There seems to be quite a bit of discussion about this but no real resolution. I've been trying to find a way to mount directories on my external SD card onto the internal /sdcard directories to force apps that only can write to /sdcard internally to actually write to the external card. What a mess. I've tried symbolic links, battled the FUSE mounts, experimented with "mount -o bind" -- on and on. FolderMount claims to do such things, but bricks the phone.
I can do the bind mounts -- and when I look at them with adb they appear to be correct. But the apps continue to write to the internal /sdcard dirs. I've also turned off SuperSu mount namespace separation in testing.
It's a shame that something that really should be so simple is such a PITA. Any new ideas? Thanks!
Why don't you use ADB and partition your SD card as internal storage. Samsung took out the adoptable storage feature for Marshmallow. For the workaround go here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s7/how-to/enable-adoptable-storage-s7-t3333511
I considered that early on. The problem is that I've never seen a reasonable explanation of how "bonded" memory like that is handled. Right now I have a 64GB card split as one exFAT and one ext2 partition (the latter for link2sd, and mostly empty). But at least this lets me have some control over where apps end up. But if I bond ("adaptable") an SD card partition to the internal memory, I (AFAIK) lose that control. Any given app and app's data could end up on faster internal memory or slower external memory, and I wouldn't be able to control it. Also, at this point wiping the phone to do this would be a serious PITA. Am I missing something? Thanks!
Actually, you can partition part of the SD card as internal and part of it can remain external using the ADB method. I have a 64GB card myself, and it works great. I would recommend a high speed one though.
Related
Hi all,
First post as a new Asus Transformer owner:
I seem to be having problems with the MicroSD card, I have a brand new 32GB card, formatted as FAT32, it can be read and written to correctly on my pc.
When inserted into the Transformer I get a "Preparing external storage" message, LOST.DIR is created on the card, and the card is visible as /Removable/MicroSD/.
All good so far but then most apps can't see anything on the card and everything seems to be looking in /mnt/sdcard/ (internal storage) for files.
Examples -
I create a nook folder on the microsd card, then a my documents folder under that and place epub files in there but the nook app can't find files either in /Removable/MicroSD/Nook/MyDocuments or /mnt/sdcard/Nook/MyDocuments
Aldiko book reader - I hit home then sdcard and it displays the contents of /mnt/sdcard with no way to navigate to /Removable/MicroSD
Dropbox places files in /mnt/sdcard not on the MicroSD card
The Music App however is successful in automatically finding music in /Removable/MicroSD/Music
I have tested this with another (8gb) card and the same behavior happens.
Is this normal? if so how do I get the apps to look in (and store files in) the MicroSD card?
I am no expert but I think this is one of the "bugs" that need to be worked on in Android 3.x. It is most likely the reason why the XOOM still has no official microSD support. How are you going to mount the internal memory as /sdcard and in addition use a removable medium, also called /sdcard? Unfortunately, /sdcard is commonly the removable medium so I am curious as to what the solution will be! For now we just have to "suck it up" until someone smart comes up with a work-around
For example, I've got system rom, internal storage, sd card storage, and ext sd card storage. Why don't I just have internal storage and external storage? Can someone explain what each one is "for", and where I should store what (like apps, music, videos, etc.). Thanks ahead of time for any answers that you give, this has been bothering me for a while.
You should store your files on the internal /sdcard or your external /ext_sd micro sd card.
I'm saving music,videos and pictures on my external sd card.
This way i can take the card out of my phone plug it into a new one and have everything there.
I leave the build in card for the apps, kernels, roms, downloads and random other things.
Its mainly just preference.
Because of multiple partitions on the internal sdcard android can use different filesystems and option on each one.
Each filesystem can have advantages in security,scalablity, performance or reliance.
Partitions can be flagged read-only to secure them from involuntary changes.
Thanks for the help, but that leads to another question. I can't move some apps to the other part of my internal storage, or the media area, as the phone calls it, why not? It's just internal storage like the other partition, but the media area has around 12gb of data while the internal storage only has about 2. I just don't want to fill the first partition up because im not able to move apps out of it.
