Related
I am an Android newbie here, but my god this seems difficult!
I am trying to take songs off either my usb flash drive or the memory card and put them onto the hard drive of the tab. Why the hell is this so difficult?! I must be really missing something here...
I can find the MP3 files on the devices but I have no clue how to get them into the "music" app on the tablet or even just somewhere onto the tablet itself. Any ideas here? And sorry if I sound like a complete idiot...
The media scanner will find songs on any attached storage. If you really want the songs on internal storage, use a file explorer to move them from /Removable/MicroSD to /SDcard
Edit - sorry for being brief. I'm writing from my TF...
It might take a bit, but the system will eventually scan all attached storage for media. Also, the way storage is mounted varies widely and is not always intuitive. In the case of the TF, the internal storage is mounted as /sdcard and a microSD in the tablet is mounted as /removable/microsd. Not sure what other storage is mounted as, I dont have a dock yet.
Thanks for the quick response. I had nothing pop up when I put in either Microsd, SD or my flash drive. So the "media scanner" ain't working?
And I just went to the app store and downloaded a file explorer, but now I cant find any of the drives?!
This is friggin painful! I was using filemanagerhd and could see the mp3's but there is now way to copy them onto the hardrive?
bedoig said:
The media scanner will find songs on any attached storage. If you really want the songs on internal storage, use a file explorer to move them from /Removable/MicroSD to /SDcard
Edit - sorry for being brief. I'm writing from my TF...
It might take a bit, but the system will eventually scan all attached storage for media. Also, the way storage is mounted varies widely and is not always intuitive. In the case of the TF, the internal storage is mounted as /sdcard and a microSD in the tablet is mounted as /removable/microsd. Not sure what other storage is mounted as, I dont have a dock yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
there are no drives in android. the filesystem is organized as a tree and as such, everything is attached to the root or "/"
off the top of my head the internal storage is in
/sdcard
while microsd is in
/Removable/microsd
if you don't see your microsd, it didn't get recognized for one reason or another
also why the hell are you downloading a file explorer when one is included.
Yeah, use the built in file manager. Most of the ones on the market are designed for the phone variant of Android and restrict you to only being able to view the /sdcard folder.
Also, make sure you're actually correctly inserting the SD/MicroSDs (i.e. pushed in all the way and not upside down, etc).
First, how the heck are you even connecting an SD card or USB drive? If you're using the gender charger, I wouldn't count on that.
When inserting your microsd card, do you get a message that it's preparing media and then an icon in your system tray? If not, it's not seeing your card correctly. You should be able to open the file manager from there.
The easiest way I've found to put files on my device is by buying a program named "Wifi Explorer Pro." It was only 0.99 and it lets you open a web browser and upload files to your device over your wifi network. The only thing that isn't great is I can't find a way to select multiple files.
Otherwise, I think you can copy files with the file manager by selecting them and doing a long press. You can then navigate to the folder you want them copied to and paste them.
When I first got my device I just put my microsd card in a sd card adapter, plugged it into my laptop, copied over a bunch of media files and the next time I put the card in the Transformer they showed up.
That's the way it should work... Also, have you updated to the latest firmware from Asus' site? In addition, a reboot never hurts. Usually.
npompei said:
I am an Android newbie here, but my god this seems difficult!
I am trying to take songs off either my usb flash drive or the memory card and put them onto the hard drive of the tab. Why the hell is this so difficult?! I must be really missing something here...
I can find the MP3 files on the devices but I have no clue how to get them into the "music" app on the tablet or even just somewhere onto the tablet itself. Any ideas here? And sorry if I sound like a complete idiot...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No need to download any file manager as it is on your device. Go to file manager if you don't see it on your desktop, click on apps at the top right hand corner and select file manager
With your microSD in the slot with music on it, go to the root directory....then click on removable, then microSD, You should see your music there.
Now click on the pencil icon on the top right hand corner, this will put square boxes on the left hand side of all your files and folder. Select the music or folders of music that you want to copy to the device by putting a check mark by it. Then select the copy icon on the top right hand corner.
Now go back to root, navigate to sdcard, in there there will be a folder called music, click on it. Once you are in the folder, click on the paste icon in the top right hand corner. Your music is now on your device, remove your card.
nxp3 said:
No need to download any file manager as it is on your device. Go to file manager if you don't see it on your desktop, click on apps at the top right hand corner and select file manager
With your microSD in the slot with music on it, go to the root directory....then click on removable, then microSD, You should see your music there.
