Develop Bugs

[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.

Internal memory folders changed after J.B Kies update?

Hi I have been dealing with this problem for awhile now and still haven't been able to find a fix (without rooting). After I updated JB from Kies when it came out my internal and memory card folders are completely different? Also it says I only have 11.95GB total in my internal memory. The internal memory folder says :sdcard0. And my memory card folder is: extSdCard? I'm not rooted. Does anyone know how to get the folders back to the regular names ext sd ect? Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium

RPK925 said:
Hi I have been dealing with this problem for awhile now and still haven't been able to find a fix (without rooting). After I updated JB from Kies when it came out my internal and memory card folders are completely different? Also it says I only have 11.95GB total in my internal memory. The internal memory folder says :sdcard0. And my memory card folder is: extSdCard? I'm not rooted. Does anyone know how to get the folders back to the regular names ext sd ect? Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is how it they are formatted now. It's not a mistake or anything being messed up. I guess I'm just used the internal being sdcard0 and ex sd card being extsdcard. I don't use myfiles much. I use root explorer and it can displays it as storage and then inside that folder is extsdcard and sdcard. Or there is a fodler just called sdcard for the internal in the root of the file system.
What problem is it creating, other than just being different than you are used to ?

hednik said:
That is how it they are formatted now. It's not a mistake or anything being messed up. I guess I'm just used the internal being sdcard0 and ex sd card being extsdcard. I don't use myfiles much. I use root explorer and it can displays it as storage and then inside that folder is extsdcard and sdcard. Or there is a fodler just called sdcard for the internal in the root of the file system.
What problem is it creating, other than just being different than you are used to ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yhea, i'm having some trouble too. After the update my extCard is totally mess-up. The folders with the pictures and songs are not recognized, and the Gallery doesn't show hundreds of pictures, but i see if i use a file manager. I've synced all my songs so far, but with the pictures is a mess: seems also the format is not recognized anymore and with Kies i'm not seeing a way for put the pictures in the new folder named "Photo". It's really frustrating.

hednik said:
That is how it they are formatted now. It's not a mistake or anything being messed up. I guess I'm just used the internal being sdcard0 and ex sd card being extsdcard. I don't use myfiles much. I use root explorer and it can displays it as storage and then inside that folder is extsdcard and sdcard. Or there is a fodler just called sdcard for the internal in the root of the file system.
What problem is it creating, other than just being different than you are used to ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I cannot use the Apps2sd app anymore. And basically I would just like to be like before the update.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium

i'll try not to rant too hard but Kies and OTA firmware updates are a joke. you are essentially dirty flashing one rom over another with no real clearing of caches, no resetting, no way for all the programs to regroup, rebuild and run on the system hardware/software properly. the thing about dirty flashing is, it sticks well with some devices but generally not with many others. you'll see these types of issues many times among the avid flashers and those that must have the latest release of a developers rom.
i would recommend backing everything up, booting into stock recovery, wiping data/factory reset and wiping cache. if you decide to perform another update via kies in the future, i would do this procedure before AND after the update.
yes, you have to start over when you perform these sorts of actions but you have to ask yourself, are you happy with how your device is performing now (before the update)? is it worth starting over? (it might be if you're going to run on the updated OS for a year or so) and how well do you want it to perform after you install the update?
cheers
EDIT: i just assume everyone accesses recovery and download mode so i didnt post the button combo. recovery is: Volume Up + Home + Power. release just the power button when you get a vibrate.

RPK925 said:
Also it says I only have 11.95GB total in my internal memory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is normal for a 16GB SGS3. 16GB is advertised but actual formatted available space is less. 11.95GB is right on par. This is the case for just about all devices that have memory that is writable, including hard drives on a computer.
RPK925 said:
I cannot use the Apps2sd app anymore. And basically I would just like to be like before the update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any particular reason why you are using Apps2sd? $10 to $20 will land you an external memory card with huge amounts of space (32GB at least). This is plenty to store music, photos, and other misc. files. And even with a ton of apps installed to internal, you still should have ample space left over. There is just no good reason to use Apps2sd on this phone as it has so much internal memory. If this is just to keep you from losing data, then I would suggest rooting and using an app such as Titanium Backup as it makes it super easy to restore apps and the corresponding data after anything that requires a factory reset.
simonMac777 said:
Yhea, i'm having some trouble too. After the update my extCard is totally mess-up. The folders with the pictures and songs are not recognized, and the Gallery doesn't show hundreds of pictures, but i see if i use a file manager. I've synced all my songs so far, but with the pictures is a mess: seems also the format is not recognized anymore and with Kies i'm not seeing a way for put the pictures in the new folder named "Photo". It's really frustrating.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As stated by xBeerDroidx, factory reset from stock recovery. You will have to re-setup your device but it will be a one time frustration for now until the next update.

