Database Develop

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

Why can't I save apps on my internal SD card?

Why does my Captivate only limit me to having 2GB of space for apps? I'm not using an external SD card and I want to install my apps onto my internal SD card or atleast move them there.

It's been a while since I have been on a stock ROM so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you can move at least some of the apps by going to settings / applications and then, in the individual application settings, select "Move to SD."
I know you can't move widgets or alarm applications because they will break if they aren't on internal memory, but you should be able to move games, etc. with no problem.

Move to SD was not available on Eclair... what are you running?
Sent from my Cappy

I'm on 2.2 right now. There is an option to move to SD but it only moves it to external SD not the internal one. It's split up into 3 sections
Internal Memory
Internal SD Card(I want apps to go here)
External SD card

muh316 said:
I'm on 2.2 right now. There is an option to move to SD but it only moves it to external SD not the internal one. It's split up into 3 sections
Internal Memory
Internal SD Card(I want apps to go here)
External SD card
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Ah, now I understand. I never had enough apps on Froyo to play with moving them but shooting from the hip, have you tried removing your external card and see if it will let you move them then? If not, I know that there are apps2sd applications on the market that should help you, but I haven't used any of them to give you a recommendation.

apbthe3 said:
Ah, now I understand. I never had enough apps on Froyo to play with moving them but shooting from the hip, have you tried removing your external card and see if it will let you move them then? If not, I know that there are apps2sd applications on the market that should help you, but I haven't used any of them to give you a recommendation.
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I've used all of those methods and none work.

Did you find solution? I have same situation here, it's pretty weird internal SD could only be stored with application data instead of application itself.

I'm almost positive that you can't move apps to your "internal SD card" regardless of whether or not you have an external sd card installed.
My understanding is that you can only move apps to the external SD card (at least that's how it's been on any ROM I've ever used)

why... Why! WHY!!! . . . oh >.>
muh316 said:
Why does my Captivate only limit me to having 2GB of space for apps? I'm not using an external SD card and I want to install my apps onto my internal SD card or atleast move them there.
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Why you ask...
Well simple, your limited to only 2GB because this size was choosen by phone manufacturors years ago when they were first designing the phone.
Consider that most of the phones in use back when 2.2 was released did not, for the full storage potential, even have the 2GB that we have just for apps (16GB in total). Heck most did not even have 1GB (I think 512MB was the standard). There was no separation between app storage and other media. This lead to users running out of space for both rather quickly. The solution then was to find use for the external SD as it could be as large as 32GB of storage.
The whole "internal SD" thing was thought up because it seemed wise to separate app storage from media storage. Also back when 2.2 was first released we did not have such massive apps as on the market today, so 2GB was plenty of any and all user (excluding the ppl who felt a need to have 200+ user apps...)
So, you can't store apps to the "internal SD" because that's not what it is meant to be used for. When companies decided to start putting such massive storage into the phone there was no reason for it to be any bigger.
As to only being able to move apps to the external SD, simple; Google did not design Android to do so.
To allow such would require changing how Android sees the "Internal SD" and to change how the app to SD function works, it is not currently written to check for multiple SD cards. I don't see any Dev willing to take up the task when the solution to running out of app space has already been solved by a much better means.
A different way to view the problem would be to ask (or learn, as that's the xda way) about re-sizing the partition to make the app storage larger. If enough people ask (politely!) maybe one of the Devs can be convinced to make it standard in their ROM that it be more then the default 2GB, or someone might make an app or flashable .zip that allows for re-sizing.
lt:dr - phone is old, based on old specs (think pre- 2.1 Android).

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.

Is there any way to force the phone to use External memory?

This is my first phone with a lot of internal memory and I don't quite get how it uses it... Is there any way for the phone to use my external 16GB memory card instead of always using its own 8GB partition?

I second this question.
Though it may seem useless to do so, on the contrary I have a 32g ext SD card and would be fine ignoring the (confusing and my case redundant) internal SD card.
Or if not disable, maybe force apps/etc to default to the ext card?
Sent from my XT875 using xda premium

The question is does your app allow you the option to use your external memory. Not all apps are created equal and whether they allow you to use the external SD card is really up to the app developer. Its in the coding of the app that determines where the data is stored. Check your apps for that option and if there is none request it from the developer.

I believe there are ways to use the sd-ext for some kinds of data files used by large games, but the app must run on internal mem. I store all docs, downloads, pictures, music, videos, etc. on my external microsd card, but apps have to go on internal or they disappear or don't work. Search for 'apps2sd bionic' and you should find a way to store some game data externally.

raylgo said:
This is my first phone with a lot of internal memory and I don't quite get how it uses it... Is there any way for the phone to use my external 16GB memory card instead of always using its own 8GB partition?
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I did this when I had the atrix, and have also done it on my Bionic.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1404872

Ha! Didn't even think about messing with the fstab, thanks for that link. I'll be trying this shortly, and repost with results.
On a side note, I figured it shouldn't rely on the apps per say, considering a lot of phones don't have an internal "sdcard" (note: sdcard, not to be confused with regular internal app storage).
My opinion, naming the internal sdcard what it is was a seriously stupid idea. Should've followed suit with "app storage", how about "data storage"... just something not involving "card".
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Cool, it worked awesome. Just had to swap files from one to the other to keep data in spots apps expected it to be.
Actually, I went ahead and disable the internal SD, and mounted the extsd in its place. Have been playing with mounting the extsd to both internal and external (resulted in only one mount point working), and also tried renaming the internals mount point to something like "internal_storage" (resulted in boot loop).
Be careful if playing with the mount points. The system doesn't like booting if it can't find something mounted to "sdcard", etc.
Something I'll be playing with and experimenting with. Any more info on editing these mount points would be very handy.
And lastly, sorry for hijacking your thread
Hope I didn't bother.
Sent from my XT875 using xda premium

[Q] sdcard0 vs extsdcard, want to move large data to extsdcard

Sigh, this is exactly what I was worried about when upgrading from my EVO 3D.
I noticed my new M8 has a sdcard0 and extsdcard folder. And of course, the apps and games which download hundreds of megs of data in order to run are downloading to the 24 gig internal sdcard0 mount point instead of the nearly empty 64gig extsdcard0 mountpoint. I really REALLY hate how so many Android phones seem to do this, why can't it just be partitioned as internal instead of faking a sdcard, thus making large apps install to internal with no option of installing to the actual external card?
Anyway, without rooting my phone, is there any way I can somehow set it so apps download and install their data to the actual SD card? The whole reason I didn't get the M7 was because I don't want my data to be stuck on the phone's internal memory in case anything happens, as well as to not waste internal memory space on several hundred megs or even gigs of data when I can use a large sdcard for that.

I believe u can go to manage apps and move apps to the sd card. Some may not be able to if it's not comparable but a lot of them should.
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aaron130 said:
I believe u can go to manage apps and move apps to the sd card. Some may not be able to if it's not comparable but a lot of them should.
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I tried that, it only moves the app executable to the SD card, not the hundreds of megs of additional data it downloaded. The app management screen even tells me how much of this additional data is on the internal memory and how much of it is on the SD card (it's all on internal), but moving the app doesn't move the additional data to the SD card.

One would assume that the ext sd 's bus interface would be quick enough to not bog any app which would be using it. That being the case htc has no excuse for not having interchangeable symbolic mounting points between the two sd's. Ive physcally moved some of the data from app's (dcim, and random music ) directories to the extsd, and at least it unburdens the internal sd.
The apk resource fork in these systems could be processed better in android and it's sdk, or even the runtime.
F yes it sucks.