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

Help [Q] Is there any way to move apps to internal USB storage?

ok im new but have a very helpful response i think. First off sorry if I'm repeating an answer i started reading and figured this out half way down the page. So: What i did, is I have KIES installed so when i plug my phone in i always have the USB STORAGE option in my notification bar. When i turn that on, naturally it comes up on my computer. I open folder to view files. Then find whatever it is you are looking for, books, apps, data of something, and ctl + x (cut) and paste it into "external_sd" This is what it is called on my phone, ofcourse its different for some people but im sure it will usually have the word SD or External when referring to the extra 11.5 GB of internal memory. Now some things cant be moved there. But if something big is taking up space on DEVICE memory then this will clear it up. I hope this helped and sorry if i repeated anything!
 
External_sd is the location of your external microsd. The 11.5GB memory space is called /sdcard. If you use Myfile in the phone it goes to that folder and the external_sd is a folder in that master folder.

You can create folders and copy and paste in both location.
 
hi seniors,

I have galaxy y and galaxy note.galaxy note i bought just now.i was using expense manager in galaxy y.i tried exporting the data from Y to NOTE and its not importing the same file in NOTE bcz the app is stored in device memory.

How to solve dis issue people?? help me...

regards.
Shankar.
 
RyanBiv said:
Hoping to revive and add to this conversation.

I think the problem lies in the fact that android does not handle phones properly that have BOTH internal SD (USB) storage and external SD cards. So far in everything I've read directly from Google mobile support articles I keep coming across the phrase "Depending on your model of phone, your phone also has either internal USB storage or a removable SD card". This is incorrect, as some can do both and they never address it as such.

For instance, under manage applications, my phone labels the button as 'Move to USB storage' but it in fact moves it to the external SD. If the card is unmounted or removed, then I get the "failed to move application. not enough memory" message.

I've read that some people were able to move to USB storage prior to inserting an external SD card for the first time. If this is the case, I'd like to know why and if it's possible to get back to that point without re-formatting/restoring your phone.

Can anyone answer the following:

1. Is it possible to move an app to USB storage (internal SD) if you have used an SD card already.

2. If not, why can a phone without an external slot move apps to USB storage but a phone with external storage cannot?

3. Is the USB storage intended to be used only for data moved when connected to a PC via a USB cable? If so, then why is #2 true for phones without external storage options?

The reason this is important is because I'm reaching the point where my external storage is full. So I'd like to know if the 12.5 GB out of 13 of unused USB storage has to go unused (as far as apps go). Yes, I can get a larger SD card but I'd rather not. It seems like this should be possible, but because Android wasn't designed for phones capable of both storage options it doesn't know what to do when presented with both.

Very frustrating. Has anyone figured out a workaround?
Click to expand...

I would also appreciate any input re utilizing the USB storage on the Samsung Galaxy S2. I had the same issue with the HTC Wildfire S, and even though I moved some apps to an SD card which I had inserted into the Wildfire, the internal memory still filled up with the updates to the apps which couldn't be removed or relocated (these had been installed on the phone before purchase).

It would appear that Google has crippled the full functionality of these devices by partitioning off 'internal storage' for apps and then not allowing people to move apps between partitions.
 
I agree its pretty unbelievable that you can't move anything / use the USB storage. Would love to hear if anyone finds a solution. My internal device memory is full and giving me error messages, but USB memory has tons available - just can't access it...
 
michaelgr said:
i would also appreciate any input re utilizing the usb storage on the samsung galaxy s2. I had the same issue with the htc wildfire s, and even though i moved some apps to an sd card which i had inserted into the wildfire, the internal memory still filled up with the updates to the apps which couldn't be removed or relocated (these had been installed on the phone before purchase).

It would appear that google has crippled the full functionality of these devices by partitioning off 'internal storage' for apps and then not allowing people to move apps between partitions.
Click to expand...
i wonder have you found any answer to this ???????????? Having the same problem with my infuse 4g
 
Here is what i got in my ICS device

1. I don't jave any picture/video/media stored in the usb storage as called internal SD or SDcard 1

2. I stored all my media external SD as called SDcard 2

3. I plug in the SDcard 2 into the phone

4. Surely it will be detected now that the phone has 3 storages.

5. Then, suddenly my SDcard 1 space is drained as much as the space used by the media files in the SDcard 2. So that the SD card 1 now detected as having much lower space than it should be. I check the path of the files in the gallery, well it is addressed to SDcard 2. Plug off the SDcard 2 will restore the space available in SDcard 1 detected by the android system.


What is happening here? Anyone notice the same thing as me?
What is the solution?
 
