Hi,
[1] I noticed in all the ROMS I've used is that the Iconia mounts a portion of its internal storage as the \mnt\sdcard path. Naturally all user data is stored here. I find that going from rom to rom and I have accumulated a lot of stuff in this folder that is carried over. Is it safe to delete all the contents of this folder?
[2] Is there any way to mount the external sd and usb drives as sub folder in the sdcard folder? This will make it easier to store things. My current rom has the external stuff mounted on \mnt\external_sd and \mnt\external_usb
Thank you.
Related
I just got the atrix from radio shack and trying to make my sd card from the epic work... all my files are in there including key files, backups etc...
well the atrix has a 'sdcard' folder and the epic's is now sdcard-ext
I need to make the current sdcard folder disappear and make the sdcard-ext the default sdcard folder...
how do I go about this?
Really? nobody has anything on this!?
The sdcard folder is hard coded into the stock atrix firmware. It may be possible to make the change by rooting and deodexing the firmware.
Easier option would be to just use the included file explorer or one from the market to copy the files over to the internal storage.
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
I did that, which is PITA. and problem is, anything that stores data (like text logs, backing up data) is all going into sdcard, not sdcard-ext
so when I wipe data for whatever reason, I'm loosing everything everytime...
razorseal said:
I did that, which is PITA. and problem is, anything that stores data (like text logs, backing up data) is all going into sdcard, not sdcard-ext
so when I wipe data for whatever reason, I'm loosing everything everytime...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
use the customized recovery to wipe out,
nothing in intermal memory card will be deleted
razorseal said:
I did that, which is PITA. and problem is, anything that stores data (like text logs, backing up data) is all going into sdcard, not sdcard-ext
so when I wipe data for whatever reason, I'm loosing everything everytime...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
some apps will give you the option to save to a certain location but most are set to default to your sdcard(internal storage). its because android doesnt assume that you will be using a external sdcard. just backup the stuff you want to keep on your sdcard before you wipe it...what do you mean by making the sdcard folder disappear? sounds like you dont want to use the internal sdcard at all?
Hey, there is a possibility that may work for switching internal and external sdcards.
In /etc/udev folder, there are configuration files for naming the devices. If we can create a configuration file that will force the atrix to mount the external sdcard as if it is the internal card, then what you want will work.
I will experiment with doing this from the adb command line, but this might need to be requested under the development forum.
If I have any success in this, I will start a thread under development and see if we can create an automated method for doing this. Since some apps don't know about the external card, this could be quite handy.
Hey, so I have successfully swapped the internal and external sdcard mount points, the trick is to edit the file /system/etc/vold.fstab
There are two lines that set the mount point of the internal and external storage. Once these are swapped, the cards change mount points, and the external is now mounted on /sdcard instead of /sdcard-ext.
If you have experience changing /system files, you can make this change yourself.
root *DEFINITELY* required.
--- Changes made to lines 13-17 of /system/etc/vold.fstab ---
# external sd card
dev_mount sdcard_ext /mnt/sdcard auto /devices/platform/tegra-sdhci.2/mmc_host/mmc2 /devices/platform/tegra-sdhci.2/mmc_host/mmc1
# internal eMMC
dev_mount sdcard /mnt/sdcard-ext auto /devices/platform/tegra-sdhci.3/mmc_host/mmc0/mmc0:0001/block/mmcblk0/mmcblk0p18
hi, when I goto android recovery mode
there are some options in how to create backups
I usally go for the full one including the webtop partition.
now my question is there are 2 storage location
internal sd and external sd
where android store its applications and music and so on
if i back up fully including the webtop,
will internal SD card also backed up?
if not what would be the best practice to backup the internal SD card (they store application data)
what I usually do after updating to a new rom is
clear cash hardreset dalvik cache, and finally format the internal SD card
thank you in advance.
leegoon84 said:
hi, when I goto android recovery mode
there are some options in how to create backups
I usally go for the full one including the webtop partition.
now my question is there are 2 storage location
internal sd and external sd
where android store its applications and music and so on
if i back up fully including the webtop,
will internal SD card also backed up?
if not what would be the best practice to backup the internal SD card (they store application data)
what I usually do after updating to a new rom is
clear cash hardreset dalvik cache, and finally format the internal SD card
thank you in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no, CWM/nandroid does NOT back up your sdcard. to back up your SDCard, you should copy it over to your computer. but there is no reason to have to back it up every time you do a rom flash
there is no reason for you to format your internal SD card either
also, i think your steps for flashing a new rom are a little backwards.
typically a rom will wipe your dalvik cache for you (not always, but most of the time)
clearing cache and hardreset should be done BEFORE you flash a rom. a hard reset (formats /data in the process) will remove any /data that the rom dev may have put in...
