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8gb internal storage solutions

So I got the Moto G 1gb, 8 gigs of internal storage version.
I love this phone so far and I've pretty much set it up how I'd like it, but the 8gb internal storage has turned into an issue.
I got Appmanager III, moved pretty much everything to my 32 gig external, but I still have only like 600 mb to spare on the internal, with well over half of the external left over.
Is there another app that will allow me to move all the app data left over in the internal over to the external?
If that's not enough, I'd also be interested in knowing if there's any way I can force the system to use the external as the main storage for all the OS functions. I already used adb to set all the default downloads to the external.
Finally, I'd like to know if custom ROMs like cyanogenmod would use up less storage than the stock OS, or at least let me use more of my internal by reducing the amount of bloatware (why can i NOT get rid of google movies or google+??? come ON)
I'm rooted and have installed twrp so both root and custom recovery solutions are welcome. Thanks for your time and help!

If it were me, I'd make a Nandroid with TWRP on the external as well as a backup with Titanium and then use Titanium to delete unwanted bloatware. Wouldn't that help?
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

bruce7373 said:
If it were me, I'd make a Nandroid with TWRP on the external as well as a backup with Titanium and then use Titanium to delete unwanted bloatware. Wouldn't that help?
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
System apps, ie those that come with the phone such as google movies, live in the system partition. If they are updated then the update lives in the internal storage. Uninstalling via titanium will of course free up both system and internal storage space.
However just disabling them will be sufficient, this will remove all updates from internal storage and just leave the apk in the system partition. Its the internal storage that you want to be less full as this is where user apps, pictures etc all reside (assuming you haven't yet moved them to an SD card).
Disabling is less drastic than uninstalling and is maybe the preferred option in case you otherwise uninstall something that breaks your phone.

I've tried that, but for whatever reason if I disable, say, google play movie or whatever, my phone eventually ends up redownloading them? It's really odd and honestly pretty annoying.
I'd still like to know if there's any way to keep all the main app data on the external or something though. Are Cyanogenmod ROMs installers smaller? I don't need THAT much more space to feel comfortable, having 1 gigabyte would be ok with me. I just don't like having like 600 MB free at most...
EDIT: If I can just move the app data for a few games and Google Chrome, that should fix it, too. Those seem to be the real space hogs, so if I can move those I should be able to handle everything else
EDIT EDIT: Would an app like Link2SD work for this phone or has no one tested that yet?

Hi Tazzypilar, Yes Link2Sd wil work wery well. All wat you have to do is to install MiniTool Partition Wizzard Professional on your PC, then put your micro SD card in the cardreader on your desktop or laptop to make two partitions on your SdMicro card (card must be class 10). Start program MiniTool Partition Wizzard Professional and look for your microSD card on the list with disks. Right click on your removable disk (micro sd card) and you can resize your first Fat32 partition and make it smaller for at least 2 GB. After that you will have 2 GB unused space behind this Fat32 partition. Now click with right mouse on this unused space and choose „Create“ new partition and make it ext4 file system partition. You will be prompt „Are you sure that you want to make ext4 partiton because Windows can't see it ?“ and answare „Yes“ . So, one partition will be Fat32 and you can make it as big as you like depending on the size of your MicroSd card and second should be at least 2GB (or greater - also may be smaller, it's up to you) ext4 partition and there you will move your apps from the internal phone memory.
That's all, after that you have to install Link2Sd from playstore and link apps you like to move to your SdCard. Succes ! If you have more questions jut ask !
Greetz !
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium

Where did my storage go?
Just asked my self a very similar questions
I attachment a screen shot
From the 8gb 3,5 go to Android system
So 4,5gb for internal I thought., but no.
I installed about 2gb of apps and 200mb cache.
Ah I forgot to mention that this is a fresh install after factory reset and still I am missing alot of storage see screen shot
Is this normal? I am on stock not rooted with some apps already moved to SD Any ideas?