I cant believe this still isn't figured out. I have a 16 gb external micro SD card that is now maxed out, and my internal memory is now maxed out. However, I still have lots of USB storage left over, but I cant use it! WTF?

system storage is at 1.77GB/1.97GB
USB Storage is at 5.25GB/11.50GB
SD card is at 14.64/14.93GB

Why cant I move stuff to the USB storage? This is asinine.

Is there still no fix for this issue???
 
What do you mean you can't use the USB storage space? What files do you want to be in there? You can actually keep music and videos in the USB storage if you want to, instead of the microSD card. Just move it.

There is nothing much you can do with system storage. The only thing you can do is try the move2SD option which would move a certain percentage of your apps data to the external microSD.

Cheers
 
Russell Ng said:
What do you mean you can't use the USB storage space? What files do you want to be in there? You can actually keep music and videos in the USB storage if you want to, instead of the microSD card. Just move it.

There is nothing much you can do with system storage. The only thing you can do is try the move2SD option which would move a certain percentage of your apps data to the external microSD.

Cheers
Click to expand...


I want to use the usb storage for apps since the other two storages are full. From reading around this it doesn't look like I can?
 
Same problem here. My External SD Card and my internal 2GB SD storage is full and I can't move apps to the 11GB internal storage.

I have installed quite a bit of ROMs on my phone and I'm sure that there were some of them that could move apps to the 11GB internal storage. If it is possible on some ROMs then there must be a solution for rooted phones on stock Android.

Anyway, I can't remember which ROMs could use the internal storage for app storage. Any suggestions?
 
THIS NO LONGER WORKS for apps and their data, but connecting the phone as USB mass storage is convenient for shoving media files around

It is true that the SD card memory is slightly slower and more power-hungry than the USB internal memory when starting apps. There is a simple way to utilise the internal USB memory for apps (executables and data), almost as if you did a "Move to Internal USB" instead of a "Move to (External) SD", sadly you need a computer and an SD card to do it. Here's how it is done.

You might want to temporarily back-up any media that you have on your current SD card to make space to do this*

Use the "Move to SD" button or the tick-list to move as many apps to the (external) SD card as you can.

Switch on USB Mass Storage (to do this, tap {Settings}... {More Settings}... {USB utilities}... {Connect storage to PC}... connect the USB data cable and {Turn on USB Storage}).

This will mount USB internal and SD external as two drives on your computer. Drag the .android_secure folder, which contains all the app executables and data from the SD external drive to the USB internal drive (move, not copy or copy-then-delete).

Eject the drives from the computer, turn off USB mass storage on the phone. Restart the phone. The app files are now on internal storage instead of the external card.

Sadly, you need to leave an SD card in the slot otherwise Android assumes the apps are in device storage. But any old, small capacity card will do (I have a 2GB one in there, empty and unused). Or you can copy many, many media files into the remainder of the internal storage and/or a large SD card that is now devoid of app executables.

*switch on USB Mass Storage as described, drag/drop all your media folders from the External SD card to the same folder hierarchy on Internal USB - or to the computer. You can drag/drop them back later.
 
Last edited:
I have no idea what you're talking about.

The .android_secure folder is not where apps are stored normally, they're distributed across /data/app, /data/data and /data/dalvik-cache primarily and you can't see any of that without root - and none of it from a PC using UMS access.

Moving apps to an SD card then back to internal storage addressed as the internal sd card really accomplishes nothing.

The only USB storage you get comes from plugging in a thumb drive via an OTG USB cable.

You have internal storage and an external sd card - there's no internal usb storage.

Internal storage is accessed in different ways because the parts you can see are FUSE filesystems - internal storage with Linux permissions and the internal sd card that you may be able to mount using UMS is the same, exact storage location - segregated for viewing on Microsoft just using folder permissions.

Moving apps from /data to your your internal sd card is not going to give any benefit - it's the same chip, you're not moving it as far as you think.
 
How can someone say the memory is big enough for apps.On my galaxy note there is 1.98gb in the device memory and this is used up by all the preloaded apps.I have put onl two tiny apps on my phone because I get the insufficient memory message if I add more. Despite many irrelevant answers here there is no way to move these apps or any pthers to the usb memory which is ridiculously called the sd card0 when ot should be called the internal memory perhaps but not the usb memory.I suppose you could call a cat a dog if you wanted but it would still be.
When I have used the Move to sd card option the apps without fail become unusable even if a file explorer app shows they are on the card.
In the galaxy s3 Ihave the usb memory is 11gb so there is plenty of room.I believe Galaxy got this wrong in earlier models and thats why e en in their cheaper phones they changed it. Worth checking carefully when you buy the phone because it sets a limit on what ypu can do with youir phone.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom