Way to move apps to emmc instead of sd card? - Droid Incredible Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I was wondering if this is possible. Back on the first Froyo OTA, when you moved apps to SD via the apps list in settings, it actually moved them to /mnt/emmc/.android-secure. Is there a way to configure it this way again?

Not sure about that, but if you modify your vold.fstab file so that the last two lines are basically inverted (PM me if you want the exact specifics on what to change), it'll change the mount points of your sdcard and your emmc. Basically the phone will think one is the other. Very handy to put that 7ish Gigs of wasted space to use.

Related

[Q] What should I get rid of on my SD?

The picture below is what I have on my SD. I'm trying to maximize space on my SD. What can I remove? I'm using CM7.
Probably one of the largest things you can remove it old Nandroid backups. They're under clockworkmod>backups and can range from a couple hundred megs to over a gig, I try to keep that cleaned of any backups I'm not likely to use.
If you want to maximize space, why don't you sort the folders by size and then see what is using the most space and clear it depending on what you do and don't use.
I have the same question. My SD is cluttered with stuff left behind by deleted applications or are empty because they are unused by a currently installed application.
I plan to delete them one by one and see what happens. After making a backup, of course.
You could copy the contents of SD to hard drive, format the sd card again and put back from hard drive what is needed. Running it a couple days should tell you what is needed.
From my experience, you can delete anything really. If it's a folder put there by an app on your phone, once you launch the app again, it will put the files it needs back.
The only problem you would have, is if you have moved apps to your SD. Some apps auto install to the SD card...which can eat up space if you have plenty of room left on the phone itself. Try going into the settings in the Applications section and move all you can from the SD card to the phone...that will help cut down on space.
Another thing that will eat up space, is if you use your camera and the files save to the SD card. You can change that too so that they save to EMMC instead.
Other than that, if you have ringtones or wallpapers saved on the SD card that you never use or rarely use, you can probably move those over to EMMC as well...and move any music to EMMC as well. If your running a Sense ROM, then the stock music player will read the music from EMMC...so will PowerAMP if you use it.
Oh, some other stuff I noticed...check your downloads folder too. You can set up the stock browser to save files to EMMC as well.
Basically...anything you can save to EMMC or move there and still use it...then you should. At least that's what I do with my phone and my tiny 2gb card.
Hope that helps.

[Q] Swap internal and external SD

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)

