[Q] External SD Card as internal storage - Verizon Galaxy Note 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Don't flame me to bad for starting a thread on this.
Ok I Picked up a note 4 DE, did the sd card fix so apps like titanium and root explorer and what not can access and actually use the 128 GB micro sd card I picked up specifically for the phone, but that still leaves things to limited because anything I would download or some of the other apps I use has other data to go along with the app and fill up the FAKE sd card in essence making the 128 sd card useless and I shouldn't have to always move something that will only download to the FAKE sd card from there to the REAL sd card, or give my private data to google, they can call the NSA if they want it that bad, and I'm not going to make it easy for google to farm my data for the NSA either.
I've been searching and searching on how to swap the two around so the phone thinks the REAL sd card is the FAKE sd card so the phone works the way it's supposed to.
I've edited the vold.fstab file before in a tablet I had, to swap the two storages around, which worked, but vold.fstab file for the tablet had two entries in it for the mount points for the FAKE and REAL sd cards, but the note 4 only has one mount point showing in the vold.fstsab file and I've tried looking but I can't find what block the the mount points are on, I've used terminal and see that /dev/block/vold/179:65 seems to be the extSdCard but don't see anything for the emulated sd card.
and the app External 2 Internal that used init.d to make the swap is no longer available on the market??? Besides if I was going to go that route I wouldn't load another app to do it.
So does anyone here know how to go about what I'm trying to accomplish here for the note 4? Able to refresh my memory; am I doing it right to find the mount points for the storage? Can Direct me to a guide that will work for our notes? Or has already done this and has a proven method? I've spent many hours reading and searching this out and this being my first Samsung device I'm not to familiar with them coming from HTC and I'm not to versed on this kitkat either, I don't have the time I once had to dig in and keep as up to date on things.
Thanks in advance for any and all that can help me out with this.

Related

[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] Not able to move Apps to the SD card

Hi
I bought the Note 10.1 with 16 GB memory thinking that I will be able to move the APPS to the external 32 GB memory I had installed. However APP2SD tells me that "the device does not have a real primary external storage or the primary storage is emulated".
I set the install location as 2 through the SDK adb devices command prompt screen. Still I am not getting the option to transfer the APPS to the SD card.
Can someone tell me whether this option can be activated or is it blocked by Samsung. I am able to transfer the APPS to external storage in my HTC Desire phone with ICS update
oh wow, apps2sd doesn't work on the Galaxy S3.
I hope that's not the case for the GN2. Can anyone else confirm?
On my Note 1, I'm currently using Directory bind: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1410262
to move stuff off that apps2sd doesn't work with, but it requires root.
http://www.xda-developers.com/android/treat-your-sd-card-as-your-real-external-storage-with-swapsd/
is another option, but I'd hate to use that. Internal memory should be much faster than external card memory.
- Frank
Wrong forum?
Take a look in the note 10.1 forum, under Galaxy Note 10.1 Android Development. There are 2 guides how to move your apps to sd. Though you need root for both i suppose!
And that is the exact reason Google doesn't want OEM's to include expandable storage. When apps are moved to the SD card, they are unable to sync correctly with the OS. SD cards will be a thing of the past within 2 years...
Unable to apps to micro sd card.
ChodTheWacko said:
oh wow, apps2sd doesn't work on the Galaxy S3.
I hope that's not the case for the GN2. Can anyone else confirm?
On my Note 1, I'm currently using Directory bind: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1410262
to move stuff off that apps2sd doesn't work with, but it requires root.
http://www.xda-developers.com/android/treat-your-sd-card-as-your-real-external-storage-with-swapsd/
is another option, but I'd hate to use that. Internal memory should be much faster than external card memory.
- Frank
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the GN2, and I can confirm that moving apps to the sd card is not possible. Is there some other program that's needed in order to make moving apps to the sd possible? And advice would be much appreciated.
Instead of starting another thread, I would also like to know the answer to this as I just received my note 2 and I cannot move apps to sd card.
i noticed that too... i wanted to move some of the apps to the sd card but it doesn't have the move to sd card option...

