Can 'Apps' Access the Removable SD Card on the Bionic?

[thethreelaws]

When I wanted to back up all of my apps (and other things) before getting a replacement Bionic after the first week with my first one, I looked around, and found some things. I tried about four different apps to back up various things (like one for the apps, one for the txt msg history, one for the phone call history, etc). On every backup app that I tried, I told it to back up whatever it was backing up to the SD Card.

Well, when it came time to start up and activate the new, replacement Bionic, none of the backed up stuff was there on the SD Card (which I made sure to transfer before turning on the new one).

Thinking there may have been some kind of miscommunication between me and the backup apps (every one of them?), I decided to fire up the old Bionic, and sure enough, there were all of the related folders for all of the backup tools that I had tried....on the internal storage location.

I had to move all of it, little by little, from the internal storage to the removable SD Card, put the SD Card back into the new Bionic, move it all from the SD Card into the internal storage of the new Bionic, and then the apps were able to find their related files and restore the data to my new Bionic.

I then sent a message to the developer of one of the apps (Safe Backup), and asked if there is a way to get it to back up the data to the removable SD Card.

This was my question...

"Hi.
I want a backup tool that can back up to my SD Card.
I tried yours, but it only backs up to internal storage (/mnt/sdcard).
I need it to back up to the removable SD Card (/mnt/sdcard-ext).
Is there a way to change the settings in this tool to do that?
Thanks"

This was their response...

"Safe Backup doesn

 

[moondrius]

nope

 

[thethreelaws]

Response from johngalt (which I will respond to after I get the rest of my 'Questions' threads created)...

Q12: Yes, they can. Whether they do it properly or not is another story.

Older apps by default are programmed to use the path /sdcard for the removable storage. Unfortunately, newer phones with both internal and external storage are breaking them b/c for some ODD reason Google decided to change the name of the removable storage from /sdcard to /sdcard-ext. Those apps that have not been updated by the author to check for the existence of /sdcard-ext are losing out, b/c they use the internal storage as if it is external storage.

So, the capability exists - it's depends upon the developer of the app and if he / they have updated the app to account for the different naming schemes based upon OD version / Phone or not.

 

[amageus]

This question came up in another post and a developer stepped in and mentioned how to tell the program to search for the SDCard. He actually gave us the command string but that was a while ago and I don't know it. So, yes they can change it. It's not like Google is forcing everyone to use SDCard. I don't get why Google decided on that either. So if a developer says they can't, they either don't know how or just don't care to change their program which at that point I would probably stop supporting.

 

[johnlgalt]

It's directly available from the developer.android.com site as well. It's just that many devs have not added the required code to either

1) Check OS version and use the appropriate setting (not fool hardy, as some phones with newer OS versions may still only have one storage location)

2) Check the mount points in the system and if a mount point for /sdcard-ext does not exist, use /sdcard, else use /sdcard-ext