Now click on the pencil icon on the top right hand corner, this will put square boxes on the left hand side of all your files and folder. Select the music or folders of music that you want to copy to the device by putting a check mark by it. Then select the copy icon on the top right hand corner.
Now go back to root, navigate to sdcard, in there there will be a folder called music, click on it. Once you are in the folder, click on the paste icon in the top right hand corner. Your music is now on your device, remove your card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
FYI - File Manager HD is specifically written for HC. It's much better than stock I think.
For superuser stuff the stock file manager is no bueno, i'm using root explorer with no complaints.
If you cannot see your sd card it probably needs to be formatted again via a phone or even a pc but try and keep it as FAT32.
Other things i've noticed when my media scanner doesn't run is to reboot and it for sure will run on startup
A really good file manager for those with old habits, especially if you have the dock, is Ghost Commander. It's a two-pane file manager like Total Commander or Far, and it's fully keyboard enabled with familiar shortcuts - Tab to switch between panels, +/- to select/deselect files by pattern. It also uses number keys to represent F1-F10 - so 5 is "Copy", 6 is "Move", 7 is "MkDir" etc. And all letter keys start inline file search by name. Very fast when used keyboard-only.
Also see this for more info on what it can do...
I always just drag and drop, create a folder called music > artist > album name > music files
doesn't get any easier than that.
In this thread I want to share my thoughts and experiences on how to optimize storage and memory for a phone with low internal memory and with access to an SD card, for example like the LG G4S (model H735) with only 8GB internal memory and 1.5GB RAM.
I'm happy to hear more suggestions to optimize!
First of all, you need to root your phone. Find out how to do this for your individual model.
Once you're rooted, you can optimize your storage and memory:
Get a good SD card with fast read and write speeds! This is crucial as you're going to be running lots of apps from it. Get a 32GB (or if your phone supports more, then more!).
You should partition your SD card so that you can make a second partition with the ext4 file system used by Android. Only then will you be able to move almost all your apps to SD! See notes below on how to partition your SD card.
You can now use the excellent Link2SD app to do all of the cleaning tasks:
Moving & linking apps & data to SD
Uninstall system apps
By default, you will only be able to move the "user" apps (the ones which were not installed as part of the system, e.g. the ones you installed yourself). But we can get around this with many apps! This is described below (in 4.).
You may have noticed that when you switch between apps, e.g. between your game and your messaging app, every time you switch, the app reloads (e.g. the game takes ages to start up again). This is because your RAM (main memory) usage is not optimized. You can also do something which is likely fix this, which I will describe below (in 5.).
1. A word about data usage of an app
You may have wondered why your memory usage is still so high when you moved your app to an SD card with the classic Android "Move to SD" functionality (which you can access via the Android app settings).
Well, the classic Android "Move to SD" only moves the app. But often the bulk of the data is actually not in the app itself, but in the data and OBB files of the app! In games, this can be up to several gigabytes. And this stuff remains on your internal storage! So we will need to move this as well, and then "link" to the moved data, so the Android OS "believes" that the data is still on internal storage. Imagine this similar to doing a (soft)link to a file on your computer.
Also, doing it this way ("linking") is much better than the classic Android move-apps. For example, you can avoid problems with widgets which may not run any more once they have been moved to SD with Android move-apps.
There are a few apps which can help you move&link your apps and data. I have tried a few, and in my opinion Link2SD is the best, as it
already detects if your app uses OBB and data files
you can easily display the apps which use most storage (also in terms of data files!)
and you can also uninstall system apps more reliably than with other root apps!
You will need to get the pro version in order to do everything with it, but this is $2 well worth spending, you won't need any other apps for managing the moving. It's much easier than e.g. FolderMount to easily move all the relevant data of an app to SD.
2. The partitions on your phone
Most likely, your phone will be using different partitions on the internal storage for different purposes. For example, there may be a partition which is exclusively to be used for the "system" (the Android OS and system applications).
You can use an app like Disk Info to show the partitions on your internal storage (and SD card) and how much space is still free on them.
This may vary between phones, but in most cases you should find a "data" partition or similar, which is used for
Applications installed by you
Updates of system apps (!!!)
