-
After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.
How to switch out a SD card that is formatted as Internal Storage?
- Thread starter b253tn
- Start date
the only way is to back everything up and reformat the card as portable. what phone do you have? some manufacturers have their own utility program that can backup and restore data. samsung has smart switch for example.
ONN7 gen 3 tablet
You say to "back up everything", so how does it work? If I back up the entire tablet onto an external hard drive, then reformat the card as portable, what happens to the data on the tablet? Does only data that was stored on the SD card get erased and the data that was on the tablet internal storage remain? Because my tablet only has 32 GB (14 GB used out of the 32 GB) and the SD card (which is formatted as internal storage) has 32GB (all of the 32 GB is used).
So when formatting the SD Card to portable, what happens to the 32GB of data that was on the SD card? Does some of it get transferred to the free 14GB of space of the tablet's storage space? Or does it just get erased?
And so if I back up the entire device to an external hard drive, and some of the data is still remaining on the tablet, how can I restore the rest of the data that was deleted during the reformatting process? Or do I have to completely erase the entire tablet and restore the entire thing from the external hard drive? (Since I plan to replace the 32 GB SD card with a 128GB SD card)
Thank you
this is the problem when you format the sd card as internal. it basically acts as the tablet's internal storage.....so everything gets stored there. but not every can be backed up. you have an off brand device. they do not get any support and thus will not have a utility program like Samsung's Smart Switch. so you can probably backup and files, pictures, and media via a cable that is hooked up to your pc. or you can sync your photos and videos via Google Photos. just make sure that on your device, your Google account has been sync'd. if this happens than your photos and videos should be syn'c on the cloud. you can go to your pc's browser and go to google photos and your photos should be there.
for any text messages you might have on your tablet, you can use sms backup found in the play store.
as far as your app data........those are going to be toast
when you re-format the card, the sd card will get wiped and formatted.
for any text messages you might have on your tablet, you can use sms backup found in the play store.
as far as your app data........those are going to be toast
when you re-format the card, the sd card will get wiped and formatted.
So if the SD card is formatted as "internal storage" and I try to reformat it to portable storage, all app data will be wiped? Or will just everything on the tablet be wiped (both the SD card and the tablet's storage itself will be erased)? Or will it still retain some data? If so, which data will be left remaining after reformatting the SD card?
And you said not everything can be backed up, so basically if I attach an external hard drive using a OTG cable, would I not be able to back up everything on my device (including apps and their app data)? I would basically only be able to back up or transfer files to it?
Thanks
not sure what will happen, but i know everything on the card will be wiped. i never have done this....never had to....but i do know whenever you format a card, its content will get deleted.
and no using an external hard drive will not be able to backup your phone's data. most of your apps data are saved internally onto the system partition which in your case is the sd card is formatted to be part of your tablets system partition.
the only way to get a complete backup of everything would be to root your tablet, install a custom recovery(twrp) and make a nandroid backup. but usually rooting will wipe data initially. and not all devices can be rooted. you have an off brand device and there is no dev community to support it and thus can't be rooted nor is there a custom recovery.
You can certainly backup all your important pics, videos, docs, music, etc. to external storage using an OTG cable, or to an online cloud service such as Google Drive, or to a computer. Which I strongly recommend that everyone does this anyway. For apps, they'll still be available to install from your Google Play account. As for the app data, you'll need to check the backup options that might in the particular apps you've got. Some games do sync your progress, achievements, IAPs, coins, tokens, etc. from Google Play itself. You'll know those because they always show the login and sync progress when you start them. Games from Steam and Amazon may have something similar.
Banking and financial apps will always keep a list of your balances and transactions on their own servers. Things like WeChat, WhatsApp, and Telegram have their own backup and restore options.
FYI some mainstream manufacturers, such as Samsung and Huawei, just don't support formatting SD cards as internal storage on their devices. Likely because of the problems it can lead to. And if you have one of Google's own Pixel phones, this problem just doesn't happen, because they don't take SD cards.
Last edited:
Nope
svim
Extreme Android User
Stop wasting your time trying to access any data stored within a microSD card formatted as Internal. If you want anything that is residing on that card, it's not going to be usable nor accessible to you. Your options are to either leave the card in your tablet or to reformat it back to Portable. The formatting process is going to wipe the card clean, that's inevitable.
In its default condition, when you originally bought it, the card's media storage was formatted with some form of FAT file storage variant, either FAT32 or exFAT. The FAT protocols being an old, proprietary Microsoft file system, that being old are minimally capable to still be usable with today's technology but having a benefit in being supported by almost all current operating systems (i.e. Linux, Microsoft, Apple, Android, iOS, etc.). But when you format a microSD card to be Internal, that's a significant change to the card's storage media. It's a) changed from FAT to ext4 and b) gets encrypted. Once the card is changed to Internal, its file system matches the same file system, ext4, as what your tablet's internal storage media is formatted to be. The encryption ties the card to your tablet, the encryption key locking the two to only apply to each other. So at that point the card, now being Internal, is morphed into a being just another internal component of your tablet's existing hardware configuration. The change to a corresponding file system and the encryption make the card usable as just a 'virtually' added amount of storage media.
So yes you have the option to manually reformat the card back to Portable (making the file system a FAT variant again and removing the encryption), but that does result in a somewhat drastic measure to your tablet's installed Android operating system. By doing this you're removing the amount of file storage it was using previously. So expect some data loss, most likely in just having to reinstall some apps.