I'm coming from a rooted Samsung S4 to a non-rooted Huawei P9. With the rooted S4 I could do anything at all, the stock P9 is extremely restricted. I want to stay with stock because it's a phone that's been loaned to me and I don't want to risk breaking it, and I'd like the Android 7.x over the air update in a few months without having to unroot.
I would prefer not to mount the external SD as internal memory, as it's slower. I've tried creating files, deleting files, and changing permissions, I can't do anything.
Basically I would like to be able to do two things:
- Add and delete files to the external SD card using a file manager,
such as Root Browser
- Have Bittorrent Sync (or other apps) write to the external SD card
I know Android security was ramped up around Android 5, but this much restriction is crazy. Is there a way around to do this working within the stock OS? I may just have to give up on external SD, it seems pointless to have it right now.
Related
Hey there,
I have a Galaxy S I9000T outright from Telstra. I was so glad to find a Froyo/Android2.2 ROM on SamFirmware that supports Arabic very well (my native language, most ROMs don't support it well), and the upgrade also brought slightly better performance, etc..
However, since the I9000T model had only 8 GB internal SD, I also bought another 8GB SD to use as external (I don't save a lot of files saved on the phone, mostly browsing and tweeting and having few files playlist usually replaced quick).
Now, I notice the internal SD is something like 1.5+ GB used for phone storage and 5.5+ GB available to me to use. I no longer need that. Would love to increase the phone storage part to take up most if not all the internal SD storage (you know not all apps are available to move to external SD, plus it's annoying when I mount it to my computer for storage).
I know I won't be really removing it (to allow place for future use of update.zip) but at least make it as small as 1.x GB and give the rest space to phone storage.
Can I shrink the other internal SD partition (the one I can access without rooting) and increase the root phone storage without having to re-flash my happy already-configured ROM and losing any apps, etc... ?
Sorry guys, should this have been moved to a different section or so?
LG Optimus 4X HD
At least on my fone, this is a problem.
There seems to be no way to move the Apps to the Phone SD card or External SD card.
I used several apps ( App2SD etct etc ) from Google Play.
They all show the installed Apps ON PHONE.
And offer the option to select which apps you want to move over to the Phone SD card.
But when I select the Apps to move , the option that comes up only shows two choices: FORCE STOP or UNINSTALL.
Nothing else.
Do these so called new power smartphones prevent any installed apps to be
transferred to the Phone SD card or External SD card ?
I heard from a friend that even some latest Samsung phones have similar limitation features.
Probably there is some technical reason behind this. Perhaps rooting is needed ?
Appreciate if anyone here could enlighten.
Thx.
Actually, app are installed on the sdcard directly. The sdcard is actually the phone memory. Perhaps you want to install app on your micro sd card or the external_sd. You'll need Link 2 SD for that one. Moving apps to sdcard option was removed in ICS.
http://www.chainfire.eu/articles/113/Is_Google_blocking_apps_writing_to_SD_cards_/
Agustus said:
LG Optimus 4X HD
At least on my fone, this is a problem.
There seems to be no way to move the Apps to the Phone SD card or External SD card.
I used several apps ( App2SD etct etc ) from Google Play.
They all show the installed Apps ON PHONE.
And offer the option to select which apps you want to move over to the Phone SD card.
But when I select the Apps to move , the option that comes up only shows two choices: FORCE STOP or UNINSTALL.
Nothing else.
Do these so called new power smartphones prevent any installed apps to be
transferred to the Phone SD card or External SD card ?
I heard from a friend that even some latest Samsung phones have similar limitation features.
Probably there is some technical reason behind this. Perhaps rooting is needed ?
Appreciate if anyone here could enlighten.
Thx.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The LG 4X has a different memory structure than other Android devices I have used so far.
Normally an android device's integrated storage is partitioned like this:
-You get a program storage (1-2GBs if you are lucky)
-You get what's left of the integrated storage as SD card (minus the OS used space)
-You can add an external SD card which will be your... ermm external SD card
-In OTG enabled devices you can also add a USB storage
Now the difference in our LG 4X is that the manufacturer has opted to combine the program storage and internal storage into one storage location, thus saving us the trouble of moving apps to SD all the time and so giving as 12GBs of storage so we can use however we want.
In my Galaxy S with android 2.3.3, I can also move apps to external SD, but afaik this is not supported in ICS and JB, so yeah I concur your irony above, rergarding the super wow smartphones. Still I am sure there were various reasons for Google to not support it (and maybe moving to external SD was Samsung proprietary operation-not clear about that still)
psolord said:
The LG 4X has a different memory structure than other Android devices I have used so far.
Normally an android device's integrated storage is partitioned like this:
-You get a program storage (1-2GBs if you are lucky)
-You get what's left of the integrated storage as SD card (minus the OS used space)
-You can add an external SD card which will be your... ermm external SD card
-In OTG enabled devices you can also add a USB storage
Now the difference in our LG 4X is that the manufacturer has opted to combine the program storage and internal storage into one storage location, thus saving us the trouble of moving apps to SD all the time and so giving as 12GBs of storage so we can use however we want.
In my Galaxy S with android 2.3.3, I can also move apps to external SD, but afaik this is not supported in ICS and JB, so yeah I concur your irony above, rergarding the super wow smartphones. Still I am sure there were various reasons for Google to not support it (and maybe moving to external SD was Samsung proprietary operation-not clear about that still)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
App2SD was introduced in Android 2.2 (FroYo). However, different developer solutions were already around at that time (a2sd+, link2sd etc.), but they required an ext3/ext4 partition, while the build-in app2sd would move them to a folder (.android-secure) on the FAT32 partition. The app2sd feature was eagerly awaited because of the limited storage devices had back then (the Nexus One had 512MB internal memory, of which 447 were usable and ~150 MB were used for /system). Now with bigger internal storage and the different internal structure which is used since ICS (and which is also the reason newer devices use MTP), moving apps to external SD is no longer officially supported. So you'll just have to use a developer's way again, in our case it's Directory Bind. I haven't used it yet since I still have some free space left, but it was reported to work properly. Afaik it just moves the files to external SD and then links the folders. Root should be required, but I don't know exactly. Personally i'd root nevertheless, as it gives you some advantages (Ti Backup, Ad-Free etc).
psolord said:
The LG 4X has a different memory structure than other Android devices I have used so far.
Normally an android device's integrated storage is partitioned like this:
-You get a program storage (1-2GBs if you are lucky)
-You get what's left of the integrated storage as SD card (minus the OS used space)
-You can add an external SD card which will be your... ermm external SD card
-In OTG enabled devices you can also add a USB storage
Now the difference in our LG 4X is that the manufacturer has opted to combine the program storage and internal storage into one storage location, thus saving us the trouble of moving apps to SD all the time and so giving as 12GBs of storage so we can use however we want.
In my Galaxy S with android 2.3.3, I can also move apps to external SD, but afaik this is not supported in ICS and JB, so yeah I concur your irony above, rergarding the super wow smartphones. Still I am sure there were various reasons for Google to not support it (and maybe moving to external SD was Samsung proprietary operation-not clear about that still)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Regarding OTG enable devices, I cannot understand why LG 4X doesn't support the OTG feature, it should be important to support it in order to make this smartphone a wonderful replacement of a computer (we may use external usb hard-disk or even external usb DVD/BR-writer).
Regarding internal/external sd card, if I use the command line "mount" inside a terminal, I see two lines including "/mnt/sdcard" and "/mnt/sdcard/external_sd" parameters. My question is: theoretically is it possible to swap the two a/m lines, so to mount "/mnt/sdcard" as external (the real external SD card) and "/mnt/sdcard/external_sd" as internal storage? If possible, how to do it? Root grants are enough to do it, or we need more to do it?
Hi
I have just jumped from iPhone to Samsung S5 and was wondering if there is a simple way to swap the internal memory with an external SD card? I have an android gaming tablet with a custom rom which does this automatically, making the OS install, download and do everything onto the external card.
I saw a post here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1377628 which talks about modding a system file will that do what i want? currently after installing TomTom and several map packs i now only have a few GB left of 16
Ps.. I have done the SDFix already to enable writing to the SD but TomTom requires the maps to be in the Root folder so you cant " move to SD " it only moves the program. I have S5 with KitKat 4.4.2 i believe.
Anyhelp apreciated.
82 views and no reply, is it because it can no longer be done?
I'm by no means an expert, but KitKat has severely limited this capability, apparently.
I'm betting that you would need a custom boot-loader in order to fully host the OS form the SD card.
Depending upon which specific S5 variant you have you'll have different options to mitigate this. Some of the big USA carriers (notably AT&T) are shipping with locked boot-loaders, which prevents fully customizing the ROM / OS load. From what I gather, but have not attempted, not even SafeStrap is currently capable of retargeting the system to the SD card.
Depending on the app, you may be able to (on a rooted phone) make a soft-link on the filesystem and redirect that application's data to the SD card. I'd think that the more safe way to go, but again I have not tried it.
Keep in mind, also, that hosting the OS from the SD card would likely impact performance heavily. In my testing the internal flash memory has at least 2x to 3x the performance of the fastest microSD I could find to test with, and more like 10x the speed of a cheap SD card (my phone is the US AT&T variant). This has huge ramifications for much-accessed / randomly-accessed content, and by derivation probably impacts how well the phone feels in operation.
I see, i thought it would be easy like my gaming tablet, the 'system' still runs on the devices internal memory but the 'storage' runs from the SDCard.
My phone is a UK/ EU model and is not locked to any provider as bought outright. Is it possible to flash it with a stock rom that does allow the swapping of the SD, one slightly older than 4.4.2 which it is currently on?
I filled up the small 16gb within 2 hours of having the phone so having external memory is a must really. TomTom is taking up alot of the room and i dont think you can move the DATA to the SD card as it reads from root of device.
any help appreciated.
Any update in this?