Data, Cache, OBB files etc. used by your apps
The size of this data partition is pretty much what you can get out of your internal storage: if you move everything out of there, this is the maximum free space you can get (again, it may vary from phone to phone). You cannot easily get access to the system and cache partition to use as storage space, and you shouldn't try to mess with that anyway.
So what you can try to do, is shove as much as possible out of the data partition onto your SD card. The free space on data can then be used as a "buffer" when you download and install applications, before you move&link them onto the SD card.
Note also that your data partition is used for updates which may have been automatically downloaded. This may take up a significant chunk of your data partition! So you may want to either:
Move the whole system app to SD card (see below described for Link2SD).
Or, "merge" the updates into the main app, so that it then resides on the system partition again.
To merge the update with the main app, long-tap (tap and hold) on the app in Link2SD and select Integrate app into system. However keep an eye on the free disk space on the system partition, you don't want it to get too close to using full capacity! So only merge updates when you're sure there is enough free space on /system.
3. Partition your SD card
It is important that you create a second partition on your SD card, formatted with the ext4 file system used by Android. Only then will you be able to move all apps completely onto SD.
On Windows, you can use Mini Tool Partition Wizard to partition your SD card and format the second partition as ext4. I won't go into detailed instructions here, there's other documentation for this on-line.
Only a few notes:
It is important that you format the ext4 partition as "primary" also!!!
You can also "resize" the first partition (the FAT32 which may already be on it), without losing your data. However if something goes wrong, you may lose the data anyway, so it's advisable to backup your data on the SD card before.
You may want to keep a FAT32 partition (also formatted as primary), because on windows systems you cannot easily read ext4, so you may want to use the FAT partition to store your pictures etc., which you can then also read from a Windows computer.
4. Use Link2SD to move your apps
Open Link2SD and you will see a list of your apps. On the top bar you can select to display only apps of certain types, e.g. "user" and "system" apps. And you can also sort them according to different criteria, e.g. "Name" or "Size". I often use "Size (total)" in the bottom of the sorting criteria list. This shows the apps which use the most data overall first.
First, we will move the "user" apps to SD.
Display all the "user" apps and click on the first one you want to move & link to SD.
You will see a detailed list of your app and data usage.
You will see buttons to Link to SD card or Remove link. Below this, you see a field titled Android App2SD in which you can Move to SD Card --- this is the classic Android way to move apps: don't use this! Use Link to SD Card instead
After selecting Link to SD card , you can tick the boxes for everything you would like to move (app/cache/internal data...), and then click OK. Link2SD will move all your stuff to the ext4 partition of your SD card and then also link to it.
The apps which also use OBB files and extra data/cache will display extra boxes in Link2SD. Try a game app for example to see this, large games are likely to use this. You can click Link to SD for these extra files also, and it'll be all moved to your SD! Warning: I've had problems particularly with moving OBB files, sometimes also with data files -- the app was not launching properly after I've moved the OBBs. This is not the fault of Link2SD though, I've had the same problems with other apps like for example FolderMount.
If you want to undo the linking, just use Link2SD and select Remove Link. All your data will be moved back to internal storage, and the link will be removed. All back to how it was before. Easy!
Now you may also want to move system apps to SD to create even more space. While system apps natively reside on the /system partition (see 2. above), they also may store data and cache on the /data partition. Or, you may also want to create more space in the /system partition by moving system apps to SD.
The problem is, even though you are rooted, you cannot move the system apps. And for many of the system apps, you shouldn't do this either. However, it is safe to do this for apps which are installed as "system" but not really an integral part of the OS, such as
Chrome
Google maps
Google docs
Google drive
YouTube
and more.
To move them, you can use Link2SD to convert them from "system" app to "user" app.
Open Link2SD and long-tap (tap and hold) on the app to open the options menu. If you have a Convert to user app option, that's that!
If you don't have the conversion option, you can try something else:
Uninstall the app first by long-tapping on the app in Link2SD, and selecting Uninstall. But first make sure you will be able to download this app from Google Play!
You will need to reboot the phone.
Re-install the app from Google Play.
Now, you can use Link2SD to link the app to SD as we did for the user apps before.
Important: Never to this for core system apps, and I would also not touch Google Play or any of its services.
Note: You may also consider to just merge the updates of a system app so that it resides in the /system partition again. See description above (2.) for more details.
