Why can't I save apps on my internal SD card? - Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Why does my Captivate only limit me to having 2GB of space for apps? I'm not using an external SD card and I want to install my apps onto my internal SD card or atleast move them there.

It's been a while since I have been on a stock ROM so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you can move at least some of the apps by going to settings / applications and then, in the individual application settings, select "Move to SD."
I know you can't move widgets or alarm applications because they will break if they aren't on internal memory, but you should be able to move games, etc. with no problem.

Move to SD was not available on Eclair... what are you running?
Sent from my Cappy

I'm on 2.2 right now. There is an option to move to SD but it only moves it to external SD not the internal one. It's split up into 3 sections
Internal Memory
Internal SD Card(I want apps to go here)
External SD card

muh316 said:
I'm on 2.2 right now. There is an option to move to SD but it only moves it to external SD not the internal one. It's split up into 3 sections
Internal Memory
Internal SD Card(I want apps to go here)
External SD card
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Ah, now I understand. I never had enough apps on Froyo to play with moving them but shooting from the hip, have you tried removing your external card and see if it will let you move them then? If not, I know that there are apps2sd applications on the market that should help you, but I haven't used any of them to give you a recommendation.

apbthe3 said:
Ah, now I understand. I never had enough apps on Froyo to play with moving them but shooting from the hip, have you tried removing your external card and see if it will let you move them then? If not, I know that there are apps2sd applications on the market that should help you, but I haven't used any of them to give you a recommendation.
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I've used all of those methods and none work.

Did you find solution? I have same situation here, it's pretty weird internal SD could only be stored with application data instead of application itself.

I'm almost positive that you can't move apps to your "internal SD card" regardless of whether or not you have an external sd card installed.
My understanding is that you can only move apps to the external SD card (at least that's how it's been on any ROM I've ever used)

why... Why! WHY!!! . . . oh >.>
muh316 said:
Why does my Captivate only limit me to having 2GB of space for apps? I'm not using an external SD card and I want to install my apps onto my internal SD card or atleast move them there.
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Why you ask...
Well simple, your limited to only 2GB because this size was choosen by phone manufacturors years ago when they were first designing the phone.
Consider that most of the phones in use back when 2.2 was released did not, for the full storage potential, even have the 2GB that we have just for apps (16GB in total). Heck most did not even have 1GB (I think 512MB was the standard). There was no separation between app storage and other media. This lead to users running out of space for both rather quickly. The solution then was to find use for the external SD as it could be as large as 32GB of storage.
The whole "internal SD" thing was thought up because it seemed wise to separate app storage from media storage. Also back when 2.2 was first released we did not have such massive apps as on the market today, so 2GB was plenty of any and all user (excluding the ppl who felt a need to have 200+ user apps...)
So, you can't store apps to the "internal SD" because that's not what it is meant to be used for. When companies decided to start putting such massive storage into the phone there was no reason for it to be any bigger.
As to only being able to move apps to the external SD, simple; Google did not design Android to do so.
To allow such would require changing how Android sees the "Internal SD" and to change how the app to SD function works, it is not currently written to check for multiple SD cards. I don't see any Dev willing to take up the task when the solution to running out of app space has already been solved by a much better means.
A different way to view the problem would be to ask (or learn, as that's the xda way) about re-sizing the partition to make the app storage larger. If enough people ask (politely!) maybe one of the Devs can be convinced to make it standard in their ROM that it be more then the default 2GB, or someone might make an app or flashable .zip that allows for re-sizing.
lt:dr - phone is old, based on old specs (think pre- 2.1 Android).

