If you are still wondering:
- What is the breakdown of that 32GB Xoom internal memory (how many parition, how much space for apps / files)?
- Why Google is using MTP instead of USB file transfer on Honeycomb?
Here is straight answer from Google developer:
MTP is a big improvement over USB mass storage — for devices with lots of internal memory, a manufacturer no longer needs to come up with some hard partition between the USB mass storage and internal storage. Instead, they are all in one partition, with MTP providing access to the directory of media files that would normally be available through USB mass storage.This means there is no longer a need for apps on SD card for such devices, because what used to be the “internal SD card” is in the same partition as where applications are stored. The storage on your device can be used for either applications or media, depending on what you want to put on it. You aren’t stuck with how much space the manufacturer decided to leave for the two areas.
Oh also this means that the media storage doesn’t need to be unmounted from Android when it is being access through the PC.
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http://phandroid.com/2011/02/27/mac-users-require-file-transfer-utility-for-android-3-0/
Finally, true APP2SD You now have 32GB to put all your apps!!!
Sounds like a good thing!
This is a great explanation. Thanks for posting.
There is no doubt that mtp has advantages over mass storage. On the other hand I miss the ability to attach it to any computer and access files. It is not a huge problem but does add a limitation that was not there before.
That saod it is nice being able to access files on my computer without losing access to the partition on the device.
Sent from my Xoom using XDA App
I only see a problem if you flash different roms and have to do full data wipes.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA Premium App
jvs60 said:
I only see a problem if you flash different roms and have to do full data wipes.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA Premium App
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I'm sure future versions of CWM will be set to ignore that one folder.. I hope. Otherwise nandroid backups will take forever.
I'm not sure in terms of security it is a huge improvement; unless there is an option to turn it on/off somewhere.
Previously I would have to plug an Android device in to my computer, turn the device on, enter my unlock code, and then specifically allow the computer access via the USB. This morning I just plugged my xoom in and, poof, access to all my stuff.
At least before someone had to take my sdcard out at put it in their computer manually
Does MTP have anything to do with file size limit? I've seen posted on this forum that you can't load video files larger than 4gb onto the Xoom because of FAT32, is that still the case?
This MTP also seems to hide a lot of file from being seen by a pc. I open folders with File manager on the Xoom and see more folders namely the android folder which has game save data and other odd ball files. When hooked to a pc its blank. With MTP it seems all your allowed to do is transfer music, video and pics.
Malcus1 said:
Does MTP have anything to do with file size limit? I've seen posted on this forum that you can't load video files larger than 4gb onto the Xoom because of FAT32, is that still the case?
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Still haven't got around to testing (so many things to try out!), but in some of the video threads, I've been told XOOM uses EXT4 format not FAT32, and thus, should not have that 4GB limit. I've been re-encoding video files to meet XOOM's current playback limitations, and have been reducing them to sub 4GB anyway, so I haven't tested that for myself.
I am trying to understand the folder structure on the TF.
I have a 16GB micros SD card and I want all data type files to be saved there e.g. photos, downloads, music etc.
There is a folder at the top level called /SDCARD and I had assumed that this was the MicroSD card and all this sort of data is being stored in sub folder from there.
I have now realised that the MicroSD card is actually accessed from /Removable/MicroSD and that the TF has not stored anything on it. I have just moved my music and video to there.
Can I move all the other SDCARD subfolders to /Removable/MicroSD and then delete the SDCARD folder?
I can't see the point of having a folder called SDCARD it is very misleading.
Thanks for any help.
This is your internal storage. I'm not sure why it is displayed this way, maybe that will become standard in Gingerbread?
You cannot 'delete' the SDCARD folder. It is a mount point for the remainder of your internal storage (16GB or 32GB)
As bizarre as it seems when compared to a phone, this actually makes more sense. My Droid X has 6.5GB of the 8GB internal memory put aside for the /data partition. Despite having the phone for a full year and having a ton of apps installed, /data still has 5GB free. That's 5GB of storage I do not have access to, so it's effectively wasted.
On the ASUS (and others HC tabs?) that space exists as a virtual device /dev/fuse and is mounted as /mnt/sdcard. A symbolic link exists /sdcard which points to the mount point. The net result is, you have the majority of free space on the internal memory available to you. If you didn't, there'd be no incentive to buy the 32GB version over the 16GB version.
