Database Develop

Other than space, benefits of A2SD?

I have a 8gb class 4 card. Been using it for over a year. I've just noticed lately that sometimes I bring up all the apps on the phone and I see some loading up. Maybe its due to the class 4...so I've been thinking of getting rid of A2SD. Just formatting the card and leaving it as is. No Fat32, linux-swap or ext3. Would that be an issue running Cyanogen 5.0.7 Test 3?

flexnix said:
I have a 8gb class 4 card. Been using it for over a year. I've just noticed lately that sometimes I bring up all the apps on the phone and I see some loading up. Maybe its due to the class 4...so I've been thinking of getting rid of A2SD. Just formatting the card and leaving it as is. No Fat32, linux-swap or ext3. Would that be an issue running Cyanogen 5.0.7 Test 3?
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Do some research, half of this post makes no sense. Fat32 will just have to exist if you want any music, files, etc. Swap can be enabled/disabled. And you can move apps to and from SD and Internal whenever you'd like through application settings on the new CM rom.

Seeing apps loading in the app drawer is most likely based on your class 4 card. If your apps will have no problem fitting on your internal storage then there is really no reason for you to have apps2sd enabled. If you have no intention of going over your internal storage with your apps then I agree with your assessment and opinion of getting rid of apps2sd.
Use the option in CM rom to move the apps you have to the internal storage and reformat your sd card to have one partition for FAT32 so you can use if for storage and be done with it.

flexnix said:
I have a 8gb class 4 card. Been using it for over a year. I've just noticed lately that sometimes I bring up all the apps on the phone and I see some loading up. Maybe its due to the class 4...so I've been thinking of getting rid of A2SD. Just formatting the card and leaving it as is. No Fat32, linux-swap or ext3. Would that be an issue running Cyanogen 5.0.7 Test 3?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seeing the applications filling in to the app drawer is a function of having a LOT of applications installed. It takes time for each application to process and get added. It would be the same on internal if you had enough space to install that many applications.
Of course a C6 sdcard would be faster than your C4.
Note: The secondary benefit to having applications on the sdcard is BANDWIDTH. Each storage device is capable of transferring data as some maximum speed. Distributing reads/writes across two devices can produce a peak bandwidth equal to the SUM of the bandwidths of the individual devices. To take proper advantage of this would, however, require that you carefully BALANCE the location of the various bits of data you are accessing such that it actually WILL try to access data from the two locations simultaneously.

[Q] Internal Memory Location

I am not sure where to find the full 16GB of storage available on the Vivid. When I look at the folder structure I see an sdcard and sdcard2. Sdcard seems to be internal storae and has 8GB available. Sdcard2 is my external SD card. Does anyone knbow where the orthe 8GB of space is? Maybe I am lookin at this wrong and missing something obvious.

I am going to assume you installed apps already? Those will take up part on the phones internal storage. If you have loaded music and videos it is quite possible you loaded them onto the internal storage as well. Also you will never see a Full 16gb worth of storage availability because if I recall correctly it shares some of that storage for the OS.

cyber_pete said:
I am not sure where to find the full 16GB of storage available on the Vivid. When I look at the folder structure I see an sdcard and sdcard2. Sdcard seems to be internal storae and has 8GB available. Sdcard2 is my external SD card. Does anyone knbow where the orthe 8GB of space is? Maybe I am lookin at this wrong and missing something obvious.
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The phone is using 4gb for apps and 8gb for sd card storage. Obviously you know that we won't get the whole 16gb to use.
Here is a screenshot for the apps:
Sent from my HTC PH39100 using xda premium

OTB I was showing 9GB Phone memory, 4GB Internal storage and 3.15GB left on my 32GB microSD card.

Hmm now that I actually went back and looked I do see what you mean. When connected to PC the available storage is 8.83 GB. What you need to remember is that Sense takes up an extraordinarily large amount of space compared to say Stock Android or pretty much any other version of Android out there. So my guess is once we see a CM7 or an Optimized Sense Rom we won't be able to access more than what we have right now. Kinda does throw you for a loop though when they "Say" 16GB worth of Internal Storage and Don't include an SD Card to compensate for the "Lie".

SGS2 has 16GB and you get 11.3GB. Not to mention a reset doesnt wipe the 11.3GB while the Vivid does wipe its 8.83GB.
So I am not sure that Sense takes up that much more space than touch wiz.
Sent from my HTC PH39100 using xda premium

Thanks for the responses guys. I realized after I posted that I hadn't even looked at the data partition. I expected a certain amount of spece to be eaten up by the OS but not 8GB. It makes much mor sense now.

The internal space is actually partitioned into three: 3GB for apps, 8GB as "sdcard", and the remaining 4GB are a system partition.

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).

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".
--
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.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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.