SD card mount problem please help

I've been searching all over for a couple days now and I can't find any solution only people with similar but not exact same problem I'm having. Out of the blue a couple days ago the fat32 partition on my 32GB class10 patriot SD card unmounted and won't mount at all. However the ext4 partition mounts just fine and continues to work as it always has. I also can't plug the card directly into my PC because the adapter that came with the micro SD card appears to not work. My PC doesn't think there is an SD card in it. I tried it with a known good SD card (the 16GB samsung SD card that came with the phone. Which when inserted into the phone mounts and can be used like expected. No new apps where installed or changes made to my phone or the SD card before it stopped working correctly. The same apps and what not have been in use for as long as I have had the 32GB SD card. In fact the currently in use version of CM10.1 has been is use for the last month with no issue regarding the SD card. When I remove the card a notification shows up telling me to insert an SD card. And when I insert the 32GB card the checking SD card notification shows up an a second or two after the SD card is safe to remove notification shows up as if I had told it to unmount the SD card. If I tap on mount SD card in settings the same thing happens. And it also happens after a reboot. CWM can't mount the SD card either. What can I do to fix it so the fat32 partition is usable again?
StoneRyno said:
I've been searching all over for a couple days now and I can't find any solution only people with similar but not exact same problem I'm having. Out of the blue a couple days ago the fat32 partition on my 32GB class10 patriot SD card unmounted and won't mount at all. However the ext4 partition mounts just fine and continues to work as it always has. I also can't plug the card directly into my PC because the adapter that came with the micro SD card appears to not work. My PC doesn't think there is an SD card in it. I tried it with a known good SD card (the 16GB samsung SD card that came with the phone. Which when inserted into the phone mounts and can be used like expected. No new apps where installed or changes made to my phone or the SD card before it stopped working correctly. The same apps and what not have been in use for as long as I have had the 32GB SD card. In fact the currently in use version of CM10.1 has been is use for the last month with no issue regarding the SD card. When I remove the card a notification shows up telling me to insert an SD card. And when I insert the 32GB card the checking SD card notification shows up an a second or two after the SD card is safe to remove notification shows up as if I had told it to unmount the SD card. If I tap on mount SD card in settings the same thing happens. And it also happens after a reboot. CWM can't mount the SD card either. What can I do to fix it so the fat32 partition is usable again?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried formatting the SD card in recovery?
As I said I can't mount it with CWM either. The card contains the data for my mSecure passwords as that app was forced to the SD card due to JB changes in android so I can't format it until I can recover the data on it. I need a solution to access the data before I can reformat it assuming that it needs to be reformatted. The SD card was supposed to be this fail safe thing and I didn't need to make backups of it as it was the backup storage stuff. So now I'm all freaking out because I can't access it for all the backed up data on top of the data for one critical app that was forced to reside on it. The good news is that only a few apps data is effected by this the bad news is those apps were all very important. I just don't understand why this has happened. And if using a cloud source such as box will be any more secure and safe than using the SD card in light of this; now I don't trust not losing data in the future on a source that was supposed to not have this sort of thing happen.
Maybe the SD card just went bad. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.
DynamicN said:
Maybe the SD card just went bad. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No problem, it's a problem no easily solved, and is a long shot finding anyone who will be able to help. I looked at dozens of sites and forum threads and all sorts of other stuff from goggle searches and couldn't find a solution to get it to mount in either the phone or on my PC to recover the data from it and find out for sure if it is a bad card or not. It might still be under warranty. If it's not I'll be ticked considering how much it cost and how little time I've had it.
StoneRyno said:
No problem, it's a problem no easily solved, and is a long shot finding anyone who will be able to help. I looked at dozens of sites and forum threads and all sorts of other stuff from goggle searches and couldn't find a solution to get it to mount in either the phone or on my PC to recover the data from it and find out for sure if it is a bad card or not. It might still be under warranty. If it's not I'll be ticked considering how much it cost and how little time I've had it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try installing Recuva on your PC, if this program doesn't work for you then you might wanna try another more advanced recovery program like R-studio v6 (Shareware) which is easy to use since it's GUI based.
or testdisk-6.14-WIP (Freeware) which includes testdisk_win.exe for partition recovery and photorec_win.exe for files and media recovery, but it's kinda complicated since it's based on Command Prompt or DOS! so you need to google for a guide for how to use it.
StoneRyno said:
No problem, it's a problem no easily solved, and is a long shot finding anyone who will be able to help. I looked at dozens of sites and forum threads and all sorts of other stuff from goggle searches and couldn't find a solution to get it to mount in either the phone or on my PC to recover the data from it and find out for sure if it is a bad card or not. It might still be under warranty. If it's not I'll be ticked considering how much it cost and how little time I've had it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you still having the problem? I had the same problem, and I found a solution to it.
chromeplaya said:
Are you still having the problem? I had the same problem, and I found a solution to it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow I somehow never got notified of this post seeing as I'm just now noticing a reply from months ago. Yes I still can't mount the SD card. I took it out and returned to the stock one that came with my phone. I still have the card as I need to recover the data from it and if not possible wipe it somehow so that I can warranty exchange it. Please do let me know what your solution is so that I can try it and see if it works.
Refresh my memory on what the problem was. This was a while ago lol.
chromeplaya said:
Refresh my memory on what the problem was. This was a while ago lol.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The SD card won't mount in my samsung epic and my windows PCs. This was a sudden without warning signs and with no apparent cause. One moment it was fine and the next moment poof. I was looking for a solution to gain access to the files on it to recover whatever I can and if possible repair the card so that it works again. Assuming that it's not a failure of the card itself. It is within the warranty and well within the life expectancy of it. So I suspect it is not a failure of the card itself. I have the option of using ubuntu or other USB stick bootable options for tools as needed.

