[Q] Switch Internal SD to External SD for Apps - Sprint Samsung Galaxy S III

Certain apps, more like games, use the SD card for saving data like many Gameloft titles like Gun Bros save over a gig of data onto the card so that the actual app doesn't take up too much room. The only problem is that our phones use that internal storage for everything and I was wondering if there was a way to switch apps from using my internal card to using the external as a default.
My external card is a 32GB and the internal is a 16GB so I have plenty of room.

The search feature is really awesome...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2068251

Believe me, I tried searching for hours on Google and with this forum and other forum's search engines. But thanks.

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External SD card issues?

I picked up a Black Friday A100, and spent the day playing with it, when I discovered that the micro-SD card I installed wasn't being read properly by the tablet. I had pulled it from my Nook Color, and while the A100 seemed to mount the card just fine, it couldn't see any of the contents. After reading a thread where someone else had a similar problem and solved it by replacing the tablet, I exchanged it at Wally World only to discover that this one has the same problem. I've tried multiple SD cards with no luck, and also noticed that the tablet doesn't give me the option of formatting the card.
Anyone else have this same problem? If so, do you have any suggestions for a solution?
Thanks in advance!
i also picked one up yesterday and popped in the SD card from my Nook Color, but I had no issues reading it.
Picked one up myself and had the same problem but found that the microSD is at /mnt/external_sd and not the usual /sdcard. They either have an internal sdcard for the tablet's memory or they have mapped onboard memory to the normal sdcard location.
Enjoy the tablet!
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
After a bit of research, it seems that the problem isn't with the tablet... it's with my expectations. Apparently, with Honeycomb, Android dropped the ability to move apps to the external SD card. The 8GB internal card is where the apps are installed, and the external_sd is only for media like movies, books, pictures and music. It seems like a strange step backward from Froyo, but it makes sense if a lot of the problems with performance and FCs had to do with apps running off of potentially crappy SD cards.
So... the stuffs still there, but it's just buried under root mnt/external_sd. For things like Titanium back-up, you just need to move the folder to the internal sdcard for the program to see it.
I hope this makes sense.
If you do need to free up some of internal storage (if you have a bunch of games with 200+ mb resource packs) you can install a root-access app called "GL to HD" that lets you move the game files to SD.

