Hi, but is it possible that our phone can not yet add an external card with otg and make it internal memory to increase the phone memory?
I always have full memory, and I can not take pictures or download apps that I must first delete something, all this is nonsense!
The moto x2 is still a very good and performing phone, but is limited by memory, can SD format as internal memory with a workaround? I do not believe that nobody has yet succeeded, let me know !
Most likely not. I'm assuming you have the 16gb one like me. Transfer videos to a computer, those take up a ridiculous amount of space. Also download SDMaid. That'll clean up some space as well. Go into storage and see what's taking up the space and report back.
Make all of your pictures automatically back up to Google Drive/Photos, that relieves a lot of space.
My personal experience and a guide for using a USB otg as internal storage
Dear tanohack,
I ran into the same storage issue a while back and now I have a small micro usb stick configured as adoptable storage. My phone is not rooted (and you need Android 6.0 to perform this). This guide specifically covers how to transfer apps to an USB stick and how to use the stick is internal storage. If you only intend to store music or media on the stick this is not necessary.
tldr: It is indeed possible to have a USB configured as internal storage with a simple ADB command, possibly a great solution to your problem. This can, however, reduce the performance of intensive games on the stick, and it could be cumbersome to carry the stick around.
How to enable the adoption of an usb stick
It is possible to adopt an usb without root, but this is not enabled by default. This is primarily meant for developers to test their apps, but we can use it as well.
To enable it, you only have to perform the following ADB command once:
Code:
adb shell sm set-force-adoptable true
This is officially mentioned here, but I found it either on Pockednow or Android Central.
If you don't already have ADB you can follow this guide to set it up
The two storage modes and their tradeoffs
When you adopt your external storage medium (the USB in our case) you can choose to ether, only store specific apps (Use as portable storage), or to move your whole storage over to the stick (Use as internal storage). Both options have their pros and cons.
First off, the apps only version. When you use this, only apps could be moved over to the USB. System apps and apps that have disabled it can't be moved over. For all other apps, go to their storage info in the settings to manage their location. If you were to remove the USB stick the apps will disappear from your app drawer and the icons on your home screen will get grayed out.
The downside of this mode is that large games have stored a lot of their data in obb files that stay on your device, even if you move the game itself over to the USB. Your pictures, videos and music files will also stay on your device.
So, how about the second mode? In the second mode, the complete filesystem will be transferred over to the USB, even those obb files. Individual apps can still be moved between the USB and the phone (system apps etc. still stay on your phone).
Great no storage problems anymore, but what are the cons?
First of, I noticed some reduced performance mainly when loading a large game, and while playing an intensive game the frame rate could be a bit more inconsistent.
The biggest con of this mode, however, is that you don't have a file system if the USB is removed. Most apps will still work as natural but the main drawback is that you can't take pictures or videos without the USB. So if you see a cool shot, and you don't have your USB attached, you have to reattach the stick and wait for it to check and recognise it. This could take anywhere from 3 to 15 seconds.
Battery life
For some reason the phone doesn't enter deep sleep and stays awake when the screen is off while the USB is attached. This means that you can't keep the USB connected all the time or you won't be able to reach the end of the day.[/HIDE]
The USB I personally used
I use a 32GB Transcend Jetflash USB stick. It is a fairly small USB stick that can plug directly into my phone. It does however get warm while using it. As I described earlier, the performance could be better but an USB connection simply can't compete with onboard storage, so it's probably not their fault. I assume every USB storage will be this fast.
How I use it at the moment
At first I went all in and and used the USB as internal storage. When I went on holiday I converted to the Portable storage mode to regain the ability to take pictures at a moment's notice. Since then, I haven't moved back. Because only not frequently used apps are located on the USB and I use them even less often because they're on the stick, I haven't used the USB much lately.
miscellaneous
I use Storage Shortcut in combination with Custom Quick Settings to get a handy shortcut to the storage settings in the quick settings.
I use Memory Map application to manually clean my memory few times a year. A lot of apps leave some trash in folders and this app visualizes very well sizes and structure of folders. For example, I found out that Telegram stores all old media files and I needed to turn on auto-clean in Telegram to avoid it. Some apps just keep this garbage on your disk and you just need to delete it manually.
Related
When I access the internal storage with mass storage mode from my desktop, I can't access it from Diamond at the same time. I wonder if it is possible to access the internal storage from both side at the same time?
nope, i dont think so, you cant do it now on my athena with usbtopc or wm5storage
its like if you connect a camera [well mine anyway] you cant look at pics on it while the pc is looking at it.