Upgrade to android M, use external SD as internal card
Why not upgrade to android M and use phone's feature to use external card as internal card.

sandipkc7 said:
Why not upgrade to android M and use phone's feature to use external card as internal card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am glad you brought this up, guess what I am already on M and using the SD card feature, unfortunately I can only a small portion of the apps move to the SD card the rest stays internal

Look for posts on link2sd, it needs to be a fast card and then formatted using both std FAT and ext (linux) partitions. Then you can move almost everything.
Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

Though Im using LG H502F. Correct me if Im wrong but I think thats because the internal storage is emulated. Ive been using Link2SD and it works well. I can link app data and external data to the mounted partition. The only difference I noticed was... When opening the app it takes a couple of second or more compared to the unlinked apps... Anyways. Try to check if your storage is emulated. If it is, then that 3GB available space for a stock rom is as good as it gets. Mine have 8GB rom but the end user is only 3GB something.
Sent from my LG-H502 using XDA-Developers mobile app

merlin2380 said:
I am glad you brought this up, guess what I am already on M and using the SD card feature, unfortunately I can only a small portion of the apps move to the SD card the rest stays internal
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In android M you can "transform" your sd card in internal memory (in Settings>Storage>SdCard>Definitions). If you have a fast 32 Gb card, you can format it to internal and it is as you have 32 Gb internal memory, but your sdcard must "live" with your phone (can't be used as sdcard in other device).
I think that is what @sandipkc7 means.

I did that not very usefull

merlin2380 said:
I did that not very usefull
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tried internal storage option in marshmallow and at first i taught it was rubbish, but i kinda left sdcard alone and install another ROM.
So stuff on my internal storage was nowhere to be found. I installed latest recovery (TWRP) Flashed another rom and this is where things started to get interesting.
When i first converted sdcard to use as internal storage my phone was still eating up the internal memory 8GB on the phone.
Now however android system decided to do away with internal 8GB memory and use sdcard as a main storage. my photos are stored there and all data i noticed that almost everything is installed on sdcard now. so my storage is not vanishing away. I have about 1.7GB used on there.
There are some apps that can be moved manually to sdcard storage (converted to internal) - for example some of the system apps and most of google apps stay in phones memory not on sdcard and they can't be moved manually.
So my advise is covert your card to internal memory and then do factory reset or install another ROM.
Option 2 as mentioned above in posts is to use app called Link2SD - it is worth to opt for paid version which gives you more options of what to copy to 2nd partiton of your sdcard.
i have amazon fire 7 (£50 tablet) setup with option 2 - same storage 8GB. It works well. due to lack of marshmallow for this device i cannot use internal sd as an option. I have 2GB used there and rest sits on sdcard. i have installed few resource (storage) hugging apps - 1.2 GB, 2 GB each (gameloft games) - all moved to sd with link2sd app.
on my moto g 2015 i use android build in solution and it works well. You have to keep in mind that with this solution you can't simply copy files to your computer. Sdcard is encrypted at device level and it can only be access via your phone. However you can use any wifi file transfer app to copy some files over or via phones hotspot (i use droid over wifi or web pc suite to name few).
hope this helped a little

sandipkc7 said:
Why not upgrade to android M and use phone's feature to use external card as internal card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
honestly, its not worth it to use sdcard as internal, despite the micro sd card being fast, it made my phone ridiculously slow..............

marsrolled said:
honestly, its not worth it to use sdcard as internal, despite the micro sd card being fast, it made my phone ridiculously slow..............
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Because of this slow down i did a reset to default settings. This did help and now the phone works much better, just make sure you always have 500MB empty on the internal storage, anything less and tbe phone performance goes down imediatly.
All the talking about this no so vreat sdcardinteral storage feature was too much for my 32 GB samsung evo micro sd card, it died less than 6 months of service. This was already the 2nd from the evo series that hung up on me and let me to dataloss thanks to google drive all was backedup
I will now root the phone and get a custom rom, probaply cm offical

Did you ever find out how to recover that lost 2GB? I have the exact same problem and managed to maybe find the 2GB in the /data folder; however it is sys locked and I'm not ready to root a brand new phone yet.
I have 8 apps installed (not counting google/motorola pre-installed) on my Moto G3 and showing 3.72GB used of 4.53GB available internal. It then shows 1.36 GB used by apps, 1.71 MB by cache. Other 2GB is a mystery?Device storage shows only 16GB used of 37GB availabe due to SD card.

Adopting internal storage results in corrupt storage

I have recently got a Shield Tablet and I have attempted to add a 128GB to the internal storage but every time I go through the adoption process to bring it into internal, it formats it and results in it being corrupted? The sdcard is brand new.
Tablet is on Marshmallow.