As stated by xBeerDroidx, factory reset from stock recovery. You will have to re-setup your device but it will be a one time frustration for now until the next update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually i did.
After the update, without factory reset, everything was (almost) fine… except a strange malfunction of the Gps (lock signal lost after a while) and sporadic reboot without reason. For the Gps I’ve found here the solution (NV Rebuild), but for the reboot… I wasn’t sure about it. So I decided for a factory reset. After that my ext card, with the ICS paths, was not recognized. So bucked up everything, format the ext card and let Kies sync my files and create all the folders needed from JB: Camera Photo Video for pictures, and media for the music. Now I’m let’s say 90% ready to go… I’m curios to test especially the Gps.

Cyanogen 10.2 and big problem

Hello guys. To begin with, sorry for my English (I'm from Poland).
I've got a problem with my Samsung Galaxy Note II. I have had jelly bean 4.1.2 (I think) stock system and today I changed it to Cyanogenmod 10.2. Everything is good now but there is a problem with storage on phone's memory. I did a full backup and all wipes using CWM recovery. After I installed new system, I have all my old contacts, but I don't have my music. Furthermore system says that there is only 2,14 GB of free space, although all media, applications, pictures, videos and other blablabla takes only around 100 MB. What should I do?
Thanks for any help

You're the 2nd poster in 24 hours whom I am 99% certain did not wipe as much as your think you did.
Odds are you did NOT wipe /data/media. So ALL you media files are still there. Now Android4.2+ use a different partition for the internal SD card than TouchWiz 4.1, which matters as the TWiz ineternalSD partition is NOT accessible from inside AOSP. There's a flashable zip to move your media across partitions somewhere here on XDA. Otherwise flash back to TouchWiz, move all your stuff over to an external SD card, and then flash back.

Skripka said:
You're the 2nd poster in 24 hours whom I am 99% certain did not wipe as much as your think you did.
Odds are you did NOT wipe /data/media. So ALL you media files are still there. Now Android4.2+ use a different partition for the internal SD card than TouchWiz 4.1, which matters as the TWiz ineternalSD partition is NOT accessible from inside AOSP. There's a flashable zip to move your media across partitions somewhere here on XDA. Otherwise flash back to TouchWiz, move all your stuff over to an external SD card, and then flash back.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok. I've got root and indeed there are all my old files in /data/media
But can I just remove them all from this folder (because I don't need them) or it won't give me free space on phone's storage?

wlodarix said:
Ok. I've got root and indeed there are all my old files in /data/media
But can I just remove them all from this folder (because I don't need them) or it won't give me free space on phone's storage?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Presuming nothing else is going on....If you really want then delete them and you'll get your storage space back. Otherwise just copy them over to your externalSD card or your new internalSD partition.
Coming from TouchWiz, probably 2GB of your memory is eaten up by your Nandroid backup of your OS...I'm guessing you chose to save everything internal, and nothing on your external SD card.

Skripka said:
Presuming nothing else is going on....If you really want then delete them and you'll get your storage space back. Otherwise just copy them over to your externalSD card or your new internalSD partition.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok. Thank you very much. Topic to close

internal folder structure/extsdcard format

A few days ago I noticed my phone wasn't taking photos correctly. They were corrupted. After a little research, I tried to reformat the sdcard from the phone settings but nothing actually happened, my files were all still on the sdcard. So after looking at the properties of pictures in the 3 different "camera" albums (I've had a few different roms on here) I realized that they're all in the internal storage under various folders like extsdcard/DCIM, sdcard/DCIM, and 0/sdcard/DCIM. Through ES file explorer I was able to determine that my external sd card called sdcard0.
I have my camera set to save externally but it's still not working, although my music reads fine from it.
Initially I though the problem was formatting the external sdcard but now I'm thinking the internal structure is a giant mess from the various roms and I'd really like to get it purged out and organized for stock (ish) TW roms. Can someone provide some guidance?
I'm currently on Jedi XP16.
Thanks

[Q] How to safely remove legacy files/data?

I'm running SlimBean 4.3 (curse my luck, I'm stuck on 4.3 thanks Samsung) and after doing a lot of research, I've found that since 4.2, there's been an update to the file system on internal memory cards where you can have multiple users - my main issue with this is that it duplicates all files I transfer to the internal SD card (I've only added music at this point) and it's taking up unnecessary space - is there a way to remove these files without actually removing the original files in my regular storage?
I've been searching the forums and I've found some things that touch on it but I can't find a straightforward guide to removing the legacy folder/files etc. I just don't like how I transfer 3 GB of music and I actually take up 6GB of space.
Edit: More research has shown that the issue is because my Recovery might not be up to date, (which I'm pretty sure it is, I'm running CWM 6.0.4.3) and I've completely formatted my internal about 3 times and reinstalled everything but it's still showing up in my drive - so that method is a bust. Is there any other option?