Keep ext sd card clean if unwanted files

Question
I want my extra sd card to only have my media...no and secure or data or any other app crap placed on it
I try and keep everything on the internal 16 GB storage. This way my 64 GB sd card only has my games and movies.
What I have noticed is I can delete them off my sd card...remove it...and restore the app data with titanium back up and I am all good. But after a few days they sneak onto my SD card and take up about 1 GB of space. In effect the files are duplicated on my internal memory and my sd card.
This is inefficient...does anyone know how to prevent this ?
Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk
If I understand you correctly and I believe I do, you want to maintain all of your External SD cards space for your media, and if its a 64gig card you want ALL 64gigs free for the media of your choice.
The simple fact that your phone formats that card so it can use it sould tell you that your phone placed data on your SD so not all 64gigs are free. Formatting in general takes some space away from the media for the format to reside. So on a 64gig card, you may end up with like, 62.3gigs or a bit less after format.
I use a 32gig but only 29.8gigs are useable due to format. just saying...hope I'm correct and that I helped you.
rdisanza said:
If I understand you correctly and I believe I do, you want to maintain all of your External SD cards space for your media, and if its a 64gig card you want ALL 64gigs free for the media of your choice.
The simple fact that your phone formats that card so it can use it sould tell you that your phone placed data on your SD so not all 64gigs are free. Formatting in general takes some space away from the media for the format to reside. So on a 64gig card, you may end up with like, 62.3gigs or a bit less after format.
I use a 32gig but only 29.8gigs are useable due to format. just saying...hope I'm correct and that I helped you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not what I meat.
What bothers me is my phone sees two sd cards ...one is the 16 GB internal memory and the other is the ext sd card.
When downloading an app that installs to sd by default the phone will randomly throw it on my ext sd card if It is plugged in...but if I take the card out it will put it on the 16 GB memory
What bothers me most is all the extra folders and the fact that somethings are in one place and not the other or both.
There needs t be a way for the phone to leave my sd card alone
It gets confusing because the so called 16 GB internal memory on the phone is treated like a sd card by the system and is not part of the system rom....the system rom where most apps is installed is seperate
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Trev186 said:
I try and keep everything on the internal 16 GB storage. This way my 64 GB sd card only has my games and movies.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WTF, I thought these phones were only 32GB capable..........?
AVAH0LIC said:
WTF, I thought these phones were only 32GB capable..........?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
SanDisk and KingMax have new 64GB MicroSD cards out that the Galaxy and others work on. The problem for me is the price......like ~$150.
To the OP .....Maybe it is the card as I have a couple of Samsung 32gb class 10 and don't have that problem. Whatever I put on my ext. SD card stays there.
7harper said:
SanDisk and KingMax have new 64GB MicroSD cards out that the Galaxy and others work on. The problem for me is the price......like ~$150.
To the OP .....Maybe it is the card as I have a couple of Samsung 32gb class 10 and don't have that problem. Whatever I put on my ext. SD card stays there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have no problem with what I put staying on my card..it is the app folders and android secure data that my phone seems to duplicate onto my sd card as well as the included internal card.
Check you app directory you will see an android secure folder on your internal and ext sd card...chances are you have duplicate data in each...
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AVAH0LIC said:
WTF, I thought these phones were only 32GB capable..........?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is nothing limiting phones to 32 GBs ...that is just sales material.
I put this sd card in an og droid and n1 and it worked.
Fat 32 can read large drives on a pc so nothing stops iron android either. I have a 2 TB hardrive formatted as fat 32 at home.
Fyi SDXC will allow for up to 2 TBs on your cell phone within 5 years. Prototypes of the micro sdxc @ 2 tb have already been developed.
Hence why the whole nexus internal memory only is bs
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Trev186 said:
Question
I want my extra sd card to only have my media...no and secure or data or any other app crap placed on it
I try and keep everything on the internal 16 GB storage. This way my 64 GB sd card only has my games and movies.
What I have noticed is I can delete them off my sd card...remove it...and restore the app data with titanium back up and I am all good. But after a few days they sneak onto my SD card and take up about 1 GB of space. In effect the files are duplicated on my internal memory and my sd card.
This is inefficient...does anyone know how to prevent this ?
Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you ever figure out a way to keep data on the phone only? I have a BIG problem with Evernote (free). I love the program as it holds small bits of data that I cannot remember (e.g. license plate numbers, birthdays, drivers license numbers, etc) but are too personal to not worry about. I only use 1/2 MB (yes, that is right, 1/2 MB) so paying for the premium version is much too expensive for what I store.
What I recently found however, has me ready to stop using it. The program stores all the 'cards' on the SD card of my Samsung S3 phone. And if you pull out the card, pop it into a computer and go to the Evernote folder, they store the data IN PLAIN ENGLISH! So even if I lock my phone anyone who can get the card out can read all this information. I even told the program not to store the data for offline access and cleared the cache/history but it still remains on the SD card if the program is running. I need a way to prevent the program from storing the data on the SD card. I thought I had it fixed - completely remove the program, delete all stored data and folders, pull out the SD Card, reinstall and download my 1/2 MB of data from the cloud (forcing it to phone storage), then rebooting with the SD back in. IT PUT THE DATA BACK ON THE SD CARD! This is a BIG security risk and now I am looking for a way to prevent it.
So, back to your original thread, any luck?
Frank
Trev186 said:
Not what I meat.
What bothers me is my phone sees two sd cards ...one is the 16 GB internal memory and the other is the ext sd card.
When downloading an app that installs to sd by default the phone will randomly throw it on my ext sd card if It is plugged in...but if I take the card out it will put it on the 16 GB memory
What bothers me most is all the extra folders and the fact that somethings are in one place and not the other or both.
There needs t be a way for the phone to leave my sd card alone
It gets confusing because the so called 16 GB internal memory on the phone is treated like a sd card by the system and is not part of the system rom....the system rom where most apps is installed is seperate
Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am having this issue too, I think it had something to do with going from Blazer ROM (GB) to Paranoid Android (JB), and the difference in the way they handle partitioning the ext SD card
sent from my ET4G on Paranoid Android using XDA Developers App in hybrid mode

[Q] Is there a way to get rid of "internal" SD on Galaxy E4GT?

