Database Develop

[Q] How to set the primary sdcard folder

Is there a way to switch the sdcard / sdcard-ext folder names to make the external sdcard the primary one? Or is there any other way to set the primary sdcard?
Thanks!

I was disappointed to see the phone force you to use sdcard and then renamed my microsd card to sdcard-ext. It made it quite a bit of a hassle to restore programs or use the backup features of other apps.

I know its been done on some tablets running 2.3 (My old Viewsonic G Tab). On those you had to edit the vold.fstab to mount them the way you want.

I'd love to do this too. I made a lot of songs available offline in Spotify, synced some mp3s etc and it all ended up on the internal "sdcard", not my 32gb class 10 Patriot MicroSDHC (which works perfect with the D3).
The same goes for most apps.

If someone has experience doing that please tell us how to do, I'm not too experienced in such Linux filesystem things. THANKS!

+1 this is very annoying.
Sent from my DROID3 using xda premium

/etc/vold.fstab seems to be the right place to change it, like mentioned above. However I think the risks are little, I wouldn't be the first who tries out ... at least not before an SBF is available.
And I cannot fully assess what it means for future updates, if and how it has to be undone then. I'd rather recommend to live with this naming.

Thanks for explaining that und danke.

I'm more curious to see if we can remove the space allocated to "sdcard" and merge it back with the internal program storage, then when I drop my actual sd-card in, it mounts as "sdcard".
Possible? Or is that a rom only thing.

Does this link help?
Partitions for the x2

I'm afraid I'm not experienced enough to dare to try it ^^

Internal vs SD menory?

Is there anyway to FORCE the apps to use the MicroSD memory instead of the Internal storage?
It seems every app I've installed ( Dropbox, Google Docs, Evernote, etc) uses the internal memory. I have a 32GB MicroSD that seems to be useless right now. I tried moving all the apps to SD, but they still use the Internal Memory to store cache/files

I have yet to see a fix for this as well. The way I work around this is if the app saves files to the internal storage there is usually a setting in the settings menu that will allow you to change where it saves files. For instance with the TapeRecorder app. It automatically saves files to the sdcard (which Motorola stupidly named the internal storage for). I go to the settings and change the "sdcard" to "sdcard-ext", then it works!

For the time being, you can use the SD-EXT microsd card for music, videos, pictures, TiBU backups, downloads, etc., but in some cases you need to change some settings to do so. Apps cannot be installed on the external microsd card for now and you should make sure you 'move to phone' any apps which are check marked in the 'media' area or you are subject to losing them.

Sorry this next generation android phone just like Droid X it has dedicated app memory. That memory is used strictly for those apps. U can put 500 apps and not run out of room. SD card is used for media music movies etc
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Sent from my DROID BIONIC using xda premium

Groid said:
For the time being, you can use the SD-EXT microsd card for music, videos, pictures, TiBU backups, downloads, etc., but in some cases you need to change some settings to do so. Apps cannot be installed on the external microsd card for now and you should make sure you 'move to phone' any apps which are check marked in the 'media' area or you are subject to losing them.
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Is this why When I selected "Move to Media Area" the application shortcut disappears from the "All Apps" menu?
I moved 2 games to the "Media Area" and now they are gone... they are still installed, but I have no way of accessing them. (I know they are still installed because when I went to reinstall, it said something about it replacing an app thats already install)

After researching more, and fumbling through the phone I discovered that Motorola has deemed the 8GB of Internal memory as an SDCard.
Another FAIL for Motorola, and I doubt there will ever be a fix for this. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
Stated on the Motorola Forums:
Folks, it's the storage naming system in Android. If you go to any forum for any phone with internal and external memory you'll see the same complaints. There are multiple threads about it here.
Even though in Motorola's file manager you see "internal phone memory" and "SD Card", the internal memory is actually "sdcard" and the external is "sdcard-ext". Like I said, it's like this on every brand of phone with this set up.
So, what's happening is the apps are saving to the internal memory because it is, in fact, the SD card. Motorola has tried to remedy this confusion by discontinuing to say "move to SD" and instead now calls it "Move to Media area".
And no, your external SD is not useless. You can still set your photos from the camera to save directly to your external, you can still put music and movies and all kinds of media on your external and your phone will see them just fine. This is why there is a 16GB card included with your phone, so you can use it for media and if you want to move your apps off of the system memory to save space you move it to the 8GB internal area. Of course 8GB is still plenty of space for apps and other media as well
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EDIT: BFirebird101 stated this to, I don't know why, but when I was scrolling it passed over his post. Didn't mean to restate what he said.