HeroXx said:
I have recently got a Shield Tablet and I have attempted to add a 128GB to the internal storage but every time I go through the adoption process to bring it into internal, it formats it and results in it being corrupted? The sdcard is brand new.
Tablet is on Marshmallow.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am having the same issue with the Shield tablet and a 128g sd card. I can use as portable, but trying to adopt as internal storage always returns the "damaged" partition after formatting and starting the moving process. I have tried formatting as ext4 in a PC first as recommended by others to no avail. If anyone is able to get this working please post your fix.

Found the below "Notes" on Nvidia's site. Looks like you'll have to format NTFS on your PC. Some PCs will not allow you that option out of the box, but you can easily change Windows' built-in formatter's options to allow it to format NTFS. The settings are somewhat hidden. To enable it, open up Device Manager and find your micro-SD card, go to the Properties -> Policies tab and then choose "Optimize for performance". Once you've done this, you'll see the NTFS option in the format dialog. Just make sure you "Eject" the card properly, as it seems it's more easily corrupted if not ejected properly.
NOTES:
The ability to move data to SD card is variable for select*apps*and games. Onlyapps*that developers have opted in as moveable to external storage can be moved.
The SHIELD tablet K1 only supports writing to FAT32 and NTFS formatted cards.
64*GB*(or higher) microSD cards – Android does not support the exFAT file system out-of-the-box. Because the standard FAT32 file system does NOT support partitions greater than 32*GB*by default, 64*GB*cards come pre-formatted as exFAT. If you want to use a 64*GB*microSD with the SHIELD tablet K1, it has to be converted to a file system format that is supported by stock Android, which in this case is NTFS. This can be done using a PC.
Android KitKat significantly changes the way applications are allowed to use SD cards. If you use SD Card to store data, please read here for further details."

Hey, I have a similar problem but wanted some opinions.
Received my new K1 and updated to MM and everything is cool. Installed PNY 64GB (10 class) and chose the integrated storage option. The K1 sees the storage and I'm able to move apps to it. My problem is that new apps cannot download due to no storage. The message "whatever app cannot be downloaded. Install a SD CARD......something, something" (sorry, I'm at work).
Will formatting my sd card to FAT32 or NTFS fix this or is there something else wrong? I haven't seen any messages or errors regarding corruption and the sd card is working.
Thanks for any helpful suggestions!

When my 64Gb card was formatted exFat as it came stock, i had the same issue. I'm on LP. I had an almost empty card inserted, other than some mp3 files, and kept getting the message that my storage was full and that i need to delete some apps. I've since formatted it NTFS but i have not checked to see if items are being sent to the external SD. Don't have my tablet with me right now to check, but i wanted to reply to you that you were not alone in seeing the out of room message.
Sent from my LG-E980 using XDA Free mobile app

I had my PNY 64GB formatted with exFAT and it worked ok. I've switched to adopted storage and that worked too. But I saw other glitches with internal storage, such as MTP not seeing all files/folders even after reboot. I think "adopted storage" is buggy in general currently. It's also quite slow. Not impressed.
I prefer the Move to SD of Lollipop and Kitkat.

Do we already have a fix/workaround for this? I have a K1 (with the latest OTA 1.2) and 64GV Samsung Evo, formatting the sd card as adoptive storage still says corrupted. I already tried formatting it as Fat32/NTFS but to no avail.

I also couldn't get adopted storage to work.
The best fix for me is not using adopted storage
Instead I use an app called FolderMount which simply creates a symbolic link (is this the correcton term?) on the device's internal storage for whatever folder/file you like. It integrates moving data and managing it as well making the process as easy as it gets though you can of course do the same thing manually as it's using linux operations to do these things.
After you make the symbolic link when apps look for the data in the usual place on internal storage they "see" it but the data is actually whereever the symbolic link points to ie. on your external SD card.

Not found any real workaround for this it makes the tablet a bit of a dud
Sent from my SHIELD Tablet K1 using XDA-Developers mobile app

diji1 said:
I also couldn't get adopted storage to work.
The best fix for me is not using adopted storage
Instead I use an app called FolderMount which simply creates a symbolic link (is this the correcton term?) on the device's internal storage for whatever folder/file you like. It integrates moving data and managing it as well making the process as easy as it gets though you can of course do the same thing manually as it's using linux operations to do these things.
After you make the symbolic link when apps look for the data in the usual place on internal storage they "see" it but the data is actually whereever the symbolic link points to ie. on your external SD card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've read about the FolderMount app before but I thought that it works only for lollipop. I'll give this a try. Thanks!