Ok i'm a bit of a noob so bare with me here... i have a 32GB SD card i'm using on my Galaxy E4GT but it only shows up as a folder in my "internal" SD so i cant really use it other then dead storage to make space.. i want the internal SD to be gone and just be phone memory so then my External SD card can be my other main memory .. so in a nutshell i guess i'm asking to be able to get rid of the "internal" SD and give its space to the actual phone and for the only other memory to be my External SD.. can this be done? and how?
I really don't understand what you're trying to ask, but I think you're confused about how external storage is being stored.
For starters, the internal SD can not be deleted. It's not even an option, it's like, taking the transmission out of a car. The car won't work. Your phone needs it's internal storage.
Your external storage is *mounted* (Google it) as /sdcard/external_sd/, meaning Android conveniently creates a "shorcut" folder to your external SD in your internal SD. Very similar to how when you plug in your phone to your WIndows computer, you see a new "Drive" in "My Computer".
Now that I re-read your message, I believe you're thinking your /external_sd/ folder is limited to the size of the internal SD (which is 16 GB). Like I explained, it's simply a shortcut for you. You're *not* limited to the size of the internal SD. In there is your 32GB external SD.
Hope I helped.
I think his problem is kind of what I was asking in my music thread. On the OG epic everything downloaded went straight to external sd storage. While I know it didn't have dual storage like this phone. This phone seems to not use the link to the external storage correct.
For example everytime I DL music from a playlist no matter what app it goes to the internal memory, not to the external memory. It seems that there needs to be a way to have the external memory link not sit inside a place in the internal memory so that downloads go there. Right now most of the time they sit in .../sdcard rather than find there way to .../sdcard/external_sd (or whatever it is).
I saw a link somewhere for a different device to swap internal and external but didn't get a chance to read it yet. that may solve the problem but i'm not sure. I wish it worked as easy as the OG epic so I could put my music playlists onto external and have them play/show up correctly.
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StormGlove I
Hit the nail on the head.. Thats exactly what I'm talking about... The phone turns your External SD Card into dead storage space.. You can't run anything from inside it (Like Music or Games) and you can't make it your main SD Memory. What I want to know is how can I merge the "Internal SD" with the "Phone's Memory" to make them one.. So that the only two forms of memory on the phone are "Phone Memory" and "External SD Card".
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you can't... it wouldn't make sense to want to be able to do that..
you could, through some hackery, switch the mount points and make external show as /sdcard and internal as /sdcard/external_sd for whatever reason.. but without repartitioning your phone... you aren't going to be able to do much more..
im still kind of lost on what is wrong with the internal sd?
btw music plays just fine from the external, and you can install games to and from the external.. i think you may have a misunderstanding of how it works..
EnVy MoNtOyA said:
StormGlove I
Hit the nail on the head.. Thats exactly what I'm talking about... The phone turns your External SD Card into dead storage space.. You can't run anything from inside it (Like Music or Games) and you can't make it your main SD Memory. What I want to know is how can I merge the "Internal SD" with the "Phone's Memory" to make them one.. So that the only two forms of memory on the phone are "Phone Memory" and "External SD Card".
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What? I am able to play all my music stored on the /external_sd/music folder without issues. I am using poweramp though
I guess if you could modify the fstab file you might be able to have it in a way so it ignores the 'internal SD' and links it directly to the real SD card. Now if the phone will be able to work properly afterward is another issue but I don't see why not.
I understand music plays fine one moved there. I haven't tried poweramp yet. But for instance with double twist or Amazon mp3 when you sync playlists or any song it saves to internal memory without any option to sync to external. If you move the music to external the playlist won't work anymore. Yes the song will play but no playlist without remaking it.
I have no problems with using internal but it fills up pretty quick. As far as games I don't have any comment as I just leave those on internal memory. Thanks for the responses though. And maybe I'll try and use power amp to sync playlists.
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stormglove said:
I understand music plays fine one moved there. I haven't tried poweramp yet. But for instance with double twist or Amazon mp3 when you sync playlists or any song it saves to internal memory without any option to sync to external. If you move the music to external the playlist won't work anymore. Yes the song will play but no playlist without remaking it.
I have no problems with using internal but it fills up pretty quick. As far as games I don't have any comment as I just leave those on internal memory. Thanks for the responses though. And maybe I'll try and use power amp to sync playlists.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium
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Click to collapse
Yeah, moving it after youve sync'd it most definately won't work, if it's saved to that location then you move it from that location, it's going to keep looking for it in the original location.
I've never used Amazon Mp3 or DoubleTwist, so I can't say maybe you guys are missing an option. Make sure you throroughly read and check all available settings in both programs.
All I know is that the externsl SD does not become dead storage, as I use mine everyday and play music, videos, view pictures, move/zip CWM backups, everything.
Maybe you can try uninstalling Amazon Mp3 /Doubletwist, reinstall, then before running it even once move it to your external SD. Then run it/set it up once it's in your external SD. Maybe that'll force it to save to your external SD.
I know its not dead space, haha. I wasn't completing about that, and I searched all over, its those apps. Google music is the same. There were numerous complaints on all there websites about not having a choice where to DL to, making the extremal in dual storage phones like ours, become useless when trying to get playlist off our computers onto them.
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Ok as for music i use Google music and my offline music wont show when moved to External SD.. games is the same.. they just dont look for the External SD directory... im assuming that there is just one big hunk of memory in the phone and its partitioned into two parts (Phone Memory and Internal SD). If i can get rid of the partition that separates the two and just make it so that its all just phone memory without Internal SD.. the phone would be faster wouldn't it? and when i use my SD card it will just show up as SD card leaving only two sources to save or move things around to? again i could be way off and totaly wrong.. im only a noob at this point but im open to wisdom and learning as much as i can since im going to be a android user FOREVER
I am using "Media Monkey", and have no problems copying to the external SD. As a matter of fact, all of my music is sitting on the external. Its also (I think) the best music app available...
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I guess my question is the 500mb of RAM just partitioned off the mass storage sd internal like the 2gb of memory for apps? Or is it 500mb chip in there seperate some where? Which im guessing it ia since it would have to run at a faster clock than the internal sd can
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bluefire808 said:
I guess my question is the 500mb of RAM just partitioned off the mass storage sd internal like the 2gb of memory for apps? Or is it 500mb chip in there seperate some where? Which im guessing it ia since it would have to run at a faster clock than the internal sd can
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Click to collapse
Its my understanding that the memory used by the applications and RAM is shared on the same chipset that it's separate from the storage (internal SD) chipset. Checking the teardowns on http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung-Epic-4G-Touch-Teardown/6481/2 shows that 16GB chip being separate but the one that holds the RAM and internal app storage is not described there.
Actually what the op is asking can work. It would need kernel changes tho and mappings of partitions changed. So that the primary partition (where the OS is installed) becomes say 1gb. Then the rest goes to internal storage (where all apps go.) Then nothings left for a "internal SD." Then the SD card can be used as the only storage.
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Shoulon said:
Actually what the op is asking can work. It would need kernel changes tho and mappings of partitions changed. So that the primary partition (where the OS is installed) becomes say 1gb. Then the rest goes to internal storage (where all apps go.) Then nothings left for a "internal SD." Then the SD card can be used as the only storage.
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Click to collapse
OMG! YES! Finally someone who truly understands what im saying... you said it much better then i did for sure.. but yes thats exactly it.. i heard of someone doing work on this but i cant find the thread anymore.. it was called "*something* partition Mod" but it was for some other phone... if this could be done it would truly make my day and my phone would be perfect! im willing to help make it happen how ever i can ... unfortunately i dont know anything about coding or kernels but if there is another way i can help jus let me know.
I agree this phone does handle memory in a retarded way. Like for example when you move apps to sd it shows your available internal space but when you switch the app it goes to the actual sd card. So you'll notice that as you're switching them the amount available in internal is not decreasing but when you check your sd space you'll notice its memory decreased. However all my music is on the sd and I have no issue with it playing or creating playlists. Maybe you moved the files to sd and you had created the playlist while it was on internal so now it can't find it.. For the most part you can go into most apps setting and change between which memory you want to store internal or sd.
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Yes I can create playlist and play them on the external. The problem is I have Some big playlists on my comp I want to put onto external without having to recreate them. So far I've been unsuccessful. I do need to try media play still though.
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[Q] Micro SDHC card