Pirateghost said:
to back up your SDCard, you should copy it over to your computer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can also copy the internal sd card to your external sd card.
If you do it manually with adb over romracer's CWM, you have to mount the right partitions. You can do this with the CWM mount menu or with the following commands:
Code:
mount /emmc
mount /sdcard
After mounting you can copy:
Code:
copy -R /emmc /sdcard/internal_sdcard_backup
3dik said:
You can also copy the internal sd card to your external sd card.
If you do it manually with adb over romracer's CWM, you have to mount the right partitions. You can do this with the CWM mount menu or with the following commands:
Code:
mount /emmc
mount /sdcard
After mounting you can copy:
Code:
copy -R /emmc /sdcard/internal_sdcard_backup
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WOW.
way to necro a 3 year old thread
Why not? My post could still be useful for some users.
3dik said:
Why not? My post could still be useful for some users.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, its very smart to ressurect a dead thread that's nearly 4 yrs old. Its not like your input is already known and used in the 4 yrs since the last post, but then again you're like the Korean user who recently gave directions on how to install CM7. Stating obvious facts that everyone or at least most ppl already know.
Sent from my ATRIX HD using XDA Free mobile app
Let's google: atrix 4g backup internal sdcard
The first entries say the same as Pirateghost says: copy internal sdcard to the computer. Ok, this is already known.
I explained the external sdcard way because I have problems pulling big files via ADB. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I know XDA is not Stackoverflow, but OP asked for the best method for backing up internal storage. And copying to external sdcard is the best method imho.
But let's assume that your device is broken and you're restricted to the use of CWM. The CWM mount points differs from the moint points of the Atrix Android. Are the details common knownledge? I found the mount point descriptions at the changelog and at page 56(!) of romracers CWM thread..
My post is like a summary of my research. I it reduces the research time for other users. Tell me a better place to contribute that knowledge than this thread.
Guys, yes, he has brought a dead thread back, it's not always the best thing to do, but what's even worse is trying to argue about it. If you don't agree with the person reviving an old thread, then just report it and let us mods take care of it. Don't go out telling people they might have screwed up, especially when it's no big deal like this one...
So I'll leave it at that now
when I back up it's placed in my internal memory
isn't it supposed to back up my system to my external card?? how do I fix this? Do I need to use another recovery?
I tried to look for my card using TWRP but I only see an empty folder named sd-ext but my sd card is called external_sd when using file manager
Is this normal for an A500?
Thanks in advance!
pinmemo said:
when I back up it's placed in my internal memory
isn't it supposed to back up my system to my external card?? how do I fix this? Do I need to use another recovery?
I tried to look for my card using TWRP but I only see an empty folder named sd-ext but my sd card is called external_sd when using file manager
Is this normal for an A500?
Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I really don't like necroing a thread, but this seems, too, relavent -- and someone may need an answer
I am using TWRP 2.1.3 right now (just installed it).
Apparently it places the backups on internal storage by default.
If you tap/select the 'mount' option on the main screen you can select that the sdcard be mounted.
You can also select whether to store backups on the internal storage or on the external card from here.
On the backup menu, you might need to tap/select 'refresh free space' or similar option.
Then select what you want to backup, and swipe to backup (as per on-screen instructions).
After a few days of googling, i stumbled upon a thread in Droid DNA forum. Which led me to this answer right from the source on why it's not possible to mount our SD Card or actually, just a folder in /data, in TWRP.
Just wanted to share and hope this will clear things up and hoping that people won't wipe their /data partition since it will delete the SD Card folder as well.
I find this very enlightening so read on.
What is a data media device?
