• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Help Apps cannot be moved to SD Card

Alot of people are saying that 16gb is plenty of storage and we have no need to store apps on sd. I find a them to be wrong in several instances. For me, I have games such as gta vice city, nova 3, dead trigger, modern combat 4, and many more games. Nova 3 after initial install and downloaded files takes over 2.5 gb of space. After everything is installed on the knternal memory we have about 11gb to play with. I am constantly trying to make room for the next big game. I bought a 64gb micro sd for this reason. I know there are ways to fix it through root but I really dont feel like running that route if I don't have to.
 
It still is not clear to me who is responsible for the stupid decision not to allow people to move apps to SD on jelly bean running on S3 - I feel that we should bombard Samsung and or google until they sort this out - to me it seems like a scam to sell their higher capacity models in the same way that the hated Apple do:mad:
 
It still is not clear to me who is responsible for the stupid decision not to allow people to move apps to SD on jelly bean running on S3 - I feel that we should bombard Samsung and or google until they sort this out - to me it seems like a scam to sell their higher capacity models in the same way that the hated Apple do:mad:

its googles idea, its the future and its for your own security.
theres a 32gb version.
early in the thread someone suggested rooting which means a) you could hack it to read apps from ext sd or b) use a backup app to backup your game progress and uninstall the games, install when u fancy playing one.
i remember phones could only take upto 16gb cards lol :)
 
Hello.
I just joined the forum. I am having the same issue. My SD card is saying blank or unsupported file...I tried reformatting it over and over, nothing is working. I even tried to download an app for backup and that is failing over and over again... now my phone is overheating and I got a replacement with insurance...
I do notwant to lose any texts or voice recorder messages... can I save them to my SD card and how?
Or can you PLEASE tell me how to save to GOOGLE?

Thank you. :)
 
Hello.
I just joined the forum. I am having the same issue. My SD card is saying blank or unsupported file...I tried reformatting it over and over, nothing is working. I even tried to download an app for backup and that is failing over and over again... now my phone is overheating and I got a replacement with insurance...
I do notwant to lose any texts or voice recorder messages... can I save them to my SD card and how?
Or can you PLEASE tell me how to save to GOOGLE?

Thank you. :)

theres a simple file manager "my files" in the app drawer.
any folder or file you want to move to the sd card (its called Ext Sd and the internal memory is called SdCard0) just long press on the file or folder and tap "copy to" then press back till u get to choose ExtSdCard then move it to wherever u want it there and tap "done" or something.
apps just wont read from the external sd. use it for media and backups.
have u tried putting music on it?
oh yeah, in camera app, make sure its set to save pics to ExtSd :)
 
I just joined the forum to find out why I couldn't move apps to sd card. I wish I would have looked this up before I bought. I would have went 32gig instead of 16gig. Between games and Mog downloads I'm down under 3gig available. And I just got on board with mog. Bummer oh well older games I don't play much will have to go.
 
I have a 32GB and had to remove some of my games as well. My apps I feel are more important than my games. I really wished they would have made a 64GB version like they said they would.
 
Hi,

I just picked up a shiny new white S3 yesterday, the 1st day of its release here in India.

Tried to configure the apps and ran into the following issues

1. I do not see the 'Move to SD' card option in the applications menu screen. So unable to move apps to SD card. Tried to reset the phone, still no luck.
2. Did a backup of my contacts, messages on Kies (S2) and tried to restore on the S3. Only contacts were copied. How do I transfer the messages?

Appreciate your assistance in the above two issues

Thanks
Shivram.K
could it have the same layout as my note 2. I finally emailed Samsung support and they solved that problem for me.
on my note I was told to open files>select phone memory>select the file you want to move(check the box)>tap on the menu(not the phone menu, but the menu on the screen(the lines, upper right of screen on note),>select move>select extSd>choose which file you want to move it to(or you can make a file),>select that file>select "move to here". or email Samsung support. hope I didn't exist your time
 
could it have the same layout as my note 2. I finally emailed Samsung support and they solved that problem for me.
on my note I was told to open files>select phone memory>select the file you want to move(check the box)>tap on the menu(not the phone menu, but the menu on the screen(the lines, upper right of screen on note),>select move>select extSd>choose which file you want to move it to(or you can make a file),>select that file>select "move to here". or email Samsung support. hope I didn't exist your time

Did you try it?