NinjaCoool said:
I've read about the FolderMount app before but I thought that it works only for lollipop. I'll give this a try. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Caveats: I actually haven't tried it on Marshmallow since I went back to LP however I cannot see any reason that FolderMount will not work as it's using underlying Linux operations to do all the work. But YMMV.
I like this approach since you can move any folder from internal storage to microSD which makes it very flexible. For example you could move:
/Download
/Images/DCIM
/Android/obb
/Android/data
/where you store recorded videos/
and never worry about internal storage again (until you run out of microSD of course lel)
Or whatever you wanted.

diji1 said:
Caveats: I actually haven't tried it on Marshmallow since I went back to LP however I cannot see any reason that FolderMount will not work as it's using underlying Linux operations to do all the work. But YMMV.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
FolderMount from the Play Store is not working on MM due to security changes.
There is a beta version that fixes it for some devices. Best to read the official thread here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2192122
Sent from my SGH-I337M using XDA Free mobile app

There's a problem with cards 64GB and up. I managed to format as internal storage a 32GB one, had no succes with 64 and 128 ones

I couldn't get portable storage to work on the stock MM RoW LTE rom. It works perfectly fine on all the custom roms I've tried (Bliss, Temasek, RR, etc) but none of those have LTE so for me it's either or if I want to use a MM rom. Otherwise, I'd have to use a LP rom for both to work...

I've hit this issue using the RR rom with my 128gb SD. But then if I keep the card in portable mode, I have those permission issues with my emulators. Has anyone got any suggestions or recommendations?
I've so far tried xInternalSD, SDFix and FolderMount with no success and I don't want to do that solution where I have to adjust the permission xml of all my apps. Its micromanagement I don't want.

I just have to use fat32 to get my 128gb card to work.

gqukyo said:
I just have to use fat32 to get my 128gb card to work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To work as adopted storage or portable storage? Because mine is working in portable mode, just has write to SD permissions issues for any apps not updated to deal with MM's new OTT security requirements on External SD's (which is most apps to be honest).

Adopted storage, I only tried it once but didn't like it so using portable.

gqukyo said:
Adopted storage, I only tried it once but didn't like it so using portable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Being Fat32 initially shouldn't have made a difference, because the card is reformatted to ext4 when its made into adopted storage and the tablet just seems incapable of reading an ext4 encrypted SD Card, so it comes up as corrupted.
What brand and model is your 128gb micro sd? And was it the stock rom you did it on? I'm using a Sandisk Ultra myself, and this definately does not work.

It's been awhile so I don't recall all the things I've tried nor the roms. All I know is I got it to it to work once. Think I have a SanDisk something. Just wasn't worth it in the end to me. If you're trying to get it to work, doesn't hurt to try. Stranger things have worked to fix issues in android.

Get data from sd card fromatted as internal(Android 6 Marshmallow)

I have a micro sd card 32gb Transcend which I use as android internal memory and was working for one year.
Yesterday suddenly stopped working and my Motorola moto g(3rd) device not recognizing it anymore.
When i insert this card and starting my device it shows that it "checking" it for 2 minutes and then it shows "no card".
I would like to get my data from this card(photos and videos) is there a way?
I have a second moto g device to which when i insert this card it shows "cannot read card" and asks format "as internal" or "as storage"?
If i choose "as storage" i will lose my data?
Please move this post to the appropriate thread.
thanks for helping

The card was formatted as internal before it was stopped being recognized. So the card is tied to that phone and is encrypted. No matter which of the options (adoptable or portable) you choose, the second Moto G (or any other marshmallow phone) will format it first deleting all the data. I am not sure if you can recover your personal data though, sorry.
Broadcasted from Zeta Reticuli

Welcome to the joys of adopted storage... It puts incredible amounts of read/write cycles on the card, causing "early" failure. Really this is not early failure, sd cards have limited writing capabilities and using adopted storage does this causing failure.
When you use adopted storage, the data is encrypted to that device and there is a decryption token generated that is stored on the device, for whatever reason that encryption token is no longer valid (likely due to a failure of the card) and the data is lost.
Your card can no longer be trusted, I would suggest replacing it.
This is another reason why regular backups of data, both manually and automatic, are essential in devices. I suggest implementing a backup plan in the future.