I'm not really sure about that one, but something along the lines off: on the internal 2gb partition android can restrict and controll access for stablity and safety reasons, while if the apps were saved on the 12gb media partition any rouge app could run wild and screw things up for other apps.
Physicly they are probably the same, so with some technical knowledge you could reflash your device and change the partition sizes.
So apparently Samsung makes the skyrocket think that the usb storage is the sd card. Because of this when i tap to move an app to the sd card it moves it from system storage too usb storage. I am pretty much out of storage internally. Has anyone else had this problem or does anyone know how i can solve the problem.
ian1 said:
So apparently Samsung makes the skyrocket think that the usb storage is the sd card. Because of this when i tap to move an app to the sd card it moves it from system storage too usb storage. I am pretty much out of storage internally. Has anyone else had this problem or does anyone know how i can solve the problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do not think that Samsung is unique. An external SD card appears as a directory in the external storage. It is rather easy to use this directory to store music, photos and videos. I have many programs and I am nowhere near tapped out in terms of storage. However, I believe that there are a number of solutions that would allow one to move applications to the external-external SD card.
Ya i was wondering if anyone had heard of a way to do this. I havent found anything yet.
If you are rooted you can probably edit the fstab file to switch the mount points of the internal and external memory. This has been done on other devices and a search should point you to directions to accomplish this.
There are negatives and positives to this approach, so read and understand what yoou are doing and the effects it will have before doing it.
I have over 80 apps installed, including two nav programs with offline maps for the US and have 1.5 GB in the user space for ap installs, 9.4 GB in the internal storage, and 11 GB free on a 32 GB external SD card (music files take up most of the used space).
Thank you!
Using "mount" to bind external sd to internal memory, are there any speed difference
If i was to mount a folder from a class10 64gb micro sdcard to internal memory, mainly to store these oversize obb (game data) files, will there be any problem i should know about. I am assuming that maybe....
1. Class 10 is slower to what ever internal memory phone uses, maybe RAM?
2. It may kill my external sd card fastet if i store frequently access game data files there.
3. Anything elsr?
Sent from my Sony Tablet S using xda premium
I did this a week ago with my htc chacha. I mounted the /data dir to the external sdcard (32gb sandisk Class 10 UHS-1) and I can tell you that it works pretty well. My phone won't boot if I use other than a genuine htc battery. I have a spare chinese replacement battery but it won't boot with it. I can't tell you much about sd card corruption, but I had no problems with it. And about the speed.. well, this one ain't that fast anyway, but it's faster than the internal memory that's sure. I had no issues with games, even ps1 games work pretty well on it. Hope this helps you decide. P.S.: you should give us more info about your phone. Cheers!
Hey there. I have a question regarding "mount -o bind".
I have mounted DCIM folder to extSD.
My problem is, the gallery shows up two folders.
And my question is, how to hide folders in extSD?
Hello all,
It seems that nowadays all vendors decide to go with the approach to have a virtual SD card that uses an emulated filesystem to make us feel happy in case we do not have a real SD card. I honestly do not understand the reasoning behind this so I am reaching out to you to let me know what you think the reason is.
For now I can see the following pros and cons of this approach:
Pros:
Have SD card support in case you do not have a real one and you have an app that requires it.
Cons:
You no longer can move applications to external SD card on most devices (all that I have tried).
The application data (obb) that is essentially the largest thing an app can offer goes directly to the internal SD card and you can not move it to the external SD card.
You are now even restricted by what you can write on the external SD card because if not there is a security issue. That's also a thing that I do not understand that is conveniently not explained and just implemented.
Your CPU cycles are used to process the data yet once more just so that you can have the luxury of an emulated file system.
The fuse filesystem in most devices lacks some basic features like links.
Essentially the internal SD card seems like a Huge hack to me. Why is that? Even just the name gives it all away. "Internal SD card". That is not an SD card. It's not even a separate flash chip. Not even a separate partition on most devices. There is times where this is just a folder in your userdata partition made to look like an SD card by the magic of fuse.
The only reason I could find for this monstrosity is that there is some kind of compatibility issue with some apps in case you do not have an SD card and so that's why they came up with this.
So please let me know what the big idea that I seem to be missing here is as to why this humongous hack is needed. Thanks in advance!
Cheers,
Sakis