Related

[Q] CM7 on SD memory usage question

I have CM7 stable booting off an 8G SD card. Once I registered Google nicely downloaded all the apps I have on my phone. I'm slowly adding and removing apps as I tweak my Nook. At one point when I tried to install an app it failed with an insufficient memory error. Thinking this was like my phone I went through and moved a bunch of apps to the "SD card". The app still wouldn't install. It wasn't until I uninstalled several unneeded apps that I was able to install the one I wanted.
I don't have my Nook in front of me but did look at the various memory sizes several times and always had plenty of internal and SD free memory. Obviously everything is on the SD card but I thought that moving from "phone" to "SD" might be moving from one partition to the another.
So how does the memory scheme work in this case that so it prevented me from installing? Does moving from Phone to SD actually accomplish anything in this case? Curious minds (well one anyway) want to know.

[Q] saving backups/photos to SD card on D3

Why the hell won't my phone save my songs from Spotify, my photos from Vignette, videos from the camcorder, and anything other data the apps create??
Where the hell is the option to save on SD card?
Simmah down.
The actual SD card is mapped as /sdcard-ext/ in the filesystem. The /sdcard/ mount point is the internal storage. Apps need to be written so you can choose the storage location, and this will only be a larger problem going forward because as internal storage space goes up, more and more manufacturers will be doing this.
The built-in camera app does ask if you want to use the real SD card when you put one in and load the program.
elkay said:
The actual SD card is mapped as /sdcard-ext/ in the filesystem. The /sdcard/ mount point is the internal storage. Apps need to be written so you can choose the storage location, and this will only be a larger problem going forward because as internal storage space goes up, more and more manufacturers will be doing this.
The built-in camera app does ask if you want to use the real SD card when you put one in and load the program.
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Yeah, see I use Vignette so that doesn't help... geez.
Guess I'll have to make sure the main camera app is at least on SD card storage. I don't remember if the video files are automatically saving to the SD card (I did notice the SD-ext difference and figured that was the external vs internal memory).
pekosROB said:
Yeah, see I use Vignette so that doesn't help... geez.
Guess I'll have to make sure the main camera app is at least on SD card storage. I don't remember if the video files are automatically saving to the SD card (I did notice the SD-ext difference and figured that was the external vs internal memory).
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If they're not being stored to the external on the stock app, boot the phone without the SD card in the phone, launch the camera app, then shut the phone down. Pop the SD card back in, boot up and launch the camera app again. It should say as soon as you launch that a new SD card is found and ask if you want to use it.
Going forward, /sdcard-ext/ is going to be more common on more phones, so app developers need to start providing an option for where users want to store data files. I'd contact the Vignette developers (they're pretty responsive) and let them know that they need to add a feature to choose the storage location of saved pics because most likely all Motorola devices will be set up this way going forward, with other manufacturers following.

Is there any way to force the phone to use External memory?

This is my first phone with a lot of internal memory and I don't quite get how it uses it... Is there any way for the phone to use my external 16GB memory card instead of always using its own 8GB partition?
I second this question.
Though it may seem useless to do so, on the contrary I have a 32g ext SD card and would be fine ignoring the (confusing and my case redundant) internal SD card.
Or if not disable, maybe force apps/etc to default to the ext card?
Sent from my XT875 using xda premium
The question is does your app allow you the option to use your external memory. Not all apps are created equal and whether they allow you to use the external SD card is really up to the app developer. Its in the coding of the app that determines where the data is stored. Check your apps for that option and if there is none request it from the developer.
I believe there are ways to use the sd-ext for some kinds of data files used by large games, but the app must run on internal mem. I store all docs, downloads, pictures, music, videos, etc. on my external microsd card, but apps have to go on internal or they disappear or don't work. Search for 'apps2sd bionic' and you should find a way to store some game data externally.
raylgo said:
This is my first phone with a lot of internal memory and I don't quite get how it uses it... Is there any way for the phone to use my external 16GB memory card instead of always using its own 8GB partition?
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I did this when I had the atrix, and have also done it on my Bionic.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1404872
Ha! Didn't even think about messing with the fstab, thanks for that link. I'll be trying this shortly, and repost with results.
On a side note, I figured it shouldn't rely on the apps per say, considering a lot of phones don't have an internal "sdcard" (note: sdcard, not to be confused with regular internal app storage).
My opinion, naming the internal sdcard what it is was a seriously stupid idea. Should've followed suit with "app storage", how about "data storage"... just something not involving "card".
--
Cool, it worked awesome. Just had to swap files from one to the other to keep data in spots apps expected it to be.
Actually, I went ahead and disable the internal SD, and mounted the extsd in its place. Have been playing with mounting the extsd to both internal and external (resulted in only one mount point working), and also tried renaming the internals mount point to something like "internal_storage" (resulted in boot loop).
Be careful if playing with the mount points. The system doesn't like booting if it can't find something mounted to "sdcard", etc.
Something I'll be playing with and experimenting with. Any more info on editing these mount points would be very handy.
And lastly, sorry for hijacking your thread
Hope I didn't bother.
Sent from my XT875 using xda premium