It is called /sdcard to maintain the illusion within the OS. This space, like it or not, is your primary storage. It makes your actual sdcard more of a transient storage location, great for just music, movies, etc., that you do not necessarily want to keep on the device long term. This is a great advantage as you can keep multiple sdcards with different content and not worry about messing up the core OS storage needs.
Be aware that the OS and apps expect to find certain data in /sdcard and moving the folders to your 'external' card will only force these apps and processes to recreate the folders in /sdcard. Also some apps will have lost some of their data and may not operate as expected or will act as when they were first installed (games will redownload supporting data, for example)
Sent from my rooted ASUS Transformer running PRIME 1.4
jhanford said:
You cannot 'delete' the SDCARD folder. It is a mount point for the remainder of your internal storage (16GB or 32GB)
As bizarre as it seems when compared to a phone, this actually makes more sense. My Droid X has 6.5GB of the 8GB internal memory put aside for the /data partition. Despite having the phone for a full year and having a ton of apps installed, /data still has 5GB free. That's 5GB of storage I do not have access to, so it's effectively wasted.
On the ASUS (and others HC tabs?) that space exists as a virtual device /dev/fuse and is mounted as /mnt/sdcard. A symbolic link exists /sdcard which points to the mount point. The net result is, you have the majority of free space on the internal memory available to you. If you didn't, there'd be no incentive to buy the 32GB version over the 16GB version.
It is called /sdcard to maintain the illusion within the OS. This space, like it or not, is your primary storage. It makes your actual sdcard more of a transient storage location, great for just music, movies, etc., that you do not necessarily want to keep on the device long term. This is a great advantage as you can keep multiple sdcards with different content and not worry about messing up the core OS storage needs.
Be aware that the OS and apps expect to find certain data in /sdcard and moving the folders to your 'external' card will only force these apps and processes to recreate the folders in /sdcard. Also some apps will have lost some of their data and may not operate as expected or will act as when they were first installed (games will redownload supporting data, for example)
Sent from my rooted ASUS Transformer running PRIME 1.4
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After reading your explanation, it makes better sense to me. I was a bit annoyed, but I see how this could work to my favor. Using just the actual SD cards for movies, music, ect.
Moving data - Video
Sorry, I find what is said here a little disconcerting.
Why have SD cards and USB devices attached (eg. USB Flash drives, hard drives) when the data flow only goes one way, "in", and not out.
If I want to edit a video, the files are too large to email.
I can't find a way to move the video to an external device.
All one can do, as far as I can tell, is to upload the unedited video to YouTube.
Once there initially one get an error message saying that the file type is not recognized. It is...eventually, but only after it's fully processed. This is really confusing to the user. You'd think Google would give Android users a processing message rather than something that makes you think there is no way to view and share your video other than your tablet.
I couldn't find a way to tag a video either.
The default seemed to be "entertainment."
The options for sharing video are much to limited.
The only site you can upload a video to is YouTube.
I'd love to be able to put it on another site (e.g. a personal/corporate website).
I sure wish there were a way of off-loading and storing a folder generated from the Tablet to an external device, especially one with external ports like the Transformer.
If anyone knows of an app to do two way data flows, I'd sure like to know about it because my SHDC card and USB Flash drives look so lonely with nothing to do.
[email protected] said:
Sorry, I find what is said here a little disconcerting.
Why have SD cards and USB devices attached (eg. USB Flash drives, hard drives) when the data flow only goes one way, "in", and not out.
If I want to edit a video, the files are too large to email.
I can't find a way to move the video to an external device.
All one can do, as far as I can tell, is to upload the unedited video to YouTube.
Once there initially one get an error message saying that the file type is not recognized. It is...eventually, but only after it's fully processed. This is really confusing to the user. You'd think Google would give Android users a processing message rather than something that makes you think there is no way to view and share your video other than your tablet.
I couldn't find a way to tag a video either.
The default seemed to be "entertainment."
The options for sharing video are much to limited.
The only site you can upload a video to is YouTube.
I'd love to be able to put it on another site (e.g. a personal/corporate website).
I sure wish there were a way of off-loading and storing a folder generated from the Tablet to an external device, especially one with external ports like the Transformer.
If anyone knows of an app to do two way data flows, I'd sure like to know about it because my SHDC card and USB Flash drives look so lonely with nothing to do.