5. Optimizing your RAM
What I found particularly annoying on my LG G4S (H735) is that whenever I switched between my game (large files) and another app (e.g. messaging app), the game would load up from scratch again, which would take a few minutes. The reason for this is that the default settings on the phone were set to keep a too big part of the memory "free", so other apps were "killed" as soon as I was using my game. When I then switched back to home screen, all the other apps had to be re-launched, and my game instead "killed" again.
You can decrease the threshold of reserved free memory by editing the build props. There's a risk to get an unstable system if you tweak this too much, but if you try carefully, it may be ok. And you can also reset it to defaults if you're not happy with the results.
You will need a build prop editor, for example the Build Prop Editor app. Open it, and click on the "edit" pencil below to edit the following values:
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree1=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree2=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree3=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree4=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree5=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree6=...
It worked like a treat on my phone (LG G4S with 1.5GB RAM) and was also reported to work nicely with the LG G3, using the following values:
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree1=49152 (unchanged)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree2=61440 (unchanged)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree3=65000 (was set to 73728 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree4=70000 (was set to 204800 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree5=80000 (was set to 262144 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree6=100000 (was set to 327680 originally)
Please share your experiences if you have some tipps to further optimize low-memory phones! Thanks
See also
http://forums.androidcentral.com/lg...ry-using-link2sd-w-pros-cons-vs-data2ext.html
http://www.link2sd.info/faq
jen.magnolis said:
In this thread I want to share my thoughts and experiences on how to optimize storage and memory for a phone with low internal memory and with access to an SD card, for example like the LG G4S (model H735) with only 8GB internal memory and 1.5GB RAM.
I'm happy to hear more suggestions to optimize!
First of all, you need to root your phone. Find out how to do this for your individual model.
Once you're rooted, you can optimize your storage and memory:
Get a good SD card with fast read and write speeds! This is crucial as you're going to be running lots of apps from it. Get a 32GB (or if your phone supports more, then more!).
You should partition your SD card so that you can make a second partition with the ext4 file system used by Android. Only then will you be able to move almost all your apps to SD! See notes below on how to partition your SD card.
You can now use the excellent Link2SD app to do all of the cleaning tasks:
Moving & linking apps & data to SD
Uninstall system apps
By default, you will only be able to move the "user" apps (the ones which were not installed as part of the system, e.g. the ones you installed yourself). But we can get around this with many apps! This is described below (in 4.).
You may have noticed that when you switch between apps, e.g. between your game and your messaging app, every time you switch, the app reloads (e.g. the game takes ages to start up again). This is because your RAM (main memory) usage is not optimized. You can also do something which is likely fix this, which I will describe below (in 5.).
1. A word about data usage of an app
You may have wondered why your memory usage is still so high when you moved your app to an SD card with the classic Android "Move to SD" functionality (which you can access via the Android app settings).
Well, the classic Android "Move to SD" only moves the app. But often the bulk of the data is actually not in the app itself, but in the data and OBB files of the app! In games, this can be up to several gigabytes. And this stuff remains on your internal storage! So we will need to move this as well, and then "link" to the moved data, so the Android OS "believes" that the data is still on internal storage. Imagine this similar to doing a (soft)link to a file on your computer.
Also, doing it this way ("linking") is much better than the classic Android move-apps. For example, you can avoid problems with widgets which may not run any more once they have been moved to SD with Android move-apps.
There are a few apps which can help you move&link your apps and data. I have tried a few, and in my opinion Link2SD is the best, as it
already detects if your app uses OBB and data files
you can easily display the apps which use most storage (also in terms of data files!)
and you can also uninstall system apps more reliably than with other root apps!
You will need to get the pro version in order to do everything with it, but this is $2 well worth spending, you won't need any other apps for managing the moving. It's much easier than e.g. FolderMount to easily move all the relevant data of an app to SD.
2. The partitions on your phone
Most likely, your phone will be using different partitions on the internal storage for different purposes. For example, there may be a partition which is exclusively to be used for the "system" (the Android OS and system applications).
You can use an app like Disk Info to show the partitions on your internal storage (and SD card) and how much space is still free on them.
This may vary between phones, but in most cases you should find a "data" partition or similar, which is used for
Applications installed by you
Updates of system apps (!!!)
Data, Cache, OBB files etc. used by your apps
The size of this data partition is pretty much what you can get out of your internal storage: if you move everything out of there, this is the maximum free space you can get (again, it may vary from phone to phone). You cannot easily get access to the system and cache partition to use as storage space, and you shouldn't try to mess with that anyway.