Yeah, there must always be one system in charge of an item of storage - two can't share it, because they'll have conflicts over it. There are probably ways to re-route requests and virtualise stuff, but they're far too advanced to bother persuing.
Hello,
I'm running a stock i896 (Rogers) Captivate. I am on WinXP 32-bit (x86).
I'm having trouble mounting the device's internal storage. What I've tried to do is connect my phone in the following two ways:
-1. Connect USB cable; select from one of the phones three options in the phone's pop-up menu: Kies (Firmware update), Media player, Mass storage
-2. Enter phone's Settings menu, and enable the option: Applications -» Development -» USB debugging; connect USB cable.
Both methods yield the same result: I hear Windows notification sounds that indicate a USB device has been connected (so far so good), check My Computer, and find that I have two new drives listed (one for internal, one for external—I assume).
The problem is, in attempting to access either of the two new drives (both labelled non-descriptly: "Removable Disk (X", where X is one of two consecutive drive-letters), I get the message: Please insert a disk into drive X:. I know not what to do at this point; I have no MicroSD card, but I assume that I ought be able to access the devices internal SD card without too much hassle...?
I've tried three different driver-packages so far (with clean uninstall/installs in-between): two Samsung ones, and one that came bundled inside PDANet's setup-package. (PDANet allows for cabled-sharing of a device's internet connection. The included driver was recommended in another thread.)
I wonder if there's something simple that I have to do—some toggle, that I've overlooked.
I'm new to the whole 'Droid mobile scene, having come over recently from Apple iOS (and I'm never going back). I'd like to get this sexy beast loaded up, and replace my old portable media-player.
While we're at it, are there obviously-superior alternatives to the stock media applications? Specifically, I like smooth, functional, pretty-looking apps—ones that are simple, efficient, easily-usable, and comprehensive (you know: good ones). Just wondering.
Thanks
Pull down the notification tray, tap USB storage, tap mount.
Sent from my Captivate
rofl
thanks
Holy crap I was struggling with this as well! Glad I found this thread!
loonieryan said:
Holy crap I was struggling with this as well! Glad I found this thread!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it's in the notification bar at the top, chances are if you pull down the bar, you'll see something regarding it.
Hi,
has anyone succeeded to export the internal or external SD storage as a USB mass storage device? The only thing that works for me is MTP under Windows.
Of what I know it's not possible because the phones usb mass storage only supports one drive.
Our phone has two drives, internal and external SD.
Therefore it has to use MTP for you to see the two drives in Windows.
It's the same for all phones with external and internal memory.
Solution: Unmount SD card, rip it out of the frickin phone, ram it into your computer, start copying HD quality movies super fast, rip it out of your computer and showe it back into your phone! Problem?
Sent from my LG-P880
Yes, but I don't like to open the filigree back side too often.
MrWunderbaum said:
Of what I know it's not possible because the phones usb mass storage only supports one drive.
Our phone has two drives, internal and external SD.
Therefore it has to use MTP for you to see the two drives in Windows.
It's the same for all phones with external and internal memory.
Solution: Unmount SD card, rip it out of the frickin phone, ram it into your computer, start copying HD quality movies super fast, rip it out of your computer and showe it back into your phone! Problem?
Sent from my LG-P880
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry for digging out this old thread. But still better than starting a new one.
I am new to android and the 4X HD is my first android phone. Was using iPhone with PWNtunes, which allows for free file transfers to and from the phone (including music & videos) without using ANY additional software on the other end.
Is there really NO way to activate USB mass storage at least for the external SD card ? I mean, I could like copy the files later to the internal memory, but I really hate the idea that I have to open the phone everytime I want to transfer a file. I can't always mail the files.
I am willing to modify the phone in any way, but I often come across computers where I can NOT install any additional software. Even worse I work with Hardware devices (like my car Stereo or my Set-top-box) where there is no possibility to change the Software.
So USB Mass Storage is the only way to go for me. All the google searches I've done so far point out 2 piece solutions, at best, where I would also need to install software on the PC.
Is there really no standardised solution for this that works on ANY Android ICS (like PWNtunes for any iPhone) ?
I would even pay up to 10 € for this feature, a feature that should be included !
With Total Commander and the Android-ADB-Plugin I have access to the entire file system and SD cards of all my Androids.
I don't know about yours but, for me its enough when I select "LG software" (don't know how's in yours cause mine is in Portuguese...), after I just need to run "LGAutoRun.exe" and I can see the internal store and external sd just like if I had "mass storage" selected.
If I have previously selected "LG software" windows just ask me if I want to open to see the files, but thats normal cause the drivers are already installed.