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There is nothing stopping you from copy files from the internal storage to an external sdcard. From the built-in file manager you can select a folder using the check boxes to the left of it, and then click the Copy or Cut button at the top of the screen, then navigate up until you see "Removable". Tap that and then "MicroSD" and then you can tap "Paste" at the top of the screen to copy or move to the new location.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App
Drive letters or some kind of unique ID from the root would be favorable. I know it's meant to adapt to Android, but last time I checked, Honeycomb was a separat version of the OS. It's unfortunate that it has to fool both the user and itself to be effective.
moo99 said:
Drive letters or some kind of unique ID from the root would be favorable. I know it's meant to adapt to Android, but last time I checked, Honeycomb was a separat version of the OS. It's unfortunate that it has to fool both the user and itself to be effective.
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It still maintains the overall Adroid/Linux filesystem structure, there are no lettered drives in *NIX.
I know that, bru. Calling it , I dont know, "Internal" instead of "SD Card" would make a little sense considering there are two separate ports for SD Cards on there. Writing an alias isnt that complicated
For A500, is there any way to turn off the MTP mode and just get A500 to act as an USB drive (i.e. USB mass storage)?
For copying large files, Acer Sync's speed is ok, but I copy offline newspapers for viewing on A500, and that involves thousands of small files. MTP's speed for copying large number of small files is much slower than USB drive. For example, I can copy a whole newspaper to a USB thumbdrive in 3 minutes, while using MTP mode it takes 15 minutes.
I'm new with the Acer, and I don't have an answer to your question, but I wondered about using a thumb drive. Needs to be formatted to fat 32. Just use the thumb drive like you would the micro sd card. 4 gig thumb drives are pretty cheap.
Woody
Woody, I think you misunderstood my question, my question is not about using a thumb drive on A500... I would like the A500 to behave like a usb thumb drive when plugged in the micro USB cable to a PC's USB port.
The other annoying thing I forgot to mention about Acer Sync is that it is single task when copying files. You can only copy one file at a time, you try to copy another file before the first one is finished and it'll tell you the file system is busy...
ray1234 said:
Woody, I think you misunderstood my question, my question is not about using a thumb drive on A500... I would like the A500 to behave like a usb thumb drive when plugged in the micro USB cable to a PC's USB port.
The other annoying thing I forgot to mention about Acer Sync is that it is single task when copying files. You can only copy one file at a time, you try to copy another file before the first one is finished and it'll tell you the file system is busy...
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If you're running 3.2 when you plug your tab into your PC your tab should pop right up on your PCs screen giving you two drives to choose from. External or internal SD card.. Drag and drop. Never heard of anyone using Acer Sync to copy files before.?!?
kjy2010 said:
If you're running 3.2 when you plug your tab into your PC your tab should pop right up on your PCs screen giving you two drives to choose from. External or internal SD card.. Drag and drop. Never heard of anyone using Acer Sync to copy files before.?!?
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Are you using A500? I know other tabs are like that, which is the normal usb drive mode. A500 isnt like that, it'll recognise as a A500 tab in win7, not a drive, and copying files is via this special protocol, not like a usb drive.
ray1234 said:
Are you using A500? I know other tabs are like that, which is the normal usb drive mode. A500 isnt like that, it'll recognise as a A500 tab in win7, not a drive, and copying files is via this special protocol, not like a usb drive.
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Ummmmm my signature clearly states I'm using an A500, and I've never used Acer Sync in my life. Drag and drop files just like a thumb drive. It comes up as an A500 in win 7. You double click on the A500, and it will show 2 drives (internal SDcard, and external SDcard). Double click on whichever drive you want to copy files to, and drag and drop them in, or use "copy and paste".
kjy2010 said:
Ummmmm my signature clearly states I'm using an A500, and I've never used Acer Sync in my life. Drag and drop files just like a thumb drive. It comes up as an A500 in win 7. You double click on the A500, and it will show 2 drives (internal SDcard, and external SDcard). Double click on whichever drive you want to copy files to, and drag and drop them in, or use "copy and paste".
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That is using the PTP kind of protocol already, not acting like a thumb drive. Just do a simple test, copy one large file to the SDcard, and then before it finishes try to copy another file to it, it'll say the file system is busy. USB thumbdrive won't behave like that. Copy large number of small files in this PTP kind of protocol is much much slower than thumbdrive.
Also, try plugin in your A500 to a WinXP PC, it won't even recognise it without installing drivers for it.
ray1234 said:
That is using the PTP kind of protocol already, not acting like a thumb drive. Just do a simple test, copy one large file to the SDcard, and then before it finishes try to copy another file to it, it'll say the file system is busy. USB thumbdrive won't behave like that. Copy large number of small files in this PTP kind of protocol is much much slower than thumbdrive.
