Hi
I have a Samsung Galaxy W, and you know that this device has such a little memory for apps and games.
I bought a 16 gb class 10 external sd and I was wonder if the memory swap mod could be a really useful operation.
I'm not usual to install lots of applications and games, (I really use only social apps) however sometimes I like to play some heavy-data games. So I need a help: do you suggest me to keep the sd as a default external memory, maybe trying to move the heavier apps in this external space with link2sd and other stuff, or it would be better to make the swap and then make the sd recognized as internal memory?
I read that sometimes the swap operation causes lags and some other stuff, so I need your opinions and suggests.
Thanks in advice
Some custom ROMs automatically swap /sdcard/ with /sdcard/external_sd/
You could try that, it's a great solution IMHO.
Did you try "GL to SD(root)"? Download it from the market... It just mount the external SD as the sdcard, but temporarily. And it also moves game data to external SD.
Sent from my GT-I8150 using XDA on CyanogenMod 9
Also bugs me as well. I just bought 32gb class 10 card and i am using cow bionic 2 rom. But i already changed the vold.fstab folder back to stock. I would be the same not a heavy app storer. If i dont use the app any more i delete it.
But supposedly if you have a class 10 card you should not experience any lag if you have the swap done?? How true this is i dont know
maybe i'll find this useful for heavy data games like generation of chaos or other apps/games that install themselves on the internal storage and not on the sd card, other than that, i seriously don't know what other advantage it can provide
Of course, swapping is a good solution for huge games data storing on external sd and u own a class 10 sd card which is fast enough for swapping. However, this may cause problem when u want to remove sd card as most of the apps are stored on it.
GL to sd is a better solution to me personally. I wrote a similar script instead of using GL to sd. This mounts certain paths to ur external sd card while keeping other important apps such as launcher, theme, widgets, on the internal sd.
yewsiong said:
Of course, swapping is a good solution for huge games data storing on external sd and u own a class 10 sd card which is fast enough for swapping. However, this may cause problem when u want to remove sd card as most of the apps are stored on it.
GL to sd is a better solution to me personally. I wrote a similar script instead of using GL to sd. This mounts certain paths to ur external sd card while keeping other important apps such as launcher, theme, widgets, on the internal sd.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Care to explain about the script you wrote. Also whats GL?? I wouldnt use any big games so no point in me swapping. But if any roms i flash to the phone has this done ill not bother changing it back to stock. Also is class 10 not the highest micro sd card you can get??
snwman said:
Care to explain about the script you wrote. Also whats GL?? I wouldnt use any big games so no point in me swapping. But if any roms i flash to the phone has this done ill not bother changing it back to stock. Also is class 10 not the highest micro sd card you can get??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, class 10 is the fastest writing speed for MicroSD at this moment.
I used script manager to create a script for mounting and give it SU and set it on boot. It is very simple.
Create a new script file and type the following:
(I used the Android folder as example)
Code:
mount -o bind sdcard/external_sd/Android sdcard/Android
This is for gameloft
Code:
mount -o bind sdcard/external_sd/gameloft sdcard/gameloft
After creating these, u need to cut the files in Android or gameloft from internal sdcard and paste them to the new location on external sd. Leave the original folders empty.
Remember to set them "boot" and "su".
enjoy
Edit: if u download any other games that stores its data in Android folder, it will automatically move to ur external sd card as the script has mounted the path to external sd since every boot.
yewsiong said:
Of course, swapping is a good solution for huge games data storing on external sd and u own a class 10 sd card which is fast enough for swapping. However, this may cause problem when u want to remove sd card as most of the apps are stored on it.