So what you can try to do, is shove as much as possible out of the data partition onto your SD card. The free space on data can then be used as a "buffer" when you download and install applications, before you move&link them onto the SD card.
Note also that your data partition is used for updates which may have been automatically downloaded. This may take up a significant chunk of your data partition! So you may want to either:
Move the whole system app to SD card (see below described for Link2SD).
Or, "merge" the updates into the main app, so that it then resides on the system partition again.
To merge the update with the main app, long-tap (tap and hold) on the app in Link2SD and select Integrate app into system. However keep an eye on the free disk space on the system partition, you don't want it to get too close to using full capacity! So only merge updates when you're sure there is enough free space on /system.
3. Partition your SD card
It is important that you create a second partition on your SD card, formatted with the ext4 file system used by Android. Only then will you be able to move all apps completely onto SD.
On Windows, you can use Mini Tool Partition Wizard to partition your SD card and format the second partition as ext4. I won't go into detailed instructions here, there's other documentation for this on-line.
Only a few notes:
It is important that you format the ext4 partition as "primary" also!!!
You can also "resize" the first partition (the FAT32 which may already be on it), without losing your data. However if something goes wrong, you may lose the data anyway, so it's advisable to backup your data on the SD card before.
You may want to keep a FAT32 partition (also formatted as primary), because on windows systems you cannot easily read ext4, so you may want to use the FAT partition to store your pictures etc., which you can then also read from a Windows computer.
4. Use Link2SD to move your apps
Open Link2SD and you will see a list of your apps. On the top bar you can select to display only apps of certain types, e.g. "user" and "system" apps. And you can also sort them according to different criteria, e.g. "Name" or "Size". I often use "Size (total)" in the bottom of the sorting criteria list. This shows the apps which use the most data overall first.
First, we will move the "user" apps to SD.
Display all the "user" apps and click on the first one you want to move & link to SD.
You will see a detailed list of your app and data usage.
You will see buttons to Link to SD card or Remove link. Below this, you see a field titled Android App2SD in which you can Move to SD Card --- this is the classic Android way to move apps: don't use this! Use Link to SD Card instead
After selecting Link to SD card , you can tick the boxes for everything you would like to move (app/cache/internal data...), and then click OK. Link2SD will move all your stuff to the ext4 partition of your SD card and then also link to it.
The apps which also use OBB files and extra data/cache will display extra boxes in Link2SD. Try a game app for example to see this, large games are likely to use this. You can click Link to SD for these extra files also, and it'll be all moved to your SD! Warning: I've had problems particularly with moving OBB files, sometimes also with data files -- the app was not launching properly after I've moved the OBBs. This is not the fault of Link2SD though, I've had the same problems with other apps like for example FolderMount.
If you want to undo the linking, just use Link2SD and select Remove Link. All your data will be moved back to internal storage, and the link will be removed. All back to how it was before. Easy!
Now you may also want to move system apps to SD to create even more space. While system apps natively reside on the /system partition (see 2. above), they also may store data and cache on the /data partition. Or, you may also want to create more space in the /system partition by moving system apps to SD.
The problem is, even though you are rooted, you cannot move the system apps. And for many of the system apps, you shouldn't do this either. However, it is safe to do this for apps which are installed as "system" but not really an integral part of the OS, such as
Chrome
Google maps
Google docs
Google drive
YouTube
and more.
To move them, you can use Link2SD to convert them from "system" app to "user" app.
Open Link2SD and long-tap (tap and hold) on the app to open the options menu. If you have a Convert to user app option, that's that!
If you don't have the conversion option, you can try something else:
Uninstall the app first by long-tapping on the app in Link2SD, and selecting Uninstall. But first make sure you will be able to download this app from Google Play!
You will need to reboot the phone.
Re-install the app from Google Play.
Now, you can use Link2SD to link the app to SD as we did for the user apps before.
Important: Never to this for core system apps, and I would also not touch Google Play or any of its services.
Note: You may also consider to just merge the updates of a system app so that it resides in the /system partition again. See description above (2.) for more details.