acejavelin said:
Welcome to the joys of adopted storage... It puts incredible amounts of read/write cycles on the card, causing "early" failure. Really this is not early failure, sd cards have limited writing capabilities and using adopted storage does this causing failure.
When you use adopted storage, the data is encrypted to that device and there is a decryption token generated that is stored on the device, for whatever reason that encryption token is no longer valid (likely due to a failure of the card) and the data is lost.
Your card can no longer be trusted, I would suggest replacing it.
This is another reason why regular backups of data, both manually and automatic, are essential in devices. I suggest implementing a backup plan in the future.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is there any application that can get this "decryption token" from device and read the sd card?

makis_g3 said:
Is there any application that can get this "decryption token" from device and read the sd card?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope. The purpose of encryption token is to prevent the use of card in other systems. It will take a great deal of hacking to get the token and put it into another phone, that too if it's possible at all. The token is randomly generated AFAIK and is not supposed to be used between different devices.
Broadcasted from Zeta Reticuli

makis_g3 said:
Is there any application that can get this "decryption token" from device and read the sd card?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not really... IF (and that is a big if) the data is intact AND you are rooted already, the token can be retrieved via an ADB superuser shell, then you need to have a modern Linux installation that has a microSD card reader and you need a fair understanding of using the command line and mounting an encrypted file system manually. The big if here is if the file system is not corrupted, but if it wasn't corrupted then the phone would be able to use it. Also, if you are not already rooted (actually, your bootloader unlocked) then the process will wipe the device including the decryption token.
http://nelenkov.blogspot.com/2015/06/decrypting-android-m-adopted-storage.html

If I unistall from my device applications that used to be in sd card, is there any chance for sd card to work again?
Thanks for your replies

makis_g3 said:
If I unistall from my device applications that used to be in sd card, is there any chance for sd card to work again?
Thanks for your replies
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No... If it can't read the card it can't use it. The fact it's checking for so long says it can do something with the card, but that operation if failing. If you are already rooted there maybe some options of manually doing an fsck but other than that the best you can hope for is to reformat the card in another device and salvage the media for non-critical usage as standard storage, but the data is lost
You could try rebooting several times, you might get lucky and it will mount by chance, but don't much hope in it.

My GF has a Moto G3 2015 (1GB RAM, 8GB storage) which I had configured with a 32GB SD-card as adoptable storage. After this month's OTA, the SD-card is no longer recognized and there seems no way to recover any of the data. It also checks a couple of minutes for the SD-card and then says 'no card'. If I put the card in an adapter and a Windows pc, it says the card is healthy in disk management but it does not show the card in Explorer, I guess due to the formatting and encryption.
This is the second time her phone has issues with adoptable storage. First time the internal storage was full while there was still plenty of room on the SD-card, but this was apparently because I had only configured the SD-card as adoptable storage after 6 months of use, which caused the internal storage to have filled first. I expected adoptable storage to treat the internal storage and SD-card as one, but this is not true. I gave the phone a factory reset and immediately set the SD-card to adoptable storage before installing any apps, this took care of the problem until now.
I would not recommend using this option on any phone. Just buy a phone with enough storage and use the SD-card as external storage which is what I do on my Honor 7. I had told her to wait for the 2GB/16GB version which was going to be released a couple of months later but you know women, once they have their mind on something, they can't wait .

SD card stuck on checking

Hi guys,
I have a samsung sm-t520 which I recently resurrected with lineage os 14.1-20190104-Nightly-n2awifi. I think everything installed correctly, but after I inserted my sd card I put it as an internal storage. Later on I honestly don't know what happened, but the card wasn't being seen by the os. I am getting an sd card checking... I just wiped the system, it recognized the card for a second but after I selected format as portable, I got to where I was in the first place with sd card checking stuck. And nothing happens. I tried formatting the card through pc, but it couldn't (unable to format, I even tried with disk manager). There's nothing on the card, I tried to format in twrp but depending what I do it gives me error 1 after failed formatting. I'm not sure what I can do with it. It's a 64gb card. When I try to change the file type on the sd card twrp just keeps working on it and then it reboots to the os normally. (I'm not sure now if it's not happening randomly, really frustrating)
Help much appreciated.