I have a Samsung 64 gb evo uhs micro sd card. What exactly are the benefits beside storing music, photos and etc?
I tried moving a game(hearthstone) which requires a lot of power to the sd card. What would be the difference if you were to run it off from the sd card than from internal memory?
I have so much space on my sd card(60gb), I only have 1 game, don't have music nor movies and barely any apps. Are there anything else I can implement to the sd card?
Hi,
http://www.tomsguide.com/faq/id-2333937/moving-installed-apps-card-galaxy-tab.html
This is a similar link to how to do it. The SD card wont use a lot of power and there is only part of Applications you can store one the SD card. You will notice when you move things a certain amount of space remains on the internal SD.
The internal storage is faster than the SD cards (in general), and is always powered where the SD card can be put to low power when the device is sleeping. You may notice no difference or possible the game run a tad slower on the SD card but I would imagine not a noticeable difference. I have a lot of space (exactly the same SD card) so I have started filling it up with movies and music. You could get a lot of stuff on there for when you need to watch something but do not have WiFi.
I have the T805 ~(so LTE) and actually find because of having my data and Netflix I do not use nearly enough of my SD card. To make things worse Kitkat ruined SD cards so you can't use them properly within apps such as utorrent.
lynxblaine said:
Hi,
http://www.tomsguide.com/faq/id-2333937/moving-installed-apps-card-galaxy-tab.html
This is a similar link to how to do it. The SD card wont use a lot of power and there is only part of Applications you can store one the SD card. You will notice when you move things a certain amount of space remains on the internal SD.
The internal storage is faster than the SD cards (in general), and is always powered where the SD card can be put to low power when the device is sleeping. You may notice no difference or possible the game run a tad slower on the SD card but I would imagine not a noticeable difference. I have a lot of space (exactly the same SD card) so I have started filling it up with movies and music. You could get a lot of stuff on there for when you need to watch something but do not have WiFi.
I have the T805 ~(so LTE) and actually find because of having my data and Netflix I do not use nearly enough of my SD card. To make things worse Kitkat ruined SD cards so you can't use them properly within apps such as utorrent.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey thanks for posting, this information is great! That sucks how KitKat doesn't really utilize the sd card well then. I guess we'd have to wait for the official release of Lollipop hah. So we can actually run games off of the sd card? Obviously this will be run on a lesser performance but will it save battery since it doesn't use as much power from running on the sd card? I'd rather have less performance on a game than running out of battery faster and heating the device(which happens when I play from internal memory).
The only Heat you will get when playing games will be the CPU and possibly the display. The internal memory shouldn't get particularly hot.
There is no clear consensus if the SD card or internal save battery but if your device runs faster by having the Apps running off the SD card rather than clogging the internal memory that would be a bonus. Try it and see I would say.