5. Optimizing your RAM
What I found particularly annoying on my LG G4S (H735) is that whenever I switched between my game (large files) and another app (e.g. messaging app), the game would load up from scratch again, which would take a few minutes. The reason for this is that the default settings on the phone were set to keep a too big part of the memory "free", so other apps were "killed" as soon as I was using my game. When I then switched back to home screen, all the other apps had to be re-launched, and my game instead "killed" again.
You can decrease the threshold of reserved free memory by editing the build props. There's a risk to get an unstable system if you tweak this too much, but if you try carefully, it may be ok. And you can also reset it to defaults if you're not happy with the results.
You will need a build prop editor, for example the Build Prop Editor app. Open it, and click on the "edit" pencil below to edit the following values:
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree1=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree2=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree3=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree4=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree5=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree6=...
It worked like a treat on my phone (LG G4S with 1.5GB RAM) and was also reported to work nicely with the LG G3, using the following values:
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree1=49152 (unchanged)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree2=61440 (unchanged)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree3=65000 (was set to 73728 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree4=70000 (was set to 204800 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree5=80000 (was set to 262144 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree6=100000 (was set to 327680 originally)
Please share your experiences if you have some tipps to further optimize low-memory phones! Thanks
See also
http://forums.androidcentral.com/lg...ry-using-link2sd-w-pros-cons-vs-data2ext.html
http://www.link2sd.info/faq
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So did the linking worked! Because I tried foldermount and link2SD but none of them worked. Which I create a link it simply tries to redownload all the data. Please help!
Hi, can you please be a bit more precise about what you were trying to do? Did you do step 3, then followed by 4, which didn't work?
Uninstall foldermount or make sure it is not linking anything. I had problems with foldermount, it may mess things up in your case.
It is also important you created the right file system in your SD card partition (step 3).
A bit complicated for me but gonna try to do it, thanks man
Sent from my Lenovo A5000 using XDA-Developers mobile app
Hi man
I have a Lenovo p70
And I have 32 gb Kingston class 4
I re-partion my memory with apps2sd all in one
And I link the most apps to SD card but I have a problems
When restart my phone most of the apps disappear and I need to restart my phone with soft restart
What the problem and how I can solve it ??
---------- Post added at 01:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:18 PM ----------
And I have a question for you
Step 5 optimizing ram I don't optimizing it
If it nessesary to work plz tell me
I'm so sorry for bad language
Hey Guys -
I've looked everywhere for a solution to this issue and even submitted a request to Titanium's developers, but have yet to find a solution or get a response. In fact, I can't find an issue matching mine online. Posting here hoping someone can help...
The Issue
When launching Titanium Backup on my Shield (6.01 / Rooted), it lists only 289 apps. The problem is that I have a total of 310 user / system ones installed therefore roughly 20 apps aren't listed. I'm wanting to upgrade my tablet to 4.2 and want to backup first, but many of the apps I frequently use are installed to the sd physically.
Why I Think It's Happening
Apps not listed seem to be all of the ones whose files are physically stored on the SD by the OS - I don't think it's related to permissions at all. When upgrading to Marshmallow, I formatted my 64gb SD as "Internal Storage" as doing so makes space management so much easier. No more having to use 3rd party apps to manage and create symlinks for apps I manually copy to the SD. Android seems to dynamically moves / copies things to the SD as needed which works well. If wanting to install a large (1gb+) app, sometimes I must go to an app's properties in Settings and choose to have it's files physically stored on the SD, but that's rare and still using an OEM toolset.
Attempted Workarounds
Most topics I've found when looking for a resolution dealt with not being able to restore apps involving an SD which isn't my issue. Still, I did try the following:
- Tried different storage Providers when setting backup folder location
- Looked all over for potential settings that may have an effect
- Ensured everything's up to date (all is except minor version behind on OS)
- Created new Data Profile in TB
- Tried default settings in TB
Example
Attached are a couple of screenshots for my installation of "Borderlands 2" which is one of the apps affected. As installed it's just shy of 4gb, it must exist on an SD or be the only thing installed, yet it does not appear in TB. To note, when using a file explorer such as FX, the OBB & Data folders / files for applications existing physically on the SD still appear when browsing to Android\Obb or Android\Data from internal storage. In fact, they aren't even listed as symlinks.
