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SD Card Help

  • Thread starter Thread starter Vueoy
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Vueoy

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Im very very sorry if this sort of thing has been posted before, but I need help as soon as possible! I'll try and explain my situation as best as I can.

So I'm not the most android/tech savvy person in the world. I recently bought the LG Optimus F6 from MetroPCS because it was a pretty good price for a good looking phone. Unfortunately (as those familiar with the device will understand) the internal storage is TINY. I bought a 32 GB SD card and it has worked great for all music storage and whatever, but Google Play continued to install apps to my Internal SD which there wasnt enough room for. To get apps onto my SD card, I read that I had to root my device, so I did and it went well! :D However, I had to create an SD card partition and this is where it gets messy. I made the partition, and I messed up at some point because now there's two partitions or something?? and it's really weird and I just want to make Link2SD install apps onto my External 32 GB SD card but ITS NOT WORKING AAAAA. I try to download apps from the google play store with the partitions and the Link2SD set to autolink things to my SD but it still says insufficient storage. I need to be able to install apps onto my SD card and I'll do anything I have to to make that work. Please help soon, if you can!
Here's a screenshot of my storage info via Link2SD:
http<dot>//i<dot>imgur<dot>com/mnBakEs<dot>png
(^ to get past spam filters, sorry mods!)
Am I helpable? D:
 
This might be easier if you registered (free), since if we need to discuss anything that's the only way you'll be able to reply.

OK, it looks like you've partitioned the SD card. Two partitions is normal: an unpartitioned SD card has a single partition, so adding one gives two. You've probably made the second one bigger than it needs to be for apps, but as long as you don't mind the reduced space in the main partition that should be OK (but if all else fails you could try again with a 1.5 GB second partition, in case the very large one confuses Link2SD - it's a long time since I used this so can't remember whether it has problems with big partitions).

You don't say what format the second partition is. I believe Link2SD claims it can work with fat32 as well as ext, but I'd have used ext3 or ext4 (native Linux formats) for this (the phone is probably using ext4 for its internal storage). GParted is the best tool for adding ext format partitions - I've seen so many people have things fail after using MiniTool Partition Wizard that I advise people not to use that for ext formats (though I imagine it can handle fat32 OK). But let's see whether we can make it work before we worry about redoing the partitions or changing formats!

And it's the second partition of the external sd card you want to link things to - "sd card" as opposed to "external sd card" is your internal storage, so there's no point moving stuff to there.

Whatever you do, you want to leave the first partition on the sd card (the one Link2SD isn't using) as fat32.

OK, that's background really. The first question is can we make Link2SD work with the current setup? For that I'd not worry about automatic linking, but see whether you can make it move some of your existing apps. Pick a big, user-installed app and use Link2SD to move it to the second partition of the external SD. Move apk, lib and dalvik and see whether the amount of space free changes at all (and indeed whether the amount of space used on the partition increases). If there are any errors, tell us what they are. If it works, see whether you can move others. Then see if you can get auto-linking to work.

And one final thing: do you have a custom recovery? Generally people install these things as part of rooting, but I don't know your phone model or the procedures for rooting it, so it's possible you don't have one. If you have it may have a name like "ClockWorkMod" or "TWRP". If you have one of those, use it to make a backup of your system first, just in case anything funny happens when you use Link2SD. Just a precaution, but it will do no harm and might possibly be useful if something goes wrong.

Good luck, and apologies if that's a bit dense! :)
 
Sorry for the change in username, I found my account I used here last time I had trouble with my older phone (thanks to those who helped! :P)

I successfully moved both Chrome and Kik to my SD card from my internal storage and it did clear space from my internal storage! :D :D Both of the aforementioned applications seem to be working fine and everything so that's totally dope.

I suppose this is the end of the troubles? It seems to be working fine, I've since downloaded an icon pack and Pandora and it managed to autolink to my SD card, I think we might be in the clear! It kind of sucks, but I don't have a custom recovery, I didn't think to get one before I did all this :(

As for the bit about filesystems, I wasn't sure what to do. I read a guide and followed it and it said to just stick with fat32 so I did, I hope that wont cause problems in the future? All i know for the time being is that it wont let me move an apps internal data along with the apk/delvik/whatever to my SD card becuase it is fat32 but that doesn't seem like too bad of a problem.

Concern: In my System Settings > Storage there's no SD card below my internal storage. Is that bad? Did I do something wrong? I can't mount or unmount anything
addendum to the above concern: whenever i connect my phone to my computer, there is no SD card for me to save things to, only internal storage. What do?
 
Welcome back :D

It's working with the fat32 partition, so don't worry about formats (most a2sd solutions require ext formats, which is why I'd try that if there was any doubt, but it's working so that's fine). I'm a bit sceptical about moving the app data anyway - that's the thing that's most likely to slow the phone.

If there is a custom recovery for your phone you should be able to add that later. Now that you can install apps again you can always use Titanium Backup to back up app data.

Re. the concerns, how did it behave previously (i.e. prior to rooting/partitioning)? I'm not sure what's normal with this handset. I'd not expect it to show the second partition in the system menus, but you'd expect the first partition to show up as external sd card.
 
Before, there was always an Internal Memory and External Memory display, however now there is ONLY Internal. I cannot mount/unmount any SD card storage although I can move apps and use them on my SD card. Whenever my phone is connected to my PC for file transfers, I can only move music/photos/w.e to my Internal Memory, SD storage isnt even avaliable. Prior to partitioning and rooting, I could move things to either Internal OR External.
 
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