@Bud Cord & @RuedasLocas
Both are again solutions where I would have to run some kind of software on the Host side.
Yes, this will work for Win7 computers BUT IT WILL NOT work for my TV, it will NOT work for my Car Stereo, it will NOT work for my Printer, it will NOT work for my portable mediaplayer, it will NOT work for my DSL-Router, it will NOT work for my DVB-SetTopBox, and so on. For all those other devices that ONLY understand USB MASS STORAGE it will simply NOT WORK.
Yeah USB MASS STORAGE (UMS) is some crappy old block access device. BUT it is also the defacto standart that every USB Device that can read a USB stick supports.
I had a Windows Mobile 6.1 Phone some years ago, it hat UMS, only for the SDcard.
I had a simple Feature-Phone(SE K610), it hat UMS, again only for the Memory card.
I had a Chinese unbranded Phone with dual-Sims and a TV set built in, it had UMS!
I had an iPhone I could Jailbreak it and activate UMS. Every 2$ cheapo USB stick has UMS.
I again want USB MASS STORAGE at least for the SD-Card. I am still trying to find some workaround. Even that the phone was not rootable at the beginning was no dealbreaker for me, but THIS actually IS a dealbreaker for me. I loved to use my Phone as a USB-Stick and plug it in everywhere. I always did that. IPhone has forced me to carry around my own cable, android is forcing me to carry around a regular USB stick.
I hate the phone for not having MASS STORAGE. The worst part is that it seems like Android has adopted this crap, so any Android phone is just as bad.
Sorry for whining, I just thought that there was some simple solution that I am not seeing.
A while ago after transfering some files to/from my PC via USB mass storage mode I unplugged the USB cable without doing a Safe Disconnect on the PC. Immediately after this, the processor (or something in the lower right corner) on my Droid 3 started overheating and draining the battery very quickly, as if I was running some very pretentious 3D game or something.
I found some discussions on the Net that lead me to look under Settings / Applications / Battery use to find that an application called "Media" was overusing the processor and causing the overheating and drainage, so I force-stopped that one and the problem went away.
But now every time I connect the phone to a PC in USB mass storage mode, I get the same problem and after I'm done transfering files I have to force-stop the "Media" application. (This is even if I use Safe Disconnect or whatever it's called on the PC.)
I've seen some other suggestion today that I should try the same operations with the SD card pulled out, but the same thing happens even in the absence of the SD card.
Does someone know how I can reset/reinstall the "Media" application or service that handles USB mass storage mode without resetting the whole thing to factory settings or reinstalling the whole Minimoto image?
Boy, I think I remember reading somewhere that this might happen if you have a media file that is malformed. In other words, the media app scans all available storage for media files to put in the gallery (or something like that) and gets hung up when it encounters a media file that has errors in it.
I'm not sure about that, but it might be worth copying to PC and then removing all photo, music and video files from internal storage and the SD card and then see if that still happens. Then look at the files on the computer to make sure that they are good before you put them back on the phone.
My only issue with this theory is that I recall it was an issue with phones that updated from Gingerbread to ICS a few years ago, so maybe that has nothing to do with what you are seeing...
Thanks for the suggestion, it pointed me in the right direction.
I didn't like the idea of a simple copy operation solving a corrupt file problem, so I started looking for ways to run a chkdsk/fsck on my internal drive (since taking out the SD card hadn't eliminated the problem earlier, I assumed something was wrong on the internal drive). All the solutions I found for this involved using ADB and rebooting into some "recovery mode" and that too seemed like too much hassle, so I insisted on searching for some app that could do at least some limited filesystem checks that maybe wouldn't involve unmounting the system drive.
In the end I found something called "AParted", an ad-supported free partition manager that looks like it wants to be the Android homologue of GNOME's GParted, KDE's KParted etc. Of course, while running AParted from the system drive I couldn't perform any operations on the system drive itself, so I said "what the heck" and just ran a Repair operation on the SD card, which was the only one I could unmount in that situation.
Lo and behold, the problem seems fixed now and I'm not getting any more overheating and battery drainage after connecting my Droid to the PC in USB Mass Storage mode (tested with two PCs running Ubuntu and Windows 7).
I have access to a 3D printer, and I was thinking of designing a case with a bare flash drive built in. If I cut one of the USB OTG cables down that allows usb and charging simultaneously and fit it in the case design would I be able to have the USB connected and still be able to charge? If that is a possibility, is there a way to trick Android into thinking that the USB drive is instead an SD card? If we could trick Android into thinking it was an SD card wouldn't we be able to merge the flash drive with the internal storage and increase the storage capacity of the phone? My other thought for this idea was using multirom, and just sticking a 256gb flash drive in the case and just booting off of that. Do either of these ideas sound like they would work well at all? I just have the 32gb model and it just isn't enough.
No. The phone will not charge while in USB host mode, if you try to just throw in voltage you'll burn out the flash drive and or damage your phones micro USB port.
You're multirom idea wasnt bad. But all multirom does is allow a system partition to be installed with an image to a flash drive, and then boot it from the flash drive. It still reads data cache and such off your devices partition.
How are you using your storage? I got use to the "no expandable storage" with my lg and Galaxy Nexus.
Are you encrypted? Unencrypt your phone, you'll save 1.5-2gbs of storage capacity. Use Google photos to backup your photos and videos in HD quality and have it delete files after backup. Do you flash roms? Go through your android/data and Android/obb folders and delete everything related to apps you don't use.
It's not a bad idea to backup music/photos/videos to a PC, then wipe internal storage and restore all the photos and such. You would be amazed at how much storage our phones will use that you can't find and delete without digging around.
Deleted as apparently useless...
noidea24 said:
No. The phone will not charge while in USB host mode, if you try to just throw in voltage you'll burn out the flash drive and or damage your phones micro USB port.
You're multirom idea wasnt bad. But all multirom does is allow a system partition to be installed with an image to a flash drive, and then boot it from the flash drive. It still reads data cache and such off your devices partition.
How are you using your storage? I got use to the "no expandable storage" with my lg and Galaxy Nexus.
Are you encrypted? Unencrypt your phone, you'll save 1.5-2gbs of storage capacity. Use Google photos to backup your photos and videos in HD quality and have it delete files after backup. Do you flash roms? Go through your android/data and Android/obb folders and delete everything related to apps you don't use.
It's not a bad idea to backup music/photos/videos to a PC, then wipe internal storage and restore all the photos and such. You would be amazed at how much storage our phones will use that you can't find and delete without digging around.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am un-encrypted so I do have that little bit of extra space. I have a lot of music on my phone for listening in the car. LTE is spotty where I live, so streaming isn't a great option. I was under the impression that with a modified kernel it is possible to charge and access a device at the same time. Doesn't the nexus 7 have a kernel that allows that? If that is in fact possible is there a way to trick android into thinking that it's an sd card instead of a flash drive?
This is one such kernel for the nexus 7
https://mehrvarz.github.io/usb-host-mode-power-management-nexus7/
I think my solution my work great if there is a kernel that works with charging and we could get the USB to integrate.
Encryption takes up more space?
Code:
adb shell sm set-force-adoptable true
lets you use any external storage device as adoptable storage letting you use a OTG drive as internal storage. Could've just been my drive but it stalled at 20% for a couple minutes, mighta finished but my OTG adapter is kinda flaky and lost connection. After a bit of reading I've learned it might be since my phone isn't encrypted and adoptable storage is encrypted by default.
Also from what I understand about OTG things is that you CANNOT charge the phone while it's connection with OTG even wirelessly.
Though with the N6 having USB 2.0 it'll likely be very very slow.
Ad
StykerB said:
Code:
adb shell sm set-force-adoptable true
lets you use any external storage device as adoptable storage letting you use a OTG drive as internal storage. Could've just been my drive but it stalled at 20% for a couple minutes, mighta finished but my OTG adapter is kinda flaky and lost connection. After a bit of reading I've learned it might be since my phone isn't encrypted and adoptable storage is encrypted by default.
Also from what I understand about OTG things is that you CANNOT charge the phone while it's connection with OTG even wirelessly.
Though with the N6 having USB 2.0 it'll likely be very very slow.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Awesome!! Thank you. I'll do some tinkering maybe this weekend to see what I can come up with. That was exactly what I was looking for as far as adoptable storage!
EDIT: I ran the adb command you gave me through terminal emulator on the phone itself after giving it root access. All 3 flash drives I tried integrated with my internal storage just phone. All 3 were 32gb usb 3.0, but each was a different brand. I built a custom "y" cable, but you can buy them on Amazon. I'm talking with a kernel developer and it seems it is possible to charge the phone at the same time. Both the nexus 4 and 2013 nexus 7 have custom kernels that allow what's called USB OTG Host mode that allows the device to charge and use a USB device at the same time. From what I can tell it's a kernel module that needs to be added. For the nexus 4 it was just a zip file that patched whatever kernel you were currently using. I don't have a lot of experience with compiling kernels, but I'll try and find out what needs to be done and fire my Ubuntu box up.