dziech said:
Hi guys,
I have a samsung sm-t520 which I recently resurrected with lineage os 14.1-20190104-Nightly-n2awifi. I think everything installed correctly, but after I inserted my sd card I put it as an internal storage. Later on I honestly don't know what happened, but the card wasn't being seen by the os. I am getting an sd card checking... I just wiped the system, it recognized the card for a second but after I selected format as portable, I got to where I was in the first place with sd card checking stuck. And nothing happens. I tried formatting the card through pc, but it couldn't (unable to format, I even tried with disk manager). There's nothing on the card, I tried to format in twrp but depending what I do it gives me error 1 after failed formatting. I'm not sure what I can do with it. It's a 64gb card. When I try to change the file type on the sd card twrp just keeps working on it and then it reboots to the os normally. (I'm not sure now if it's not happening randomly, really frustrating)
Help much appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here is a method discovered by another member here to fix a corrupted sdcard that was used as adoptable storage.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/general/help/corrupted-sd-card-adoptable-storage-t3801250
For future reference, adoptable storage has to be reversed before factory resetting or reflashing the device, then you have to go through the adoptable storage setup again.
In my opinion(many others would agree), using adoptable storage or any other similar feature that uses external as internal is not worth the hassle and exposes your important data to corruption very easily. Also, when using adoptable storage, the device will not boit if the sdcard is removed or corrupted. It can even cause the device not function at all.
Sent from my LGL84VL using Tapatalk

Droidriven said:
Here is a method discovered by another member here to fix a corrupted sdcard that was used as adoptable storage.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/general/help/corrupted-sd-card-adoptable-storage-t3801250
For future reference, adoptable storage has to be reversed before factory resetting or reflashing the device, then you have to go through the adoptable storage setup again.
In my opinion(many others would agree), using adoptable storage or any other similar feature that uses external as internal is not worth the hassle and exposes your important data to corruption very easily. Also, when using adoptable storage, the device will not boit if the sdcard is removed or corrupted. It can even cause the device not function at all.
Sent from my LGL84VL using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the information. Well, I have worked with Linux last time maybe 10 years ago so I don't really understand what is happening in this post. Is there a translation available anywhere to windows? ddrescue is available on everything but windows from what I'm seeing - great... Also, is there just a way to reset the card so I can use it in an automated way?

How to prevent Android 11 from using the SD card?

Dear all,
the following problem might be unusual and the opposite of what other people want, but as the title says:
Is it possible to prevent Android 11 (and custom ROMs based on it) from writing to the external SD card? That is, I don't want apps or the O/S itself to store any data there. You now probably are asking yourself whether I have gone totally crazy, putting an external SD card into the phone and not wanting it to be used, so I'll give a bit of background:
I have a Samsung S9 plus Duos (G965F/DS) and have installed a custom recovery (TWRP 3.5.2) and a custom ROM (ArrowOS 11) onto it. Then I have installed SSHelper 13.2 and have put an external SD card into the phone.
I am taking backups very seriously. I don't want to root my phone, but nevertheless want bit-for-bit backups of all partitions or data, respectively. I don't have much data on the phone, but the data and the O/S configuration I *do* have must be regularly backed up no matter what. The backup must *not* be in the cloud. That led me to the following idea for the backup process:
- Boot into TWRP
- Let TWRP make the backup, using the partitions of the internal storage as source, and using the external SD card as destination
- Reboot to system
- Fire up SSHelper
- Copy the backup from the external SD card to a PC, e.g. via WinSCP.
That process works like a charm; I have done it several times.
[ Side note: The SSHelper / WinSCP combo is ingenious. It enables me to transfer data (e.g. backups) between my PC and my phone without involving the cloud and without having to pull out the external SD card all the time. Doing the latter every other day would probably damage the phone or the external SD card quite fast. ]
Now I have only one small problem left: Android itself of course recognizes the external SD card as well and installs a folder structure on it (e.g. Downloads, Movies, Pictures etc.). Although I actually haven't seen files (other than placeholders) in there yet, I have no clue if and under which circumstances apps or the O/S might put important data in these external SD card folders. I have to prevent the latter, because it would render my backup method (backup internal storage completely to external SD card) useless.
Hence the question: Is there a method to tell the O/S and all apps that they may read the external SD card, but under no circumstances must place data there?
Thank you very much in advance for any ideas!
P.S. I have seen many threads where users had problems with the external SD card, e.g. not being able to make apps use it or not being able to see its contents. But I somehow have the opposite problem: Of course, I need to see the external SD card's contents (which is no problem), but I want to prevent normal apps and the O/S from writing something there.

No you can't prevent android from creating default folders on it, but I'm pretty sure you can exclude them from backup.

