Develop Bugs

What happens to my apps on SD?

I realize this is probably a stupid question but its something I have constantly been wondering. As a new rooter I have been experimenting with a lot of new ROMs and each time i go through and move the big apps to the sd card. Now when I do a full wipe to install a new ROM, those apps get removed from my sd card yea? My sd card seems fuller than it shows and I'm wondering if this is the case or not? Thanks

thekidkid32 said:
I realize this is probably a stupid question but its something I have constantly been wondering. As a new rooter I have been experimenting with a lot of new ROMs and each time i go through and move the big apps to the sd card. Now when I do a full wipe to install a new ROM, those apps get removed from my sd card yea? My sd card seems fuller than it shows and I'm wondering if this is the case or not? Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When you save an app to the sd card, you are caching a portion of the app there so it sort of dual boots the app. It puts less load on the phone's memory this way. It's kinda like caching songs on Google Music Beta for offline playback in this respect. When you flash a new rom the cached app files are deleted from use, but some miscellaneous files may remain. This may be the cause of you seeing that your memory seems bulkier than before and the files can be deleted easily without harm to your phone. Just be sure of what you're deleting before you do so.

SD vs USB storage

Ok, so here is my question, sorry if it was asked, i used the search and couldn't find something like me.
So whenever I install games, many uses about 200-300MB of space, it will use my USB storage which its coming to a fill very soon, if i keep downloading new games. My question is, how can i make use of my 16GB SD card to install game files. And, I just re-read the GS2 box, and it saids it has 16BGB-32GB, is there a way i can upgrade the internal USB Storage, or what exactly did that mean?

The 16-32 Gbs are like iPhones they come with 16orll or 32 gbs units. Have you tried pushing the data from tthe gamed to the sdcard?
Sent from my SGH-T989 using XDA App

I know i can copy it from USB to SD, or move, but i know that wont do what i want to do. Since it will be move, whenever i load the game and looks for the files, it wont look in the SD card, but the USB storage.

I thought the GS2 only came as a 16GB model. It will accept up to a 32GB microSD card and Android seems to be pretty intelligent about being able to find stuff on the external SD card if it's not in USB storage (internal). It finds my ringtones and images on my external SD card without me having to do anything.
If the apps/games you're using aren't enabled for being moved to the SD card (Settings/Applications/Manage Applications/On SD Card) then you'll have to find some other way to make space, perhaps moving your images to the external SD and configuring the camera app to store images there, or uninstalling apps.

it can actually use larger than 64 GB microSD see my HowTo guide

I'm curious as well because some titles like Asphalt 6 and GTA 3 download much more data than the .apk was to download.
For instance GTA3 from the market is 12.93MB, and if you move to external SD Card, you're moving only 13MB, but the game data to download is around 450MB and where's that stored? I have an external 32 and I'd rather prefer to store everything on that primarily.

I was so seeing the same thing. I have 32gb SD card and I would to find a workaround for this silly issue. Any input would be awesome!
Sent from my SGH-T989 using xda premium

On a regular linux system, it would be a simple matter of finding the folder where the data files were stored, copying them to a new drive and then configure /etc/fstab to mount the new drive on top of the data file folder.
not sure if this is possible with Android and would require root if it were possible.

mayhem204 said:
I was so seeing the same thing. I have 32gb SD card and I would to find a workaround for this silly issue. Any input would be awesome!
Sent from my SGH-T989 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
imabug said:
On a regular linux system, it would be a simple matter of finding the folder where the data files were stored, copying them to a new drive and then configure /etc/fstab to mount the new drive on top of the data file folder.
not sure if this is possible with Android and would require root if it were possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes, it's that simple indeed
just check out my HOWTO guide, it's in the INDEX stickied

tried app2sd?

sorry for the delay respond to all.I was away from a computer for awhile. So, i see all this talk, and it has helped me understand a bit more. I actually decided to delete some already beaten games to make space.
In regards to the pics and music, they have always been in my SD card. But i will download app2sd and see if it works. The actual app itself does not bother me. Most of the time, they are very little. Is the download after what does bother me. Most games need from 300mb to nearly 1Gb of space. Now thats a lot, when a phone comes only wiht 11.5GB of 16GB and we know why that happens.

dragonfire665 said:
Ok, so here is my question, sorry if it was asked, i used the search and couldn't find something like me.
So whenever I install games, many uses about 200-300MB of space, it will use my USB storage which its coming to a fill very soon, if i keep downloading new games. My question is, how can i make use of my 16GB SD card to install game files. And, I just re-read the GS2 box, and it saids it has 16BGB-32GB, is there a way i can upgrade the internal USB Storage, or what exactly did that mean?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you cant upgrade internal but u can always put an sd card in for extrernal

dragonfire665 said:
sorry for the delay respond to all.I was away from a computer for awhile. So, i see all this talk, and it has helped me understand a bit more. I actually decided to delete some already beaten games to make space.
In regards to the pics and music, they have always been in my SD card. But i will download app2sd and see if it works. The actual app itself does not bother me. Most of the time, they are very little. Is the download after what does bother me. Most games need from 300mb to nearly 1Gb of space. Now thats a lot, when a phone comes only wiht 11.5GB of 16GB and we know why that happens.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
app2sd is not going to help you, if you already have the stuff installed to SD card
those cheesy App2SD apps only shows you which Apps can be moved to SD
you need Link2SD the real deal, the one that actually convert stuff over to the hidden partition in your SD card to use as Internal memory, which you are short on
just look up my HOWTO guide, it's stickied in the INDEX topic

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.

[Q] Recently bought 64gb microsd - how to make it the default storage?

Hey Guys,
I just recently bought my wife a 64gb micro sdcard and I was hoping I could make it the default storage for everything if possible.
What I meant about that is for caching like maps, dropbox, fxcamera, maxgo, hbogo, and many more. ( it is currently located at /sdcard0/Android/data ).
Another thing is for some apps like whatsapp/groupme/viber, to save videos/pictures there. There seems to be no settings in whatsapp to save attachments to the external.
The only thing I've managed so far is to set the camera to save to the ext sdcard, that is about it!
Is there a way to move /sdcard/Android/Data to the external SD card?
Also, is there a way to install apps to the external sd instead of internal? She just had the phone in 10 days and it is almost full
Thanks!
EDIT: Wife GN2 is stock, unrooted -> will not root ever
EDIT 2: I just read that you can't move apps to the EXT SDCard anymore with JB - but that is fine as long as I can assign cache/default directory storage of apps to the External SD .. if someone knows how to

BUMP!
I just did a lot of research and found out that with GS3 and GN2 you can't transfer app to ext SD or install apps on the ext SD anymore when in stock.
Wow, that is so bad! Three big games would fill the 16gb already. I'm pretty sure Google has a good reason for that.
Anyway, some features of the GN2 like burst shot does not allow to save pictures to the external sd card (which is fine) but is there a way to automatically transfer files from internal to sdcard, while deleting files from the internal files while doing the process. It is like rsync in Linux.
As much as possible I want the GN2 to purely use the external SD instead of the internal.
Any app that can do that? Unrooted.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1931500
That is what I use & make sure you are running a custom kernel (eg: persues) to get the addon to work.

RMXO said:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1931500
That is what I use & make sure you are running a custom kernel (eg: persues) to get the addon to work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the info. Too bad its for my wife. She does not want her phone to be rooted.

keplenk said:
Thanks for the info. Too bad its for my wife. She does not want her phone to be rooted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you're going to be very limited since your wife doesn't want to be rooted.