Also, try plugin in your A500 to a WinXP PC, it won't even recognise it without installing drivers for it.
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You are correct, only one at a time when copy files unless you highlight two at same time, if i connect the usb drive directly into win7 pc it will automatically add to the loading file, as for the recognzie pc acer do say that on their support page...
there is a auto sync option in settings under accounts and sync..
ray1234 said:
That is using the PTP kind of protocol already, not acting like a thumb drive. Just do a simple test, copy one large file to the SDcard, and then before it finishes try to copy another file to it, it'll say the file system is busy. USB thumbdrive won't behave like that. Copy large number of small files in this PTP kind of protocol is much much slower than thumbdrive.
Also, try plugin in your A500 to a WinXP PC, it won't even recognise it without installing drivers for it.
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Of course WinXP needs drivers, that's a given. It's a 10 yr old OS!
Your first post stated that you were using Acer Sync to copy your files.
I was simply wondering what kind of person would use Acer Sync to copy files when you can simply drag and drop them into your tab.
I tried what you asked. Started by dragging and dropping a movie to the tab, then tried d/d a few docs, and it indeed said busy.
When I chose them all at once and dragged and dropped them in, it copied fine, and much faster than a few of my thumb drives (three times the speed).
Question for you now. Why can't you simply choose all the files you want, drag and drop them into your tab and wait for it to copy the files, and be done with it? And second question is why would you ever choose Acer Sync to copy your files over?!?
kjy2010 said:
Question for you now. Why can't you simply choose all the files you want, drag and drop them into your tab and wait for it to copy the files, and be done with it? And second question is why would you ever choose Acer Sync to copy your files over?!?
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I did, in fact I chose a whole directory to copy to the A500. My problem is the speed, with thousands of small files, copying the files using this way is slow in comparison to thumbdrive, at least double the time.... in fact, I can copy the files to a thumbdrive and then plug that thumbdrive in the A500 to copy to it, and I can finish the copying action faster this way than plugging in the A500 directly to the PC.... so speed for copying large number of small files is my only main issue
The side issue is winxp, without the USB drive mode, I can't connect to my office PC as I dont have admin rights to install programs on that PC... and one last thing, I probably put the subject wrong, I didn't use the Acer Sync, I'm using that PTP kind of protocol as per default, I thought that was Acer Sync at first
ray1234 said:
That is using the PTP kind of protocol already, not acting like a thumb drive. Just do a simple test, copy one large file to the SDcard, and then before it finishes try to copy another file to it, it'll say the file system is busy. USB thumbdrive won't behave like that. Copy large number of small files in this PTP kind of protocol is much much slower than thumbdrive.
Also, try plugin in your A500 to a WinXP PC, it won't even recognise it without installing drivers for it.
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PTP or MTP? PMPs and most media devices use MTP. They're generally designed this way so that you don't corrupt files or damage the files on the flash drive by disconnecting without first removing the drive in Windows. It shouldn't technically be that much slower than a thumb drive if you multi-select stuff. I generally sync my mp3 list when I'm going to travel in case I don't have wifi and xfer time seems similar if not quicker than copying them to a thumb drive.
I'll try to see if I can get some small files, maybe pictures and test those.
Neoprimal said:
It shouldn't technically be that much slower than a thumb drive if you multi-select stuff.
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I know, theoretically it shouldn't be that slow. Practically, I don't know what's wrong with Acer's implementation of it, it is dead slow copying large number of small files. To give you an idea, the offline newspaper I copied is about 1,000 files, mostly html about 1k big. The jpg files are about 100-300k big. It took me about 15-20 minutes to copy those files to my A500 via the usb cable. If I take my SDcard out and copy the files direct to the SDcard using a card reader, that can be done in 3 minutes.
ray1234 said:
I know, theoretically it shouldn't be that slow. Practically, I don't know what's wrong with Acer's implementation of it, it is dead slow copying large number of small files. To give you an idea, the offline newspaper I copied is about 1,000 files, mostly html about 1k big. The jpg files are about 100-300k big. It took me about 15-20 minutes to copy those files to my A500 via the usb cable. If I take my SDcard out and copy the files direct to the SDcard using a card reader, that can be done in 3 minutes.
