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Help How do I move apps to SD Card

D

dorlow

Android Enthusiast
I bought my kids Maylong Mobility M295 tablets for Christmas. They were cheap tablets that have almost no internal storage. They have SD card slots. I just bought a 64 GB card for both. I instert it and it shows it recognizes the card in storage settings. But in settings, it has the internal storage, then SD Card 1, and SD Card 2. The SD Card 1 must be internal storage also. I only have one slot. When the SD card is ejected, SD Card 1 is still present. As soon as I put the SD Card in, it then populates the storage for SD Card 2.

If I open up the app settings and then click move to SD, it appears to move to SD Card 1 which is the internal storage and not the 64 GB SD Card I just inserted. I just got to thinking maybe it's partitions on the SD Card, but I just formatted the card and the full 32 GB is one FAT 32 partition. (Let alone if they were both on the SD card, that wouldn't explain why when I eject the card, SD Card 1 is still available.)
 
SD card 1 is an emulated SD card and is part of internal storage as you correctly deduced. If you want to use your removable SD card for app and data storage, you are going to have to partition it so that part of it is ext3 or ext4 and the other part is fat32. IIRC, you might even need a third partition. You would do all this with a utility like apps2sd.
 
But you also need to root the device and make further modifications (or use Link2SD) before it can use a partition for app storage. If all you do is partition the card you will just end up with a smaller card (as the device won't see the new partition by default). And root access is essential for this to work.

The problem here is a cheap device where no care or thought has been used in the software. Moving apps to SD isn't supported in Android 4 or 5, so it sounds like they've added back the Android 2 apps to SD but without engaging the brain at all, with the result that they may as well not have bothered.

Can I just check though: how much internal storage do you have, and is the emulated sd card the same as the internal app storage? If you aren't sure of that last, you can install the "storage truth" app from the sticky post in this forum and post the results.
 
Move Apps to SD Card Using Application Manager
  1. Navigate to settings on your phone.You can find the settings menu in the app drawer.
  2. Tap Application Manager.
  3. Select an app you want to move to the microSD card.
  4. Tap the Move to SD Card button. If you don't see a Move to SD Card button, the app cannot be moved.
 
Hadron said:
But you also need to root the device and make further modifications (or use Link2SD) before it can use a partition for app storage. If all you do is partition the card you will just end up with a smaller card (as the device won't see the new partition by default). And root access is essential for this to work.

The problem here is a cheap device where no care or thought has been used in the software. Moving apps to SD isn't supported in Android 4 or 5, so it sounds like they've added back the Android 2 apps to SD but without engaging the brain at all, with the result that they may as well not have bothered.

Can I just check though: how much internal storage do you have, and is the emulated sd card the same as the internal app storage? If you aren't sure of that last, you can install the "storage truth" app from the sticky post in this forum and post the results.
Click to expand...

Well my phone I was completely out of space and couldn't find another app that the system would allow me to move to SD. I thought I tried apps 2 SD but I guess I thought so and never did. Apps2SD totally worked and just freed up 400 MB of my 2 GB internal storage.
I do have my phone rooted. I'm guessing I might have to root the tablets.
 
Beware rooting cheap Chinese tablets.
If you brick it you won't be finding any stock ROMS to reflash.
 
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