GL to sd is a better solution to me personally. I wrote a similar script instead of using GL to sd. This mounts certain paths to ur external sd card while keeping other important apps such as launcher, theme, widgets, on the internal sd.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
However, this may cause problem when u want to remove sd card as most of the apps are stored on it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But, in a swap situation, on the Wonder, Apps are not moved to External SD Card........
without swap they are moved to /sdcard/external_sd/.android_secure folder
with swap, moved Apps should be on re-mapped internal SD, so removing SD Card should not have any effect on Apps...
of course App Data should be on External [Removable] SD Card...re-mapped as /sdcard
It seems to me, for game players, Game Loft, etc.....Gl to SD is the ideal solution....****see also EDIT below****
Video for Wonder Here:
****EDIT: Just to say, yewsiong script looks good for gamers, etc.....****
It's pretty useful if you're an avid gamer. Some games usually reach 400mb+. But if not, you could still use it for storing music and videos.
saphiecor said:
It's pretty useful if you're an avid gamer. Some games usually reach 400mb+. But if not, you could still use it for storing music and videos.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which solution do you mean......
see yewsiong post here
irishpancake said:
Which solution do you mean......
see yewsiong post here
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think he meant without swapping, external sd can still be used as data, music, pics, etc. storage.
Go for it!
IMHO I see no cons whatsoever in performing the SD Card swap, just pros. I got my 32Gb Class 10 just for the swap... Check my signature links to see what I've done to my SGW...
a.fontenele said:
IMHO I see no cons whatsoever in performing the SD Card swap, just pros. I got my 32Gb Class 10 just for the swap... Check my signature links to see what I've done to my SGW...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
I followed the method outlined in your signature (http://latgale.co.uk/?p=70) and now I can see about 15GB (I have a 16GB class 10 SD) available for apps on SD.
However, when I try to move an app to the SD by using App2SD, the app doesn't go to the 15GB partition. How do you do?
Thanks a lot.
[.::MDT::.] said:
Hi,
I followed the method outlined in your signature (http://latgale.co.uk/?p=70) and now I can see about 15GB (I have a 16GB class 10 SD) available for apps on SD.
However, when I try to move an app to the SD by using App2SD, the app doesn't go to the 15GB partition. How do you do?
Thanks a lot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah... This is something I haven't found a solution for. Whenever you try to move an app, it goes to the USB Storage. Since we swapped memories, the app will be moved to the 1.7GB memory. For me it'd be great to have everything in the Micro SD card, the 1.7 GB memory is useless to me...
a.fontenele said:
Yeah... This is something I haven't found a solution for. Whenever you try to move an app, it goes to the USB Storage. Since we swapped memories, the app will be moved to the 1.7GB memory. For me it'd be great to have everything in the Micro SD card, the 1.7 GB memory is useless to me...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, that's a real pity! :crying:
I wonder what's the point of doing so, if the memory available for the apps still remains the 1,7GB partition... why swapping partitions then?
Do you have any idea if there is any ROM that lets you install apps in the "bigger partition" (the 14,3 GB according to the example above) or are you aware of any other possible solution?
Thanks.
[.::MDT::.] said:
Yeah, that's a real pity! :crying:
I wonder what's the point of doing so, if the memory available for the apps still remains the 1,7GB partition... why swapping partitions then?
Do you have any idea if there is any ROM that lets you install apps in the "bigger partition" (the 14,3 GB according to the example above) or are you aware of any other possible solution?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But, as I said before here ad nauseam, the External Physical SD Card is where Apps moved by App2SD are designed to go......so before doing a vold.fstab mount point swap, ppl should ask themselves.......
Do I really need a gigantic Internal USB Storage at [/mnt/sdcard], for what reason do I need this??
I think myself, that this is only useful for those who require to have Storage requirements for certain Games and GPS Maps Storage, etc, which do not have a built-in ability to store data on the External Physical SD Card [/mount/sdcard/external_sd]....but there are other ways to achieve this!!!
BTW, the Tutorial linked http://latgale.co.uk/?p=70 is by Eric Pīgoznis, who posted here in the very early days!!!
First of all, thanks a lot for your answer!
irishpancake said:
But, as I said before here ad nauseam, the External Physical SD Card is where Apps moved by App2SD are designed to go......so before doing a vold.fstab mount point swap, ppl should ask themselves.......
Do I really need a gigantic Internal USB Storage at [/mnt/sdcard], for what reason do I need this??
I think myself, that this is only useful for those who require to have Storage requirements for certain Games and GPS Maps Storage, etc, which do not have a built-in ability to store data on the External Physical SD Card [/mount/sdcard/external_sd]....but there are other ways to achieve this!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, that's exactly what I would like to have!
I bought a 16GB card to install many maps and games, but I quickly ran out of memory so I cannot add anymore apps (without removing already installed apps of course).
That's why I would like to use my SD card for apps - if possible of course!
And it's a pity I have 15GB free (for what? Just my music/video/pictures?) and I cannot use this space for apps.
What are the other ways to achieve this you mentioned?
It'd be really helpful!
irishpancake said:
BTW, the Tutorial linked http://latgale.co.uk/?p=70 is by Eric Pīgoznis, who posted here in the very early days!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I found the same instructions on this forum, you're right...
hmm
Swapping Internal/External is the most important for those HD gamers :good:
irishpancake said:
But, as I said before here ad nauseam, the External Physical SD Card is where Apps moved by App2SD are designed to go......so before doing a vold.fstab mount point swap, ppl should ask themselves.......
Do I really need a gigantic Internal USB Storage at [/mnt/sdcard], for what reason do I need this??
I think myself, that this is only useful for those who require to have Storage requirements for certain Games and GPS Maps Storage, etc, which do not have a built-in ability to store data on the External Physical SD Card [/mount/sdcard/external_sd]....but there are other ways to achieve this!!!
BTW, the Tutorial linked http://latgale.co.uk/?p=70 is by Eric Pīgoznis, who posted here in the very early days!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dhada said:
Swapping Internal/External is the most important for those HD gamers :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree... any news about that then?
Thanks a lot!
In older versions of Android the external SD would be mounted as /mnt/sdcard but now that is used for the internal memory and the external SD is now /mnt/sdcard/external_sd. This is a bit of a problem as some apps can only save to /mnt/sdcard and it quickly takes up our phone's internal memory. I have offline GPS maps and a few Gameloft games which can only save their data to /mnt/sdcard and as you can imagine free space is very limited.
What I would like is to switch this around. Basically I have a 32GB SD card that I would like to use a storage for some of my apps as it is not being fully utilized. I've searched around and it doesn't seem like there is an easy way to do this. I'm not completely sure but it seems like there are methods that might be specific to different phones which requires modifying a file in /system/etc.
Will this safely work for our phone?
check this topic
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1458153&page=3
posts 21 to 25 and 33 & 34..
For Recovery swapping has been tried..
You may get some idea..
Maybe the use of symbolic links could help, but I never tried it on an Android device.
I had read people Mapping the External under a directory for example the Games directory and therefore all games would in theory be on the External. I think this is what you mentioned as symbolic links.
How can you do that. I tryed a million things. Last time i installed literom with added swap internal memory to sd mod. And after i copy something in phone i loose the mobile signal. I guess the card is getting corrupted or something. How can i make it so the sd card wont be unmounted when i plug the phone in pc ?
Might want to consider this:
Root External 2 Internal SD
I've not used this specific one myself but I have used similar apps in the past.
I didn't use that yet.
But what i found untill now
1. Using Directory Bind wich makes a link between actual place of the files and where they should be. Example You put com.xxx.xxx in your SD card and set the progam to tell android when is looking into sdcard/android/data/com.xxx.xxx go for files in sdcard/external_sd/com.xxx.xxx
This method is good for games and files for them
2. Another thing is modifing vold.fstab and swapping the way adroid mounts those partitions. (this option is buggy somehow)
Hi guys this new games are driving me crazy. New Nova data file is almost 2GB and other new games are not better. And well I am loving at so much I got new 64GB Micro SD card only to find myself in a trouble, all games save data file in internal storage. Now I tried to go to manage programs and select move to SD Card and only thing it did is moved actual game .like 5 mb and not data folder. So my question is this. Can I just manually move data folders from internal storage to external or I need to use program or setting .....I want to use my new 64GB SD card as main data storage for all games , what do I do ? I am on new rooted ICS with Darkside Evolution 3 beta 1
Thanks !
Noone knows or this is so obvious as copy from internal to external that noone want to even drop a line in here
I have 2 mb left on my internal card ...... HEEELP Thx
I'm in the same exact boat! I'd like to know also.
Yeah I can't imagine something like this is not widely discussed and not actually right in the settings. I do see copy to SD in settings of Applications but it looks like all it does is copy of original install files and not data file, come on guys open this huge secret on how to use external SD for all game cache cause Nova 3 is just killing me .........
Another Newbie Question here.
So AT&T only provides the 16MB Note 2, so of course we add a nice juicy 64GB SD card. But it seems that the stock phone does not really use it for much (that I can tell) to store anything.
First question: On the stock ROM, what apps can be told to use the SD card as default, and how do you change the app settings?
Second Question, for the future: Assuming one Root's the Note 2, what can be safely moved to the SD and how? Or is another ROM required?
Humbly yours - thanks in advance!
Flame Red said:
Another Newbie Question here.
So AT&T only provides the 16MB Note 2, so of course we add a nice juicy 64GB SD card. But it seems that the stock phone does not really use it for much (that I can tell) to store anything.
First question: On the stock ROM, what apps can be told to use the SD card as default, and how do you change the app settings?
Second Question, for the future: Assuming one Root's the Note 2, what can be safely moved to the SD and how? Or is another ROM required?
Humbly yours - thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also have a 64gb card. I put all of my Titanium backups and Nandroids on the external SD (right now TWRP doesn't work with the exfat formatting of my card, so if I want to restore I'll have to move it from ext to int SD).
I also have Spotify set to store any offline music on the external SD. You can do this by installing an old version of Spotify, pointing it to external SD, then updating the app. A quick Google search will find this if it's something you want to do.
It's hard to tell you what to move to the external card without knowing what apps you use. You can get an app called Directory Bind that will point any internal SD location to your external SD. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1889550
SD card setup/directory optimization
Really like Android and the Note 2 so far.
Thanks for the directory bind guide link...interesting. Maybe my answer is somewhere in there, so I will take a look either way.
New to external SD use on Android as well (or any phone, that is). I have a 64GB sandisk as well, and It was pre-formatted for Android apparently with some s/w on it. Which is fine, if that is the way I should go.
Just playing around with it at first and copied a music album over, in similar format to my iTunes directory structure -I figured, why not. Perhaps there is a better way to structure my directories though? More general way for all apps to recognize? Moot point?
I assume different apps might require different directory structures...to be efficient, or to be able to work with those dirs/files. I'd rather have the most optimal structure now, before I start messing with creating more directories, etc down the road.
The general questions are, should I format this as something else? What is best to use? (Still looking into different file manager/transfer apps for now, and MAY root and keep stock ROM in the future, but acclimating myself with Android OS has been more than enough for now...I do enough Linux at work, so not in any rush )
Since I went there, I don't know if the OP's question was fully answered...so again, here's a quick (newbie) question for those who root but keep the stock ROM: can apps be moved to the SD card in that case? Or do I need to break out of stock ROM to do that?
Thanks in advance!
Wanted to report back that I tried a simple case of using Directory Bind for something non-critical as a test. Used it to remount Titaniumn Backup to the external SD. Yes, I know you can just point it there. Just wanted to test Directory Bind.
