from my phone to my SD card in that program I get a failure message that says "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 your sd card" and then sometime if I try to link it says something about os emulation.
So what I need is step by step instruction on how to move an app (including its data) from my internal storage to my Sd card on my rooted 4.4.2 lg volt. OR how to upgrade my lg volt from kitkat 4.4.2 to Marshmallow 6.0 without bricking it because I hear Marshmallow allows you to turn your Sd card into internal storage which would give me 32 GB of internal storage instead of 8 thus I can keep all my app in my new "internal storage" and not care. Thank you.

surely someone knows >.>

Search lg volt on android forums. Go to root and there's going to be a various selection of threads. Currently devs are working on CM13 I have it installed on mine and yes my SD card is now internal. CM 13 works perfectly BUT some phones may have a green tint in there camera.
πr²

Need To Resize The "Fake Internal Memory" On SD Memory Card

OK, I don't know the proper terminology but hopefully you can follow my description below.
Samsung Galaxy J3 Emerge (SM-J327P Boost Mobile) Phone
Android v6.0.1
Unmodified, unrooted because no one knows how to root this phone.
Phone has (had) 16GB SD Memory card installed. 8GB is "partitioned" as "Fake Internal Memory", 8GB as "USB Storage Memory". I used up the 8GB Fake Internal Memory. I bought a 32GB SD Card (came preformatted as one 32FAT partition with 64K sector clusters!). I unmounted the 16GB SD Card made copy of the contents to the new 32GB SD Card. Installed the new 32GB SD Card into the phone. Turned the phone on and it worked fine. All the apps stored in Fake Internal Memory work as well as the files on the USB Storage Memory. However the Fake Internal Memory was only 8GB, the same size as it was on the 16GB SD Card! The USB Storage Memory had increased from 8GB to 24GB. The whole reason I got the 32GB SD Card was to increase the size of the Fake Internal Memory not the USB Storage Memory.
So my question is: Is there anyway to increase the size (partition?) of the Fake Internal Memory by stealing some from the USB Storage Memory? Remember the phone can't be rooted.
Note: I removed the working 32GB SD Card (tried both mounted and unmounted) from the phone and put in the computer's USB port but the entire SD Card was one 32FAT partition. So the partition programs I have on the computer wouldn't work on it. Apparently the .android_secure file contains the Fake Internal Memory apps and are not stored in it's own partition.

Nightbreakr said:
OK, I don't know the proper terminology but hopefully you can follow my description below.
Samsung Galaxy J3 Emerge (SM-J327P Boost Mobile) Phone
Android v6.0.1
Unmodified, unrooted because no one knows how to root this phone.
Phone has (had) 16GB SD Memory card installed. 8GB is "partitioned" as "Fake Internal Memory", 8GB as "USB Storage Memory". I used up the 8GB Fake Internal Memory. I bought a 32GB SD Card (came preformatted as one 32FAT partition with 64K sector clusters!). I unmounted the 16GB SD Card made copy of the contents to the new 32GB SD Card. Installed the new 32GB SD Card into the phone. Turned the phone on and it worked fine. All the apps stored in Fake Internal Memory work as well as the files on the USB Storage Memory. However the Fake Internal Memory was only 8GB, the same size as it was on the 16GB SD Card! The USB Storage Memory had increased from 8GB to 24GB. The whole reason I got the 32GB SD Card was to increase the size of the Fake Internal Memory not the USB Storage Memory.
So my question is: Is there anyway to increase the size (partition?) of the Fake Internal Memory by stealing some from the USB Storage Memory? Remember the phone can't be rooted.
Note: I removed the working 32GB SD Card (tried both mounted and unmounted) from the phone and put in the computer's USB port but the entire SD Card was one 32FAT partition. So the partition programs I have on the computer wouldn't work on it. Apparently the .android_secure file contains the Fake Internal Memory apps and are not stored in it's own partition.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it's got 2 partitions on it then any decent partitioning tool should be able to recognise and expand/reduce the size of the partitions.
It's irrelevant what files are stored where as the partitioning program is dealing with blocks of memory not files.
Mini partition tool should be able to deal with this or something like paragon partition manager or Easus partition master.

I don't know how to fix it but here is a root guide: https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/help/guide-painless-root-samsung-j3-emerge-t3573551