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Help Samsung Galaxy S2 SD Card naming issue

V

vantiveman

Member
Hi,
I have had my new Gamaxy S2 for a few weeks now and the only gripe I have is that the internal SD card is called sdcard, just what the external SD card was named on my old phone (Magic).
OK, so I guess that normally this isn't a problem, but I have mapping apps that expet the data to be in the 'sdcard' folder, which is the internal one. I would prefer to have all of the data-hogging apps on the external card, but this is a sub-folder if 'sdcard' called 'external_sd' so how can I make such apps work from the 'real' sd card????
I guess I will have to go back to the vendor, but I was wondering if anyone else had seem such problems and found a way to resolve them.
I also had doubts about the apps that move things to the SD card, as I don't know for sure whether they are actually moving the to the real external card or just the one called 'sdcard'!

I would appreciate any information that could clarify these issues.

Cheers,

Alan.
 
hmmmm. I guess there are not many Galaxy S2 users out there yet :-)
Maybe I'll bug Samsung for an answer. If I find anything useful I'll post the response back here.
 
Seriously? I can understand the issue of installing apps into an external sd card on a phone that has only 200mb of internal memory, but the gs2 has 16gb! Why on earth do you still want to install apps on an external card, when you have plenty of room internally. Then get an sd card and fill it with your media.

As for memory hogging apps, I doubt they will run faster from an external card, being that the external card will be in effect a card reader add on, to the main pcb and chipset bus, and thus not as 'integrated' as the on-board sd card, the external sd card is more likely to be a bottle neck for data speeds.
 
Yes, Seriously.

Out of the 16Gb internal memory, 11Gb is actually available. Now install mapping apps that uses over 2Gb data each, then install gameloft games that each have an additional download of between 150 and 400Mb of data and you soon start to fill that 11Gb. On mine I have just over 4Gb free!
You just can't compare this to the 'old' phones (like my old Magic) with barely 250Mb of data space. You couldn't even install one Gameloft HD game onto that!
As the phone gets more powerful then apps come with even more space requirements - expected because some are equivalent to full desktop applications. If I had know about the whole SD card issue, I would have waited for the 32Gb version to come out.
By the way, my post mentioned data hogging apps, not memory. Performance is certainly NOT an issue on the S2 :-)
 
Just thought I would update this to say that I haven't heard anything back from Samsung yet. I'll have to bug them some more. Hopefully I will be able to provide an update some time!
 
Well, they actually had replied but I didn't get any email notification. On their site they had posted :
Thank you for contacting Samsung and I have the pleasure in providing
the following assistance.
Thank you for contacting Samsung support.
Regarding your case, as we are the Technical Support team, I kindly ask
you to contact our head office and they will be able to help you.
Contact Information for Samsung ELEC. UK Head Office
Company: Samsung Electronics (UK) Ltd
Address: Samsung House
1000, Hills wood Drive
Chertsey, Surrey KT16 0PS
Tel: 1800-(7267864)
If you require any further assistance, please contact Samsung again and
we will be more than happy to help.
Kind regards,

What REALLY bugs me is that my enquiry was a technical one so if technical support don't have anything to say then how the hell will I get anywhere by contacting Samsung Head Office???
 
Hi Alan,
I too find this decision to call the internal memory as SDcard, very bizarre :confused:

When I downloaded Mapdroyd data (6GBs for the whole world) on to my 32BG (external) SD, it eats up 50% of the internal memory! :eek:

Not good. Called the Cairo based technical centre...eventually, I persuaded them to get out an S2 and the lady could see the issue, but didn't see it as a problem. "just move stuff to internal SD" was her solution. :rolleyes: duh! All very well except for apps that download and only work with a folder called "SDcard".
Very frustrating! :cool:

Perhaps we'll see this changed on the nexr gen of Phones.

Cheers
Walker.
 
Walker2721 said:
Perhaps we'll see this changed on the nexr gen of Phones.
Click to expand...

It's more likely that we'll see it altered via updates to apps. All that's required is an option to specify where data is stored. One or two apps have already been updated like this.

Btw does anyone here know what the Nexus S calls its internal storage, seeing as it has no external memory option?
 
The reason that the micro SD card is mounted on /sdcard/external_sd rather than /sdcard is because the phone has the extra ~11.5GB of memory (called USB storage in Settings->Storage and even more confusingly, nothing to do with /sdcard/usbStorage) which many older phones didn't. That is mounted on /sdcard to maintain backwards compatibility with older Android phones.

Most apps that claim to move other apps to the SD card will actually move them to /sdcard not /sdcard/external_sd. AFAIK, the SGS2 is the only phone that uses this naming scheme.

I haven't bothered to try to move any apps to the real micro SDHC card because I just move the apps' data instead. For example, I use MMTracker (Ordnance Survey map app) and I have about 2GB of maps to use with it. I installed the app itself in the default location and put the maps in /sdcard/external_sd/maps and pointed MMTracker at it.

I currently have about 100 apps installed and have 1.53/7.79/12.31GB free on my Device memory/USB storage/SD card (32GB) respectively so my scheme seems to be working well for me at least.
 
Hi , I'm a new user from france.

to lotus49 :

your solution is the smartest,we need space especially for the datas .but i tried to do that with my deezer mobile app : replace datas on sd/external SD and leave the app on sd (internal)-because no way to install deezer on external. but how can the app refind its datas ? you wrote :I pointed the app to the datas.I think it's my problem - how do you do that ?

thank you
 
Personal things (eg music/photos) I tend to try to put on the external card. This would make it easier to just swap+plug into any new phone in the future without having to use the dreaded flaky USB connection.

Apps I tend to load onto the internal memory.
Totally agree with you about the naming convention. Its very confusing!

Anyone have any thoughts on the advantages/disadvantages of the internal card over the external? Is the speed the same for example? Personally I've not noticed any difference. I wonder if access will start to slow down more and more as the cards start to fill up?
 
i think it's a very important problem: microsd cards will become biggest and biggest,but not the internal card (16go for my samsung gs2,so 11go useable).
some apps need the most space as possible for the datas.I think the app is faster if installed on internal,but the datas could be placed elsewhere.
so the solution : a mean to change the target of the folder "datas",like in windows OS (for "my documents",for exemple,you can choose as target an another partition for datas...) ? or the app that let you choose the folder where you can save datas (but deezer mobile don't do that...:().

someone has a solution ?? pleaaaaase......:o:o
 
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