I'm stumped

Hi everybody. I am trying to get my daughters phone set up. She is 20, very busy, and I only get the phone an hour or so at a time which is frustrating. I have modded my own android phones(Note, Infuse,Gnex) so I'm not a beginner, but this captivate glide is acting a little different.
Here is where I am. CWM is installed and a backup of 2.3.6 is done, and a copy saved on my laptop. I have ardatdat's 1.2 version kernel ready to flash for root and to remove the IQcarrier junk. She will probably stay on stock, rooted since she is not into teching her phone but does want to remove ads and maybe tether to a tablet occasionally on ATT without a tethering plan- tit BU and freezing or removing the tethering manager.
I am having trouble getting the phone to recognize an 8 gb sd card. I have repartitioned it so more apps can be moved over(primary fat32 and logical-ext 2) and split the card to 4gb and 4gb.(approx)- even when just left as a one partition card with 8gb fat 32 the phone just won't recognize it. I put the old 2gb card into the phone and that one is recognized but is from a non android phone- an LG xenon.
I want to put the zip files to flash on the external sd card along with a few apk's ti install with the appinstaller. But.. the phone won't see the files. Do I have to use the internal storage?????
Don't have the phone now- it's off to work with her. So I will try later tonite. Any suggestions??
Thanks. Open for any help here. I have never had this much trouble before! Have searched for sideloading apk's, but from what I am finding it has to be rooted first??? I have checked unknown sources for install of 3rd party apps and usb debugging also checked.
I will continue my hunting for info. I'm sure it's just basic stuff I'm just not seeing. Thanks again
Ah. CWM Recovery is not compatible with the external sd card, I believe. It's located under /sdcard/external_sd but the zips are invisible in the recovery. So yes, I think you have to use internal
Aquethys said:
Ah. CWM Recovery is not compatible with the external sd card, I believe. It's located under /sdcard/external_sd but the zips are invisible in the recovery. So yes, I think you have to use internal
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for that. Did not read that anywhere! Any idea about apks on the external sd card?
Ive tried that too... The apps are located in the data partition on the kernel so that is already directed to internal... The only things most people put are Media like movies because music players scan the entire /sdcard partition and the /external_sd is in it.
Hope this helped ^o^
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I927R using xda premium
sashusmom said:
I am having trouble getting the phone to recognize an 8 gb sd card. I have repartitioned it so more apps can be moved over(primary fat32 and logical-ext 2) and split the card to 4gb and 4gb.(approx)- even when just left as a one partition card with 8gb fat 32 the phone just won't recognize it. I put the old 2gb card into the phone and that one is recognized but is from a non android phone- an LG xenon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You may need to format the sd card in the phone itself to get it to show up, some people have had problems with cards formatted in other devices or a pc.
I haven't tried a dual partition card in the Glide, but I came from a Motorola Flipside which had an absolutely tiny amount of space for apps, making link2sd and the second partition virtually mandatory. The Glide, however, has 2gb internal memory for apps, and the ~3.75gb internal memory that's mounted as /sdcard that you can store apps on with the standard Move to SD build into android, so I can't imagine anyone needing more storage than that for standard apps.
You can always points Titanium Backup to /sdcard/external_sd, my backup folder tends to get pretty big since I keep multiple backups. If she's installing a ton of games that have extra downloads to the sdcard though, you can fill up the internal "sd card" pretty quickly, and there's only a couple of ways to deal with that. She can give you the phone after installing those games and downloading the extra data, and you can manually move the data over to the external SD and create symlinks yourself, which can be tedious.
Alternatively, you can modify the vold.fstab to change the mount points, putting the real external sd as /sdcard and the internal storage as /sdcard/external_sd. There's instructions for this here. The vold.fstab method is what I personally use, as I've got a 32gb sd card and far too many games that want to download 500mb+ each.
bakageta said:
You may need to format the sd card in the phone itself to get it to show up, some people have had problems with cards formatted in other devices or a pc.
I haven't tried a dual partition card in the Glide, but I came from a Motorola Flipside which had an absolutely tiny amount of space for apps, making link2sd and the second partition virtually mandatory. The Glide, however, has 2gb internal memory for apps, and the ~3.75gb internal memory that's mounted as /sdcard that you can store apps on with the standard Move to SD build into android, so I can't imagine anyone needing more storage than that for standard apps.
You can always points Titanium Backup to /sdcard/external_sd, my backup folder tends to get pretty big since I keep multiple backups. If she's installing a ton of games that have extra downloads to the sdcard though, you can fill up the internal "sd card" pretty quickly, and there's only a couple of ways to deal with that. She can give you the phone after installing those games and downloading the extra data, and you can manually move the data over to the external SD and create symlinks yourself, which can be tedious.
Alternatively, you can modify the vold.fstab to change the mount points, putting the real external sd as /sdcard and the internal storage as /sdcard/external_sd. There's instructions for this here. The vold.fstab method is what I personally use, as I've got a 32gb sd card and far too many games that want to download 500mb+ each.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi and thanks. I just read about that mod. Is it as straightforward as just rewriting that file in rootexplorer? It sounds too easy!
I was gonna format the sd card in the phone but was not sure it would format the internal card and not the external one since I can't seem to get it recognized. I would be in big do do if I erased her stuff!!! It might be a bad card and I'll try an alternate one.
Yep, it's really as easy as snagging the file, editing it, and rewriting it in root explorer (or a shell, I haven't bought root explorer so I tend to do things from the shell). As for formatting in the phone, it should list both an SD card and USB storage, the usb storage is the internal storage, and the sd card is actually the sd card, it *should* have a format option there if the card is good, even if it's not seeing the files on it.
Thank you all!!!!!
bakageta said:
Yep, it's really as easy as snagging the file, editing it, and rewriting it in root explorer (or a shell, I haven't bought root explorer so I tend to do things from the shell). As for formatting in the phone, it should list both an SD card and USB storage, the usb storage is the internal storage, and the sd card is actually the sd card, it *should* have a format option there if the card is good, even if it's not seeing the files on it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Piece of cake!!!!! :highfive: We now have the external sd card (only 8gb for now) mounted instead. Whoever came up with that very clever work around is genius. That's better than apps2sd or link2sd.
Thank you so much to everyone who responded. Between all of you I have Rooted with the kernel on the internal card, and the appinstaller saw the apks when I put them on the internal card. My original 8gb card was bad. It was a cheap one- $5 or $8 dollars. I got 2 and the 2nd one works fine- formatted in my computer and phone saw it immediately. I transferred the stuff from the internal to the external. Did I need to do that? I left it on the internal incase the sd card is removed. Tethering manager is removed- att junk is frozen.
One more question if I may? If another rom is flashed, or I odin back to stock for whatever reason, does this sd card switch stay, or is it overwritten with the new rom? Just need to know what to do if I ever need to reset this phone.
I also added my google account to the market to put my paid apps on her phone but when I signed in to the play store under my account my paid apps did not show as paid. Anyone know why? I worked around it but I was surprised.
Again thanks to such a nice group of people! :highfive: I had a crash course in the captivate glide in 24 hrs. You gave me info here I don't think I could have found with continued searching.
sashusmom said:
I transferred the stuff from the internal to the external. Did I need to do that? I left it on the internal incase the sd card is removed. Tethering manager is removed- att junk is frozen.
One more question if I may? If another rom is flashed, or I odin back to stock for whatever reason, does this sd card switch stay, or is it overwritten with the new rom? Just need to know what to do if I ever need to reset this phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Moving everything that was on the internal memory to the SD card was a good call, since you swapped the mount points everything that stored stuff on the internal memory will now expect that stuff to be on the sd card. There's no need to keep it on the internal memory (you can delete everything there and it'll recreate LOST.DIR) unless you plan on swapping back at any point, in which case you could just copy stuff across before swapping back.
As for flashing another rom, that'll require you edit the vold.fstab again unless the rom has already made that change, which none of our existing roms have.
Personally, I keep the internal memory completely empty as far as daily use things go. CWR will store its backups there, as it mounts the memory independently of the vold.fstab, and all roms/kernels/etc you want to flash can go there, leaving the sd card free for things you actually use.
Bak- thank you so much for all the info. I saved the original file and I will make a copy of the edited mount file in case I need it again. If I ever get her phone back I will clear the internal card since that info is now on the external one.
I wonder how long this captivate glide will hold up with my daughter. She is very hard on her cell phones. Already case #1 broke due to a drop. 2 more are on the way. When I pointed out it could have been the phone broken she said- yeah, I know. I'll keep the case on. :victoryshe hates cases!) Hopefully this phone will get her thru her senior year in college!
Thank you everyone who pitched in to get me the info I needed to get it going. :laugh:

[Q] Newbie ?:Have a nice 64GB SD Card - How to use?

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.

how to transfer SD to new one?

With some programs installing partially to external SD card, how do I transfer them when I upgrade it to bigger size, when system files are invisible? My data files are easy, I just copy them to my laptop and then back to the new card, but invisible system files?
Better yet, how do I make them visible on Win7 laptop, as this is really, really annoying me beyond belief. I could be thinking the card is empty and format it, when it could have whole bunch system crap on it. I really don't feel like reinstalling 100 or so programs again, some of them paid.
You can use adb to pull all files/folders from old sdcard to laptop and push them back to the new one.
pete4k said:
With some programs installing partially to external SD card, how do I transfer them when I upgrade it to bigger size, when system files are invisible? My data files are easy, I just copy them to my laptop and then back to the new card, but invisible system files?
Better yet, how do I make them visible on Win7 laptop, as this is really, really annoying me beyond belief. I could be thinking the card is empty and format it, when it could have whole bunch system crap on it. I really don't feel like reinstalling 100 or so programs again, some of them paid.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are no programs/apps which use the external sdcard by default for installation purposes.
Now if you are talking about Apps2SD that's a different story, but that's something which
YOU have initiated, the actual programs/apps by default install themselves entirely in the
internal memory of the phone.
Good luck!
Misterjunky said:
There are no programs/apps which use the external sdcard by default for installation purposes.
Now if you are talking about Apps2SD that's a different story, but that's something which
YOU have initiated, the actual programs/apps by default install themselves entirely in the
internal memory of the phone.
Good luck!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is absolutely not true. Just downloaded game ARC Redux, App info says 37 MB internal, 521 MB ext SD card, right after install and I have not changed any installation settings nor move to SD (is there a setting where programs should install? I know developer can allow program to install on SD or not, is there such option for user?). Worst comes to worse I'll instal ADB, but there must be easier way. I remember I had some program that would show all invisible files in windows, can't remember what was it, maybe it would work. I can't believe I'm the only one having this dilemma.

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