Thank you very much!
However, excluding these folders from backup wouldn't be wise if Android or an app would have put data in them ...

D9yHyi8Fe3mo1YgM said:
Thank you very much!
However, excluding these folders from backup wouldn't be wise if Android or an app would have put data in them ...
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Then don't exclude the whole Android folder, just some folders inside. Like /obb folder or system apps data inside /data
Or just exclude "LOST" or other cache folders.

D9yHyi8Fe3mo1YgM said:
Dear all
Is it possible to prevent Android 11 (and custom ROMs based on it) from writing to an SD card? That is, I don't want apps or the O/S itself to store any data there.
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Assuming you are speaking of an External SD-card ( Note: As with Android internal storage memory by default is named SD-card ).
As long as you don't use an external SD-card ( completely or partially ) as Adoptable Storage by default neither apps nor OS itself write to it ( store data on it ).

@jwoegerbauer Thank you very much! This what I have experienced, too. I have seen the folders, but no data in them. I am still wondering why it creates those folders at all if it doesn't put data in them.
I eventually have missed it, but I think I have gone through every option of ArrowOS, but didn't find a menu item where I could activate (or inactivate) the external SD card as adoptable storage. Therefore I suspected it would do that automatically, depending on circumstances.
Another mystery (for me) is that (AFAIK) data would go into subfolders of the "Android" folder on the external SD card. But the Android folder is nearly empty, while the rest of the folder structure (Documents, Pictures etc.) is at the root level of the external SD card (i.e. at the same level as the "Android" folder).
P.S. Yes, I was speaking of the external SD card. I'll check if it's still possible to edit my posts and make that clear.
Thank you very much again!

XDHx86 said:
Then don't exclude the whole Android folder, just some folders inside. Like /obb folder or system apps data inside /data
Or just exclude "LOST" or other cache folders.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you very much again!
I should have made myself more clear: My plan is to have all data only in internal storage and to back up internal storage to the external SD card.
When there is normal data (besides these backups) on the external SD card, three problems arise:
1) The normal data on the external SD card takes up space. If I can't control which data Android and the apps put there, the remaining space may not be sufficient for the backups one day.
Every portion of normal data which is on the external SD card counts twice in that sense. First, it increases the backup size by its own size; secondly, it reduces the space which remains for the backups by its own size.
2) I know that I wrote that I will transfer the backups to a PC wirelessly. However, I still want the phone to run normally even after I have removed the external SD card. If Android or the apps put normal data on the external SD card, this is not possible any more.
3) Excluding certain data on the external SD card from backup is problematic and would void the main advantage of my backup strategy:
I really don't need to think about what to exclude or include. I just back up all internal partitions, completely and bit by bit, to the external SD card. If I lose the phone, I can buy another one, flash TWRP onto it, restore those backups, and have the original O/S, apps and all data, and even dm-verify will be no issue.
I have no clue about Android and I am not able (or would be too lazy anyway) to decide which data to include or exclude to achieve the same. So I really would like to avoid that triage.
I believe that some time ago I had found an ugly trick to keep Android and the apps from creating and using those folders. I'll have to check whether I have taken notes about it ...
Thank you very much again!

@D9yHyi8Fe3mo1YgM
To clarify things:
You have to distinguish between portable storage and adoptable storage. Adoptable storage really extends device's internal storage, whereas portable storage does not.
If apps are granted WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE / READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission then they can access the external SD-card, too.

jwoegerbauer said:
You have to distinguish between portable storage and adoptable storage. Adoptable storage really extends device's internal storage, whereas portable storage does not.
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Thank you very much again! I suspected so, but didn't find the setting in the UI of ArrowOS yet. I am nearly sure that I just missed it, and will research again (just out of curiosity, because extending the internal storage to the external SD card is exactly the opposite of what I want).
jwoegerbauer said:
If apps are granted WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE / READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission then they can access the external SD-card, too.
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I see. Thank you very much for the explanation. I'll go through the app permissions and check that. Then only the O/S itself could put data there.
[ Side note: In the meanwhile, I have corrected my posts according to your hint regarding the term "SD card". ]

I don't know if this topic has aged or not, have you found any solution?
I don't want Android system to write files like Android-Podcast-Alarms-Music-Notification into my sd card, I want my sd card to be clear and clean
this order system which android uses is very useless and annoying, when will they remove that??!!