Tablet Specs
- Nvidia Shield Tablet (Not K1, but was replaced after battery callback)
- Android 6.0.1
- Rooted /w SuperSU (binary 2.78) All prompts set to "Grant"
- Titanium Backup Pro 7.5.0
- 64gb microsd formatted as Internal Storage (Fastest write and best rated I could find as of 6 months ago)
- Storage (as reported by OS in Settings)
- 70.28gb total
- 63.96gb used
- Internal Storage: 8.31gb of 11.61gb used
- Samsung SD Card: 55.65gb or 58.67gb used
Any suggestions? Thanks!
Hi, in the meantime could you try another software to make your app's backup, helium is my current choice (slide down in first page and select full backup instead of data only).
regards
Hi, I have an old Redmi6A phone (Lineage OS 17.1) that only has 8GB of internal memory. This is very little if you use Whatsapp. Of course I added a 32Gb SD card, but with whatsapp I have trouble saving my photos on the card. What are the possible workarounds?
1- Is there a difference depending on whether you set the SD card as portable storage or internal storage?
2 - My phone is rooted. I've looked for practical solutions including magisk, but no module matches.
3 - Beyond whatsapp, what should I do: is there an app that allows other apps to be installed on the external media? Is this a good idea? Is it better to limit the storage of data on the SD card to avoid the crash of these "deported" apps?
Just an advice or two would make me happy...
If Android device allows to make external SD-card part of internal storage memory ( keyword: Adoptable Storage ) then you are good. Check it.
I believe that my android device allows me to do this. The French translation does not use the words adoptable storage "stockage adoptable" but the 1st drawing seems to match.
What I have read on the subject indicates that the reading and access time to the data on the external card is much longer than on the internal memory. How does android arbitrate what it stores on the internal or external memory? Can the user control this?
I assume and hope that the most crucial apps are on the internal memory
It's on you how much of the SD-card's storage memory ( in % ) you'll add to internal memory: 1,2,...,100.
Yes, reading / writing to device's "portable memory" basically takes longer. So with regards to file transfer speeds, choosing the right memory card is crucial. Look here:
The best SD cards for 2023: top memory cards for your camera
We've tested and ranked all of the best SD cards you can buy
www.techradar.com
Android by default uses device's internal memory. The least app's allow to store their data on external SD-card: this is set by app's developer.
I tested the 2 options; first the adoptable storage but for some reason it didn't work; I mean the operation was correctly done but the 32Gb was not added to my internal memory; just a few hundred Mb more. I repeated the operation 3 times to rule out the possibility of an isolated incident.
So I was forced to reformat the SD card as external memory. Everything went well. But now I'm back to the original situation.
My search led me to 2 apps (Link2SD and App2SD) to override the restriction to move to the SD card. Those apps don't seem to be really used anymore: their peak corresponds to the 2015-2016 versions of Android (Marschmallow and Nougat) and are quite complex to handle since you have to format the external SD card in several partitions to be able to consider moving anything.
What do you think about this type of solution?
As @xXx yYy already said:
The least app's allow to store their data on external SD-card: this is set by app's developer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thus forget the named 3rd-party-tools that claim they can.
BTW: look inside here
Whatsapp folder in Android: Here's where to find it
WhatsApp folder with all media files in Android can be found on new location if you are on Android 11. Learn here where to find it.
mobileinternist.com
Napafroi said:
I tested the 2 options; first the adoptable storage but for some reason it didn't work; I mean the operation was correctly done but the 32Gb was not added to my internal memory; just a few hundred Mb more. I repeated the operation 3 times to rule out the possibility of an isolated incident.
So I was forced to reformat the SD card as external memory. Everything went well. But now I'm back to the original situation
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After an external memory got converted to portable memory it's Android what automatically moves data from internal memory to portable memory as long as they moveable to gain internal memory space. Thus the few 100MB you reported.
You always can configure the amount of portable memory indeed to be used by Android's Storage Manager ( SM ) using ADB.
Well, I think I'm getting used to this adoptable storage which is really confusing since the size doesn't take into account the extra 32Gb (in the storage manager and also in solid explorer).
I don't know if it's a bug but sd maid and its memory analysis function allows me to check that telegram, osmand (including downloadable maps) and vivaldi browser will install directly on the adaptable storage. That's all I ask.
It's still surprising not to be able to view the content of the SD card; maybe it's a bug like others have experienced like on this thread
I wanted to experiment a nandroid backup on MicroSD adopted-storage with TWRP which was refused.
xXx yYy said:
You always can configure the amount of portable memory indeed to be used by Android's Storage Manager ( SM ) using ADB.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So I understand better the interest to calibrate the portion of adoptable storage...