Regarding SD cards..

I'm a tad confused as to why we would want the largest SDXC cards in our Note 8 (any Smartphone actually).
When so many apps tend to go the Internal memory. I know I've only used a couple GBs of my 128gb card ( while currently using 100s of apps:laugh And my son gave me a 256gb card for my B-day. What would be the advantage of using the larger card? And yes both are SDXC cards.
Sincerely, Senior lover of tech...and apps;
More pictures, music, and/or files is all I can think of. I store all of that on my SD card.
Ly10 said:
I'm a tad confused as to why we would want the largest SDXC cards in our Note 8 (any Smartphone actually).
When so many apps tend to go the Internal memory. I know I've only used a couple GBs of my 128gb card ( while currently using 100s of apps:laugh And my son gave me a 256gb card for my B-day. What would be the advantage of using the larger card? And yes both are SDXC cards.
Sincerely, Senior lover of tech...and apps;
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You do know that there's actually a way for the apps to run from the SD card right? Go to settings, apps and then go through all the apps you want one by one (tap on calculator for instance and then tap storage and you'll see "Storage used" tap it and choose SD card.) You do have to go through the apps one by one though in order to see which can be moved because some (most) system apps can't be moved to the SD card and also the apps you do move to the SD card do require a little extra time to start after a reboot since the phone needs to first mount the SD card and then run the apps.. I would suggest you do what I do and that's leave the apps you use constantly on the phones memory and the ones you use sparingly put them on the SD card.. Also, an SD card that can transfer quickly is best for this not the cheap SD cards!
Another thing to mention... If you turned on Developer Options, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you can activate "Force allow apps to external" which will then allow virtually ever app to be transferred over to the external SD card...

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