I've been *****ing about this problem for weeks and nobody seems to care, and it also seems to not bother anybody either.
Its a crock of sh1t. Yea you can save media files on the real SD card, but how many apps actually find them? Smooth move Motofùckingrola!
Fortunately with some coaxing and about a month of messing around, DoubleTwist can find media files on sdcard-ext. Its about the only worthy music player that can.
Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk

Tornlogic said:
I've been *****ing about this problem for weeks and nobody seems to care, and it also seems to not bother anybody either.
Its a crock of sh1t. Yea you can save media files on the real SD card, but how many apps actually find them? Smooth move Motofùckingrola!
Fortunately with some coaxing and about a month of messing around, DoubleTwist can find media files on sdcard-ext. Its about the only worthy music player that can.
Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk
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The Stock Music App seems to find the music files just fine on the MicroSD (just add some to try) and the Gallery Finds the Pictures. But I don't give a damn about Music or Pictures.
I have 123MB of the "Internal Memory" (SDCard) left - after I loaded all my work documents (spreadsheets, powerpoints, etc) & E-books. Right now I have to Move the file from the SDcard (InternalMemory) to the SDCard-Ext(MicroSD) after I've edit it and reuploaded it to Google Docs, then if I want to Edit it agian, I have to move it back to the SDCard(Internal Memory) Just so Google Docs will see it again.

Stock? That's okay, I'll pass. I froze those apps with TiBackup.
Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk

i use videovault and when i pulled my video vault folder from my old backup and loaded it to the external SD, the VideoVault did not find them. There is no way i will load 4GB of videos into my Internal 8GB card just so i can haz my pronz!

What I noticed is this seems to be very similar to how the Xoom and Honeycomb handles sdcards and internal storage (minus the fact that we still cant write to sdcards on stock honeycomb....) so it could be Motorola setup the phone this way for a smoother migration to Ice Cream Sandwich when it comes out?

If ICS looks anything like the "leaked" video then ill pass.
It seems that MOTOROLA Android devices are the only ones with the MicroSD issues.
I have an Asus Transformer android tablet that has absolutely NO trouble at all when it come to read/write access of the MicroSD.
Motorola seems to fudge everything up. But verizon doesnt off any better phones (IMO)

You would think with all the Smart/Nerdy People on this site, someone would come up with a way to Rename the partitions Motorola has setup.
If it was just possible to rename the "SDCard-Ext" To "SDCard" ...

The reason you have no issue is Asus did a hack mod to get the SD card to work. Moto did the same on European xooms but on USA version its a google product there fore moto has no control on software manipulation. As for apps to SD card there is no need the device has dedicated app storage stritctly for apps.
KoolAidJunkie said:
If ICS looks anything like the "leaked" video then ill pass.
It seems that MOTOROLA Android devices are the only ones with the MicroSD issues.
I have an Asus Transformer android tablet that has absolutely NO trouble at all when it come to read/write access of the MicroSD.
Motorola seems to fudge everything up. But verizon doesnt off any better phones (IMO)
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Sent from my DROID BIONIC using xda premium

Strange file system issues

My file system is totally confused. When I browse to EMMC from a file manager it goes to my SD Card. If I browse to SD Card it actually goes to the internal drive.
I've had my rooted Nook Color for about 5 weeks now (CM7 booted from a SD card). Everything was working great until I tried installing some different launchers. I tried GoLauncher, Zeam, ICS, Honeycomb and maybe one more. The default was ADW. Maybe I confused the system by constantly switching from one to the next but at some point the system crashed and I rebooted.
Once rebooted I noticed that many of the games I installed told me I needed to redownload their data files. I looked on my card, through my Mac, but the original files were still there. Turns out the Nook now installs apps on the internal drive rather than the card as it had been before.
Wouldn't be so bad but, as mentioned earlier, the file system is confused. When i need to manage files I've loaded on my SD card I have to browse to EMMC and vice versa. Makes my head spin.
Is there a way to fix it without starting from scratch? I'm using CM7.2.0.
Thanks for your help

That's not a bug, it's a feature. Anyway, what you likely did is Settings -> Cyanogenmod Settings -> Application Settings -> Use internal storage (checked). If you do this, then it swaps the mount points for the SD and the internal memory, so the SD card is mounted at "/emmc" and the internal memory is mounted at "/sdcard". See the first post in the thread in my sig for more information about this.
If you really want to return it to the original way, wasting 5G of internal storage space, then you can uncheck that box in the settings and it'll go back to normal.

