sd card help

[VrIgHtEr]

I just bought a new tablet. It's a cheap one i found for a good price (the firmware in the about screen shows beiger-magibox or something like that).

Anyway I am confused because the internal memory can be found in /storage/internal as well as /sdcard

also the external sdcard can be found mounted on /storage/sdcard

However apparently most applications (such as media player) cannot access the external sd card and only see the internal memory.

Also if I go to the application settings and select move to sdcard, nothing gets written to the external sd card :/ so it must still be writing to the internal memory somewhere

Can anybody understand why this is happening and maybe what can be done to rectify the situation? 10x

 

[Yeahha]

Welcome to AF.

You may need to format the SD card first to make sure the tablet can read it. Once formatted if you add a mp3 to the SD card and the tablet doesn't see it you should be able to unmount then mount the SD again to cause the system to rescan the card. If the card is formatted in a way the tablet can't read it you will be unable to use the card.

 

[VrIgHtEr]

that's the thing... the tablet CAN read the sd card... i can see it and access its files from a file explorer and certain applications. My problem is that it's not exactly detected as an actual sd card by the OS. As i said in my previous post, for example if i move an application to the sd card using the application manager, all it does is move it to a separate partition in the internal memory.

The tablet has a 4gb internal memory but it seems like it's split up into two partitions of 2gb each, and one of them is seen as the sd card by apps

 

[VrIgHtEr]

i mean not detected as *THE* sd card... it still shows a notification that an sd card is mounted. I'm not sure if i'm explaining this correctly

 

[Yeahha]

I think I understand what you are saying. By default there is some internal memory that can be used as an SD card if there is no SD in the tablet. You put an SD in the tablet but for some reason the tablet doesn't change the app storage to the actual SD instead of the internal memory. And some apps will not read the SD to say play music.

What type tablet do you have?

 

[VrIgHtEr]

It's one of those cheap ones. In the about screen it says Beiger Magibox and it runs android 2.2

 

[lunatic59]

i mean not detected as *THE* sd card... it still shows a notification that an sd card is mounted. I'm not sure if i'm explaining this correctly

I can explain it but I don't have a solution for you. Android has specific rules for where it installs apps. If the app has a specified location, that takes priority. If it is not specified in the app, then the default install location is used. Android has 3 identifiers for app storage location:

0 = Internal
1 = Auto
2 = External (sd card)

If 0 is set in the app, then it can only be installed on the internal storage regardless of the default install location. Widgets, services and apps that periodically poll need to be in the internal storage to run correctly.

Similarly the phone itself can have a default install location set so if the app is set to 1 (Auto) then it will direct the app where to be installed. The only thing you must remember is that 1 is not an option for a phones default location. If the app were set to Auto location and the phone was to, it wouldn't know what the default was.

Out of the box, all Android devices come with the default location set to 0, so if a widget or service was set to Auto, it would go in the right place. Apps that could be moved can always be moved to the sd card manually. You can always change the default to the sd card manually, which is what apps2sd does for you. Ask me if you'd like to know how.

Anyway, newer phones that include large amounts (by current mobile standards) Like the Atrix (and my other phone, the Captivate) often partition them so that you don't have a huge amount of system memory that wouldn't be accessible for file storage. On the Captivate (and I am assuming it's similar with the Atrix) Samsung has a 2 GB partition for the system and the remaining 14 GB partitioned and recognized as an sd card by making its mount point /sdcard.

Therein lies the problem. The path to external storage within Android is /sdcard so apps that are installed to external storage will be there, which is the internal sd partition, not the removable sd card. On the Captivate the path to the removable sd card is /sdcard/sd_external, on my SGS2 it's /sdcard/external_sd and on my Transformer is /Removable/Microsd.

It may be possible to redirect the external location to the actual removable sd card, but it would involve editing the init.rc executable script file which may be incredibly dangerous (or not, I frankly don't know). Or, you could actually change the mount points of these devices so the removable sd card was mounted as default external storage, but that would probably require a custom rom to do.

Like I said earlier, an explanation but no solution. If I may ask, why do you want to use the removable card for apps if there's room on the internal partition?

I think I understand what you are saying. By default there is some internal memory that can be used as an SD card if there is no SD in the tablet. You put an SD in the tablet but for some reason the tablet doesn't change the app storage to the actual SD instead of the internal memory. And some apps will not read the SD to say play music.

What type tablet do you have?

I think all media will still be recognized on an external SD card. It just can't use that location for apps and caches.

 

[VrIgHtEr]

well the internal sd card is a measly 2gb and the external sd card is 32 gb... i'm sure that's a good enough reason for me wanting to use that

The main problem is that while i can use it for media files etc, not all applications recognize it as such. For example if i open the default media player, any file in the external sd card don't show up. Of course i installed a separate media player but the problem still bugs me (even though maybe i *can* live with it... i'm the perfectionist type haha...)

Btw thanks for the quick replies

 

[Yeahha]

Try unmounting then mounting the SD again or rebooting. Sometimes when you add data to the SD card Android decides to not scan the card again and the new files will not show up until it has been scanned. You could also try an app called SDrescan if you have the market.

 

[VrIgHtEr]

I'll try but i don't think it will work. If as was said the system expects the sd card to appear in /sdcard then i don't think that this will do anything regarding the app install problem

 

[chanchan05]

Depending on some file managers, the external sd card is seen as a folder labeled "external_sd" inside the onboard SD card file.

 

[Yeahha]

I'll try but i don't think it will work. If as was said the system expects the sd card to appear in /sdcard then i don't think that this will do anything regarding the app install problem

I don't expect it to fix the app install issue, I was trying to come up with a way to get your media to be recognized by the device.