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I did another test using mp3s and the xfer was fast. Copied 150 files, 890MB total in 3m 35s using a class 4 card. That's around right.
Ironically, the same files took 6m 20s to the internal drive.
The only conclusion I can make at this point is that for some reason the bigger the file, the faster the transfer to the external SD. The smaller the file, the faster the transfer to the internal drive. This is all speculation.
Can you try copying them to the internal drive and let me know what you come up with? I myself am going to now try a comparison of 1 big movie file.
Update: I finished the other test. Puzzling. 1 MP4 file @ 2.26GB copied in ~3m to the external SD card.
In the same amount of time, just 1/3 of the file copied to the internal storage (I stopped that transfer, it was going to take ~9-10m).
I could only start to guess what's up. Maybe the A500 is actively scanning files being transferred to the internal storage and it ignores files smaller than a certain size or there's some other overhead going on and "noticing" media files, vs. any other kind.
The SD card is for the most part on the other hand, free and clear. I get the same results from my phone and its external SD, and that's connected like a Thumb Drive, as you put it.
Note that both the internal storage AND SD card are still accessible when the A500 is plugged in through USB, unlike most phones where the SD card is first unmounted.
What class microSD are you using? I think your best result might be copying directly to the tablet OR buying a faster microSD card.
I did the test to internal storage, it is even slower than SDcard.
I did another test - copying 400 html files of 1-4k, a total of only 1.6MB. The A500 took 3 minutes to do that, while my thumbdrive finished in 18 seconds. The A500 can only do less than 3 files per second, no matter how small the files are, that makes copying large number of small files a pain in the a$$.
I used a class 10 SDcard, and the result is about the same, the problem is with the interface, not the SDcard speed. You won't notice the slowness unless you are copying files that are really small, if you copy MP3 files that is 5MB big, you won't reach the limit of 3 files per second anyway.
from reply i read
i assume people using win 7 DIDNT REALIZE that a500 use MTP, because a500 just shows up like a usb drive altough in reality they dont get any drive (they just dont care)
only people with mac and win xp will realize a500 use MTP ,
ray1234 said:
For A500, is there any way to turn off the MTP mode and just get A500 to act as an USB drive (i.e. USB mass storage)?
For copying large files, Acer Sync's speed is ok, but I copy offline newspapers for viewing on A500, and that involves thousands of small files. MTP's speed for copying large number of small files is much slower than USB drive. For example, I can copy a whole newspaper to a USB thumbdrive in 3 minutes, while using MTP mode it takes 15 minutes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know exactly what you're saying. it's pretty horrible that the a500 uses MTP for file transfer.
Some workarounds I found was to transfer files using FTP, which is much faster for several small files so even over the wireless it'll be faster.
Also some other techniques I found were to zip the many files on my computer, transfer the zip and unzip them on the acer.
Also the other obvious is to plug the microsd card to your computer with usb.
powercat_ said:
I know exactly what you're saying. it's pretty horrible that the a500 uses MTP for file transfer.
Some workarounds I found was to transfer files using FTP, which is much faster for several small files so even over the wireless it'll be faster.
Also some other techniques I found were to zip the many files on my computer, transfer the zip and unzip them on the acer.
Also the other obvious is to plug the microsd card to your computer with usb.
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Click to collapse
Yes, sadly I have to use other workarounds, there seems no way to use USB mass storage mode on USB. I now copy the files to a USB thumbdrive, and then insert that thumbdrive to A500 to move the files to A500. Even though that is twice the work, it is still much faster than using MTP transfer alone.
It's not the A500's fault it uses MTP. You can thank Google for that as they're the ones who built it in to Honeycomb and dropped USB Storage mode.
Hopefully it'll be back in ICS...
Alternatively, some file managers will allow you to send files via wifi to and from the tab. For me this is the prefered method (I use file expert, which is free). However, I noticed that occasionally large files like movies may fail, perhaps due to signal quality. I haven't had any problems with individual files up to 200-300 MB.
Hummmm not sure if this has been asked. Where are you putting the files at on your Iconia.If your putting them on the external SD card. Remember not all SD cards are treated equal.
Check the speed class of the card.and run a test to see how fast it can actually accept the files. Just because a card says class 10 does not mean its built well enough to handle that speed.
Internal storage can sometimes be slower then others as well.This would be considered a defective device.
I would surest to see if its faster or slower depending on where you store them.for me storing on my. Class 10. Ocl sd card..