I'm going to be using a 16GB SD card and want to make sure I have a lot of space for apps. I've seen many mentions of increasing the size of the 4th partition, namely the SD Card partition. But would it do any harm to increase the size of the Data partition (partition 3) which I believe is where the installed apps live? I really don't need a ton of SD card space since I won't be storing a lot of media on it or anything.
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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?
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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.
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).
Hello
I have spent sometime going through some past articles on partitioning. There are still questions in my mind. I hope someone could help me clear up this.
I gather it's good to have an external partition where it is used to store apps and cache. It is stated that optimal size for it is abut 512mb - 1G as ext3/4.
Is there in fact reason to stop me from converting the whole SD to ext3/4 and get rid of fat32 altogether? I am linux based and I really don't care much about visibility of files at all. It seems that the current ROM works with 2 partitions: one fat32 and the other as ext3/4 and we typically allot a lot more for fat32. What's the primary reason behind this decision? Would there be some system stuffs that rely on fat32 to function?
As far as sizing is concerned, I would like to have some real reasons why things have to be arranged this way (with fat32 as a dominant partner) instead of going all the way to ext4
Even if You will format Your sd-card using Your phone You will see, that it will be FAT partition as well. So it's basic partition which android use to save photos, movies and all apps keep their data folders (f.ex. sms backups, apps backups etc). Ext partition is also not recognized by PC with Windows, so there isn't any way to use it as a storage device. And I think that similar is with android - I don't think if f.ex. music player will recognize Your music files on ext partition. But it's just my opinion and I may be wrog.
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
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.