Update. I think this works. I just moved some of my game files from off my internal memory onto my sd card and it freed up some space I am going to try it with other apps. This could be what I have been needing.
 
You all know that the "move to sd" option only moves /data/app/*.apk and /data/data anyway right?

That isn't going to make a dent on our phones. Its /sdcard/Android/data thats the problem so "move to sd" via applications manager wouldn't fix that
 
could it have the same layout as my note 2. I finally emailed Samsung support and they solved that problem for me.
on my note I was told to open files>select phone memory>select the file you want to move(check the box)>tap on the menu(not the phone menu, but the menu on the screen(the lines, upper right of screen on note),>select move>select extSd>choose which file you want to move it to(or you can make a file),>select that file>select "move to here". or email Samsung support. hope I didn't exist your time

It has the same layout. This doesn't work for me. Sure I can move files from sd to extsd like any other file manager but it doesn't create a symbolic link or bind.

For example if I move the evernote folder from sd to extsd, there's no link from sd to redirect the app to extsd so it finds the folder missing.
 
Did you try it?

Update. I think this works. I just moved some of my game files from off my internal memory onto my sd card and it freed up some space I am going to try it with other apps. This could be what I have been needing.


Can you play the games still?
 
Hi,

I just picked up a shiny new white S3 yesterday, the 1st day of its release here in India.

Tried to configure the apps and ran into the following issues

1. I do not see the 'Move to SD' card option in the applications menu screen. So unable to move apps to SD card. Tried to reset the phone, still no luck.
2. Did a backup of my contacts, messages on Kies (S2) and tried to restore on the S3. Only contacts were copied. How do I transfer the messages?

Appreciate your assistance in the above two issues

Thanks
Shivram.K

Clearly the people who say "16 GB is plenty" are not using lots of large games and other apps! This appears to be a double issue one with Android itself in JB - this is easily got around by rooting BUT also it seems that Samsung have introduced additional hard coding to prevent it!
Personally I think they are following apples route to persuade people to buy more expensive phones with larger storage (they will tell you it is security feature!) either that or they are doing it to give greater copy protection on apps.

Whatever the reason it is against consumer interest and shame on both Google and Samsung for this. I have rooted my phone but none of the available apps I have tried will restore keeping apps on external storage at least not on the S3 - it works for other phones
 
BUT also it seems that Samsung have introduced additional hard coding to prevent it!

No, that's inaccurate.

As I said only a few posts ago, "Move to SD" moves /data/app/*.apk and /data/data. Games that you refer to are (in bulk) on the SD card anyway.

Besides, since the Samsung has an internal /sdcard, which shares the same space with /data, You're moving it from and to the same place, saving no space with the "move to sd" function, so thats why it was removed. Logical really. They would have had to recode the "move to sd" function to get it to work with an external SD card.

They should have made more provision for it, but "move to sd" from google is not the answer.

Directory bind is what you need to use if you want to move your game data from /sdcard to /extSdCard

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1410262
 
Can you play the games still?

I guess it moves the data like you said in the above post. And yes I am still able to play the games. That was the first thing I checked. I am going to try to move some more data over. The data I have moved so far was from Gameloft. It was a little over a GB of memory. I have a few other games I removed because of their size. I am going to redownload them and see if they work as well.
 
Looks like it doesn't work after all. You have to re download the data again. That goes right back to the internal memory.
 
Looks like it doesn't work after all. You have to re download the data again. That goes right back to the internal memory.

Oh ok. Thats what I expected. Thanks for confirming that because I was going mad trying to figure our how Samsung had done that.
 
Back
Top Bottom