Have you cloned a failing SD card that was formatted for internal storage?

Hey guys,
HTC 10 user. Not even a year into my 128GB MicroSD card's life and it's forcing write-protection. I think it's about to die. I can read off it. I can't write.
This SD Card was formatted as internal storage and is encrypted.
I bought a similar 128GB MicroSD card and I'd like to simply clone the image to the new SD card.
Has anyone SUCCESSFULLY done this?
I've attempted it and I pop in the new SD Card and it doesn't detect the card. It simply asks me to insert a card, like the card doesn't even exist.
I've actually tried TWO cloned 128GB cards - they aren't detected.
From what I can tell, I'm doing identical clones of the original MicroSD so I am not sure what I am missing. I'm using a cheapo freeware utility to do the clone in Windows. I don't have the utility name in front of me and I'm not home at the moment.
I have two more things I'd like to try, but I don't know if it's a futile effort: I'd like to try a dd clone from a linux live cd. I'd also like to try EaseUs clone utility, but I fear that's some kind of trial and I'm going to have to shell out some $$ to utilize it.
I know I can unload the original SD's contents to a PC, toss a new card in there, format, and start fresh...download all the play store, f-droid apps again, likely re-download all my audible books, drag my music back onto the card from the PC, and start a-new. That isn't my question, though.
I'm really wondering if I can clone an encrypted, internal-storage SD. I don't WANT to have to download my apps again. I don't want to have to rebuild caches and whatever else has been thrown onto my MicroSD.
Thanks!
I've done this before using clonezilla and it worked fine, no issues at all.
It's not as user friendly as a windows application probably.... but it gets the job done by doing an exact copy.
It even has a mode to keep reading on broken sectors (when you go into advanced mode), that way you can make the best copy possible.
You can read some instructions here
I did it directly from 1 card to another by inserting the source card into an adapter with the readonly slider lock thing to make sure I didn't write empty data to my source.
You can also first create an image from the source and then write the image to the new card.
Please keep in mind to not insert both cards at the same time when using Windows, it will crash Windows.
Windows doesn't understand that there could be 2 drives with the same ID's connected at the same time

Categories

Resources