Hello, I was wondering if anyone had found a way to allows apps installed on the BLU R1 HD to write to the SD card? I've always had bad luck with rooting phones in the past and I do my best to avoid it, so I'd prefer to do it without rooting the phone. I just want to keep podcasts and the like on my SD card rather than on the limited internal storage 8/
I have used an exposed module to do it: http://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/modules/xposed-marshmallow-sd-fix-write-t3403263 But, of course, you would have to be rooted. This phone is one of the easiest to root that I've had. Google considers it a security hole to let applications write anywhere they want on the SD card.
switching to adopted storage and you can write apps to sd.
also I should add don't believe the box, I have my 128gb card working perfect as internal storage (box says up to 64gb)
also rooting the phone is one of the easiest root processes, you should just go for it
I bought a used honor 4x phone emui 4, updated , after enter my gmail account updated apps and I got 345mb in internal storage I heard about adopted sd system , can I use it with emui 4 ,my phone non rooted
jana1991 said:
I bought a used honor 4x phone emui 4, updated , after enter my gmail account updated apps and I got 345mb in internal storage I heard about adopted sd system , can I use it with emui 4 ,my phone non rooted
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, you can use it. The short answer is that adopted storage is not an optimal solution, but it can work just fine if you set it up the right way. Which Honor 4x variant do you have, btw? What I write now is valid for the Che2-L11.
Many people think that adopted storage is the same as mounting an extra partition which Android will then use in the most rational way. This is not correct. Developers of Android decided to not use the card for essential files, so when you add adopted storage, Android will still install some parts of each app on your internal storage. Also, some developers of apps have not made their apps ready for adopted storage, and they will install on internal.
For this reason, your internal storage will continue to be filled up with new files even after you have added adopted storage, and might approach 100%, so your phone will tell you there is no more space left for installing new apps. All the while your card still has plenty of space.
But don't worry, you can avoid such a scenario if you do prepare your phone a little.
To get the best possible result, I recommend that you wipe your phone and do a fresh install of EMUI. You need to unlock the bootloader, set the USB developer option, install TWRP, and then flash the firmware the normal way. (This is quite complicated procedure, you should study how to do this yourself.) After that, put an SD card into the phone, and it should be a card that doesn't contain anything important so you can format it. Follow the instructions for adopted storage, which will format your SD card. EMUI will have problems if you use all 100% of the card as adopted, so choose the option mixed 50. The SD card must be minimum class 10 speed for apps to work normally.
Then you should root your phone, and install Root Essentials. Then set the option for "install apps on SD card". After that, your phone will try to install all new apps on the SD card on the adopted storage. You will probably be using around 75% of your internal storage, and might reach 85%, but you can continue adding a lot of apps before you get a problem. I have installed 30+ apps and am using 82% of internal storage. Good luck. :good:
jana1991 said:
I bought a used honor 4x phone emui 4, updated , after enter my gmail account updated apps and I got 345mb in internal storage I heard about adopted sd system , can I use it with emui 4 ,my phone non rooted
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To answer your question, EMUI doesn't support adaptable storage out of the box.
Bob1900 said:
Yes, you can use it. The short answer is that adopted storage is not an optimal solution, but it can work just fine if you set it up the right way. Which Honor 4x variant do you have, btw? What I write now is valid for the Che2-L11.
Many people think that adopted storage is the same as mounting an extra partition which Android will then use in the most rational way. This is not correct. Developers of Android decided to not use the card for essential files, so when you add adopted storage, Android will still install some parts of each app on your internal storage. Also, some developers of apps have not made their apps ready for adopted storage, and they will install on internal.
For this reason, your internal storage will continue to be filled up with new files even after you have added adopted storage, and might approach 100%, so your phone will tell you there is no more space left for installing new apps. All the while your card still has plenty of space.
But don't worry, you can avoid such a scenario if you do prepare your phone a little.
To get the best possible result, I recommend that you wipe your phone and do a fresh install of EMUI. You need to unlock the bootloader, set the USB developer option, install TWRP, and then flash the firmware the normal way. (This is quite complicated procedure, you should study how to do this yourself.) After that, put an SD card into the phone, and it should be a card that doesn't contain anything important so you can format it. Follow the instructions for adopted storage, which will format your SD card. EMUI will have problems if you use all 100% of the card as adopted, so choose the option mixed 50. The SD card must be minimum class 10 speed for apps to work normally.
Then you should root your phone, and install Root Essentials. Then set the option for "install apps on SD card". After that, your phone will try to install all new apps on the SD card on the adopted storage. You will probably be using around 75% of your internal storage, and might reach 85%, but you can continue adding a lot of apps before you get a problem. I have installed 30+ apps and am using 82% of internal storage. Good luck. :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you
Thanks all
Sent from my Che2-L11 using Tapatalk
Adopted Storage? Nope.
Do you even checked the Settings > Storage menu? You can pick either use internal (its small) or the microsd (Im maxed out at 128gb, anybody tried 256gb?)
Or get root, and use Apps2SD. Keep going and install as many apks as you want.
U can try adopted storage . Check if this feature is available in storage menu