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What do you need to do to replace the microSD card?

J

JohnJSal

Android Expert
I just took a look at the contents of the preinstalled card and it seems to have a lot of Android stuff on it. If I want to replace it with a larger capacity card, what do I need to do in order to keep all this presumably important stuff?

Thanks.
 
Just copy the entire contents of your old SD card to the new one. But do the copy to the new SD card offline via an SD card reader. Then just swap out the cards.
 
I have run my phone without the card, so I don't think it has too much on there that is absolutely necessary. I did notice without it in, it would not take pictures.

I think what he means by offline is not in the phone. Personally I would just hook up your phone to your computer and mount the phone as drive and copy and paste all the contents on to your computer. Then install the new SD card and see if it asks for the new card to be formatted by the phone and let it do the rest. Then you can copy your personal files from your computer to the new card. Good luck!
 
ordcavms said:
I have run my phone without the card, so I don't think it has too much on there that is absolutely necessary. I did notice without it in, it would not take pictures.

I think what he means by offline is not in the phone. Personally I would just hook up your phone to your computer and mount the phone as drive and copy and paste all the contents on to your computer. Then install the new SD card and see if it asks for the new card to be formatted by the phone and let it do the rest. Then you can copy your personal files from your computer to the new card. Good luck!
Click to expand...

exactly what I did.

Copied everything off the old card to my PC, installed the new card, formatted it in the phone, copied from PC back to the Phone.
 
I attached my phone with the old card to the PC via USB and the new card in an SD card reader. Formatted the new SD to fat32 on the PC. Copied the entire contents of the old to the new then just swapped out the cards. No issues with my 32gb card formatted to fat32 on the PC.

I suggested copying to the new SD off the phone in case some of the apps to SD programs decided to make new folders on boot up.
 
Rob_A said:
exactly what I did.

Copied everything off the old card to my PC, installed the new card, formatted it in the phone, copied from PC back to the Phone.
Click to expand...

Did you copy *everything*, like Android stuff too, or just your own personal files like music, pictures, etc.?
 
Just a quick follow-up to my last question...when you install a new SD card and Android "prepares" it and formats it (if it does that), does this process put those same folders onto the card like the original SD card had, or does it still leave the card empty?

If it's still empty, I would definitely do a CTRL+A copy, but if the new card does already have some folders and files on it, would it be good to replace them with the contents of the old card?
 
It doesnt matter, if it creates folders, there shouldnt be anything in there. The BEST way to do it, is copy EVERYTHING on the old card, and paste EVERYTHING to the new card, overwriting anything that android already created. That way everything will run just as it was before.
 
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