It seemed to work until I rebooted the phone. Then it lost all the binding even tough I had checked off to save it for reboot and saved the binds to a file. So just beware that if you were using Directory Bind for something critical - you might have to recover the phone! I removed the package for now.
dponte said:
Really like Android and the Note 2 so far.
Thanks for the directory bind guide link...interesting. Maybe my answer is somewhere in there, so I will take a look either way.
New to external SD use on Android as well (or any phone, that is). I have a 64GB sandisk as well, and It was pre-formatted for Android apparently with some s/w on it. Which is fine, if that is the way I should go.
Just playing around with it at first and copied a music album over, in similar format to my iTunes directory structure -I figured, why not. Perhaps there is a better way to structure my directories though? More general way for all apps to recognize? Moot point?
I assume different apps might require different directory structures...to be efficient, or to be able to work with those dirs/files. I'd rather have the most optimal structure now, before I start messing with creating more directories, etc down the road.
The general questions are, should I format this as something else? What is best to use? (Still looking into different file manager/transfer apps for now, and MAY root and keep stock ROM in the future, but acclimating myself with Android OS has been more than enough for now...I do enough Linux at work, so not in any rush )
Since I went there, I don't know if the OP's question was fully answered...so again, here's a quick (newbie) question for those who root but keep the stock ROM: can apps be moved to the SD card in that case? Or do I need to break out of stock ROM to do that?
Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If your'e just talking about music, you can put it in any folder and any structure you'd like. The Android Media Server process scans your entire SD card for media (including music) except for folders with a ".nomedia" file in them. It will use the tags to identify the artist, song, and album, then sort them based on that information.
Flame Red said:
Wanted to report back that I tried a simple case of using Directory Bind for something non-critical as a test. Used it to remount Titaniumn Backup to the external SD. Yes, I know you can just point it there. Just wanted to test Directory Bind.
It seemed to work until I rebooted the phone. Then it lost all the binding even tough I had checked off to save it for reboot and saved the binds to a file. So just beware that if you were using Directory Bind for something critical - you might have to recover the phone! I removed the package for now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
bummer
don't bother moving any apps to the external sd, since you have TONS OF ROOM in your internal memory on this phone..On the original note, I had over 300 apps installed on the internal, and still had over 5 gigs of room left..
just keep your music, movies, pictures, and other space hogs on it..trust me, leaving apps alone will never be a problem when you have a phone with this much storage space!
wase4711 said:
don't bother moving any apps to the external sd, since you have TONS OF ROOM in your internal memory on this phone..On the original note, I had over 300 apps installed on the internal, and still had over 5 gigs of room left..
just keep your music, movies, pictures, and other space hogs on it..trust me, leaving apps alone will never be a problem when you have a phone with this much storage space!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
11GB is a lot (available to start with on the ATT model) if you use the external for media (and app cache) and leave the internal for apps mainly...agreed.
Most apps are small in size...however, one app like NOVA3 is 2GB and that is a big bite of your 11GB available, so that is a little concerning
I haven't had the device or android long enough to know, but, are app databases and cache allowed to reside on the external card --in lue of the ability to move apps to the SD being taken away since Jelly Bean (was it at that update)? Can someone point to a good thread on the reason and discussion about that? Thanks.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1994046
App2SD change external to internal.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using xda premium
You can make your external your main storage device by using this root technique. But some people don't advise it saying it slows down your processing on apps.
wase4711 said:
don't bother moving any apps to the external sd, since you have TONS OF ROOM in your internal memory on this phone..On the original note, I had over 300 apps installed on the internal, and still had over 5 gigs of room left..
just keep your music, movies, pictures, and other space hogs on it..trust me, leaving apps alone will never be a problem when you have a phone with this much storage space!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Note II is a Unified Storage device. It has 11gb available for both user content (pictures, movie, music etc) and apps. I lost 2gb of space moving from my S2 to the N2.
S2 is not a Unified storage device, so it has 11gb of storage available for user content and a separate Apps partition of 2gb.