Thanks for pointing that out and glad to see there's an easy fix. Seems a bit confusing though, like it's renaming your hard drives or something. I had been using the internal drive for storing media files, video, music, comics. Does it matter where apps or files are stored?

false1 said:
Thanks for pointing that out and glad to see there's an easy fix. Seems a bit confusing though, like it's renaming your hard drives or something. I had been using the internal drive for storing media files, video, music, comics. Does it matter where apps or files are stored?
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Well, the "fix", IMHO, is to leave it with them swapped.
Yes, it matters where apps are stored and it matters what is mounted at /sdcard. Apps use space on the /sdcard partition for settings, temp storage, downloads, etc. Mounting that 5G partition at /sdcard instead of /emmc allows these apps to use that space rather than cluttering your actual SD card. And apps are going to wind up on your 1G partition, not on either the /sdcard or /emmc mountpoint.
You can go read up in my guide on my recommendation on how to best use this space. The normal way is inefficient and wasteful of internal memory, IMHO. But you know, maybe you like it that way

mr72 said:
You can go read up in my guide on my recommendation on how to best use this space. The normal way is inefficient and wasteful of internal memory, IMHO. But you know, maybe you like it that way
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I think efficiency is more in how you choose to utilise the spaces rather than fundamentally in which switch option you use. For example, I choose to completely fill the 5GB of internal with sound and picture media as they get included in the normal app scanning process. Leaving the SD card to hold yet more media, app data and back ups.
It's still good to have the choice offered by the switch.

Moving files and photos to ext sd card

Hey everyone, I just got my M8 today and absolutely LOVING IT! One issue I am having that I would like some insight to if anyone knows. I am using es file explorer and I have wallpapers downloaded from Zedge, now I try transferring them from Internal storage to sd card and it never goes through! I've also tried moving a music file I use as a ringtone and it does the same thing. Can we not transfer to ex sd card from on the device? Do we need a computer for this? Seems odd to me. Thanks for any help!!

aaron130 said:
Hey everyone, I just got my M8 today and absolutely LOVING IT! One issue I am having that I would like some insight to if anyone knows. I am using es file explorer and I have wallpapers downloaded from Zedge, now I try transferring them from Internal storage to sd card and it never goes through! I've also tried moving a music file I use as a ringtone and it does the same thing. Can we not transfer to ex sd card from on the device? Do we need a computer for this? Seems odd to me. Thanks for any help!!
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I think this has something to do with the new KitKat policy limiting how storage be manipulated by the apps installed on your phone. The short explanation would be that apps only are permitted read/write access to the folders they are installed into. Programs like File Explorers are therefore incapable of actually doing file operations because the other areas of the internal and external storage are "out of bounds".
I'm sure its way more complicated than that, but someone smarter than I would have to step in to really lay out all the reasons this is how things work on KitKat. It is a bit frustrating, but from what I understand, it was a security measure put in place by Google. Custom roms/kernels will no doubt remove this restriction.
Hope that helps!

Move Apps to SD Option?

Hello,
Waiting for my Z3 Compact to arrive. I can't wait!
Question for you owners out there. Did Sony add the option under storage settings like they did with the Z2 to move apps to SD?
Fingers crossed!
Thanks in advance!

Would like to know myself. Seems like a boneheaded move if it's not an available feature by default. I mean, I know eventually root will allow us to achieve apps2sd even if it weren't, but it would be such an Apple move if this were a restriction.

I could only see 'Transfer data to SD card'
Photos
Videos
Music
no apps or any other options yet.

App2SD is not present and I'd predict that it'll also not come. I'd already be happy if we could get write access to the SD. Thank you Google... no, I don't want to use your Cloud "services".

Can you set pictures, videos and Music to get stored on the SDcard by default? Setting the location by default would make things much easier. Not too worried about 16gb for apps, always was fine for my N4 with everything else as well. Just needed to clean up storage every once in awhile.
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Anyone found a solution to this, running low on internal storage!

Luckily Google will bring back Apps2SD in Lollipop. Now we just have to wait, till Sony releases a LP rom...

DerDave said:
Luckily Google will bring back Apps2SD in Lollipop. Now we just have to wait, till Sony releases a LP rom...
Click to expand...
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Where did you read this?
Google only said:
Google said:
Hey all, in KitKat we introduced APIs that let apps read/write file in app-specific directories on secondary storage devices, such as SD cards.
We heard loud and clear that developers wanted richer access beyond these directories, so in Lollipop we added the new ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT_TREE intent. Apps can launch this intent to pick and return a directory from any supported DocumentProvider, including any of the shared storage supported by the device. Apps can then create, update, and delete files and directories anywhere under the picked tree without any additional user interaction. Just like the other document intents, apps can persist this access across reboots.
This gives apps broad, powerful access to manage files while still involving the user in the initial selection process. Users may choose to give your app access to a narrow directory like "My Vacation Photos," or they could pick the top-level of an entire SD card; the choice is theirs.
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FSRBIKER said:
Can you set pictures, videos and Music to get stored on the SDcard by default? Setting the location by default would make things much easier. Not too worried about 16gb for apps, always was fine for my N4 with everything else as well. Just needed to clean up storage every once in awhile.
Sent from my XT1053 using Tapatalk
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you can set the default image/video location from the camera settings, read somewhere that you can do the same with music via the play music app.

Okay probably got that wrong, but on the other hand effectively it's the solution to the problem. If the apps can easily store their biggest part of data on the SD, the internal memory will be save.