Screenshot no. 5 shows 2.7 GB of the portable memory ( real capacity 31 GB ) are used.
To get the whole portable memory as internal memory used using ADB try this
Code:
adb shell
sm list-disks -> This cmd returns id of SD-card e.g. 179:160
sm partition disk:179:160 private -> Here you use the id of SD-card
where the numbers are the Android's name of your disk.
I just did this.
Reboot but it didn't change anything. Maybe the card is defective...
EDIT : oh wait, yesterday I inserted this same micro SDcard in an old samsung galaxy tab4 with the "same" custom rom (LineageOS 17.10) as adoptable storage. The 32Gb capacity was not added to internal memory as well. Maybe this rom is buggy for managing adoptable storage.
Sorry for my english
The ( meanwhile outdated ) Lineage OS 17.1 - a Lineage OS 17.10 probably doesn't exist - is based on Android 10 and can "Adoptable Storage" as you initially confirmed.
IMO you are probably doing things wrong
"migrate data" is the 2nd necessary step after 1st step "adoptable-storage" is created. It will ( try to ) move all apps from phone into SD-card ( if app is moveable ), means all new installed apps will directly get installed into SD-card as long as android:installLocation="auto" is defined in app's AndroidManifest.xml.
When 100% disk space got adopted you can't see your SD-card any longer, the only way to check disk usage is from Android's cmd line running df -h /mnt/expand/* ( if Android is rooted consider 3rd party apps like Link2SD instead ).
So I recently ran out of storage on my Motorola G Power 2021, so I bought a micro SD to move some of my less-used but not quite expendable apps. Originally I'd planned to format as internal storage, but my phone doesn't appear to allow this and doesn't even show the option to do so. So I opted for the next best thing, migrating some of the app data over by going to Apps & notifications > All Apps > (app) > Storage & cache, but there's no option to move the app to the external storage device. As per the title, I also turned "Force allow apps on external" in developer settings to no avail. Could Motorola be blocking this too? I've done a little searching, and I can't seem to find any examples of this other than this one which was on a completely different phone brand and this one which seems to have been caused by misunderstanding and resolved.
What I've tried:
Restarting phone - didn't help
Checking other apps - checked about a dozen and none had the move to external storage option
Rooting - can't unlock bootloader as per Motorola's website
Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this, if I can work around it, or even if I can somehow format as internal storage? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Installing apps over to the microSD card isn't supported by all apps. In fact, many don’t support this feature at all. Some manufacturers - namely, Samsung and LG - reviously allowed users to format microSD cards as internal storage. That meant apps and games would be installed there by default. Sadly, this feature is no longer present on newer devices.
Technically, it’s still possible to install apps on the microSD if you’re willing to go through the trouble of rooting your Android phone and afterwareds use Link2SD to move the apps from internal storage to exernal storage.
xXx yYy said:
Installing apps over to the microSD card isn't supported by all apps. In fact, many don’t support this feature at all. Some manufacturers - namely, Samsung and LG - reviously allowed users to format microSD cards as internal storage. That meant apps and games would be installed there by default. Sadly, this feature is no longer present on newer devices.
Technically, it’s still possible to install apps on the microSD if you’re willing to go through the trouble of rooting your Android phone and afterwareds use Link2SD to move the apps from internal storage to exernal storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought the purpose of "Force allow apps on external" was to be able to transfer any app regardless of the developers' wishes. Is this not the case?
you already gave the answer yourself
Wrig9 said:
Originally I'd planned to format as internal storage, but my phone doesn't appear to allow this and doesn't even show the option to do so.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
alecxs said:
you already gave the answer yourself
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does it have to be formatted as internal storage to be allowed to transfer apps? I guess I didn't really think about that.
Edit: Just to be sure we're all on the same page, the SD card is formatted, just not as part of the internal storage. I can access any files on it, but I can't put any apps there. I was under the impression that if you formatted as internal storage the SD card would act as a direct expansion somehow and automatically install data there once the integrated storage filled.
I haven't tested that specific option but afaik it overrides android:installLocation="preferExternal" in app manifest. that would allow to move the apk to Adoptable Storage, but requires MicroSD Card formatted as internal.
Only new apps are installed external automatically (based on that setting), for existing apps the "Migrate Data" option is offered.