[Q] sdcard0 vs extsdcard, want to move large data to extsdcard

Sigh, this is exactly what I was worried about when upgrading from my EVO 3D.
I noticed my new M8 has a sdcard0 and extsdcard folder. And of course, the apps and games which download hundreds of megs of data in order to run are downloading to the 24 gig internal sdcard0 mount point instead of the nearly empty 64gig extsdcard0 mountpoint. I really REALLY hate how so many Android phones seem to do this, why can't it just be partitioned as internal instead of faking a sdcard, thus making large apps install to internal with no option of installing to the actual external card?
Anyway, without rooting my phone, is there any way I can somehow set it so apps download and install their data to the actual SD card? The whole reason I didn't get the M7 was because I don't want my data to be stuck on the phone's internal memory in case anything happens, as well as to not waste internal memory space on several hundred megs or even gigs of data when I can use a large sdcard for that.
I believe u can go to manage apps and move apps to the sd card. Some may not be able to if it's not comparable but a lot of them should.
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aaron130 said:
I believe u can go to manage apps and move apps to the sd card. Some may not be able to if it's not comparable but a lot of them should.
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I tried that, it only moves the app executable to the SD card, not the hundreds of megs of additional data it downloaded. The app management screen even tells me how much of this additional data is on the internal memory and how much of it is on the SD card (it's all on internal), but moving the app doesn't move the additional data to the SD card.
One would assume that the ext sd 's bus interface would be quick enough to not bog any app which would be using it. That being the case htc has no excuse for not having interchangeable symbolic mounting points between the two sd's. Ive physcally moved some of the data from app's (dcim, and random music ) directories to the extsd, and at least it unburdens the internal sd.
The apk resource fork in these systems could be processed better in android and it's sdk, or even the runtime.
F yes it sucks.

Confused about SD Card. Help

This is the first device i ever had where you can't use the sd card as a storage and for apps. It's either or.
Am I missing something in the settings? Is there a way to use sd card for both storage and apps? Is a root required for this?
Every time that I have tried to use an SD card to extend internal storage, it's been nothing but a headache. I have not tried it on marshmallow for just that reason. So far, I have not run out of space for apps on my 16 GB R1 HD so I use the SD card only for media that I want to carry with me - music, podcasts, movies - stuff like that.
There are some apps available that use the SD card to extend space for apps by moving them to the SD card and linking to them from where they would normally be installed. This is different from marshmallow's extension of internal store using an SD card. Let's hope some people that have used it a lot will add comments! I'm kind of curious myself.
My wife is using a 128gb card as adopted storage, no problrms.
It's not the phone but rather MM that stops apps to SD without adopted storage.
There is also xposed modules that allow it without adopted storage.
afuller42 said:
My wife is using a 128gb card as adopted storage, no problrms.
It's not the phone but rather MM that stops apps to SD without adopted storage.
There is also xposed modules that allow it without adopted storage.
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Could you shed some light on the xposed mods that accomplishes this? I really like having one SD card that I use around on different things.

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