I'm writing this page because there seems to be a lot of confusion about how many of the newer Android devices work. Starting in Honeycomb 3.0 with the Xoom, Google changed the way that they handled storage. Instead of having a "data" partition with your apps and a separate "sdcard" partition for storage, Google started giving you a single, very large data partition. Inside /data is a folder at /data/media that contains all of the contents of what you think of as your internal sdcard.
Since /data/media is part of /data, we pretty much never actually format the data partition. Formatting data, of course, also removes the media folder that contains the internal sdcard. When you choose a factory reset, instead of formatting, we use rm -rf commands to remove all the folders except for the media folder so that we can remove all of your apps and settings while leaving your "sdcard" intact. In TWRP we also have a wipe internal storage option that rm -rf's the media folder and a "Format Data" option that formats to recreate the entire file system in case something goes completely wrong or to remove device encryption.
When you're booted to Android, Android fuses the media folder to /sdcard and emulates a FAT files system that doesn't have permissions for legacy apps. We don't currently have fuse in recovery, so we just add an extra mount command to mount /data/media to /sdcard so in recovery you still have to worry about permissions on /sdcard.
Because the "internal sdcard" is not a true FAT file system, you can't mount it via USB storage. Well, that's not technically true, but the vast majority of people use Windows computers and Windows doesn't recognize ext4. If we were to allow you to mount the data partition via USB storage, Windows would claim that the device wasn't formatted and offer to format it for you, which, as you can imagine, would be a disaster. The whole ext4 setup is another reason that Android switched to using MTP for transferring files. Most of these devices don't have the necessary kernel configuration to even support USB storage mode, so it's not very easy to enable USB storage if we even wanted to try. Unfortunately at this time, MTP isn't available in recovery, so if you have no other option, you will have to use adb to push and pull files to/from your device.
As a special note, if you choose to do a factory reset from your ROM, even if the ROM says that it will wipe everything including the internal storage, well, that's not what TWRP will do. A stock AOSP recovery would format data including the "sdcard" but TWRP will use its regular factory reset setup that leaves the internal storage intact.
There are a couple of nice gains with using this setup vs the old data + FAT storage partition. With /data/media you, as the user get more control over how you use your storage. If you have a ton of apps, then that's no problem since you have a huge data partition to work with. If you don't have a lot of apps, you get more room to use for storing things like movies. Further, ext4 doesn't suffer from the 4GB file size limit that FAT has, so you can have a large, high-def movie on your device if you like. I'm sure another motivating factor was to get Android away from using FAT which is a Microsoft creation. Performance on ext4 in Android is also probably better than FAT. As a downside, data media devices tend to store a lot more app data in the "data" section and so backups on these devices tend to be larger.
Android 4.2 has changed things with /data/media devices a little bit due to the multi-user support that came in 4.2. Each user is assigned a subfolder in /data/media. The main user gets /data/media/0 and subsequent users get /data/media/10 and /data/media/11 and so on. If you switch users in Android 4.2, the system will remount the /sdcard folder to point to the proper user's folder. TWRP has been updated to use the /data/media/0 folder starting in 2.3.2.0.
Another "feature" of 4.2 is that when you "update" to 4.2 it may attempt to upgrade your /data/media to multi-user. If you're running an older version of TWRP than 2.3.2.0 or newer, a factory reset may trigger multiple upgrades, causing your "sdcard" to get moved to /data/media/0 then /data/media/0/0 and then /data/media/0/0/0 and so on depending on how many times you "upgraded". This may cause backups to not be visible in TWRP. Also, there currently isn't a good way to go back to a 4.1 ROM after using a 4.2 ROM without having to manually move your files around.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://teamw.in/DataMedia
I asked them if it's possible to just mount the ext4 partition if Windows users install some apps that can read them. Will see if they're going to answer.
Hope this helps. Cheers.
I am just wondering, if it is safe to keep my backup i just made, on my external SD card? Its much bigger than the backups were for my old device, and its kinda taking up the rest of my internal storage right now...
But what i am wondering is if i do transfer it, will twrp see it successfully in recovery mode in case a backup is needed??
thanks
Hi there!
I'm on a G900FD with TWRP v3.0.2-1 , but TWRP is mostly universal for this level of modification.
TWRP will initially display only the backups in the default backup location. Backups are stored as a (typically timestamped, though any name will do) folder containing the backup images, a log and a settings file.
TWRP keeps its settings, backups and (maybe) themes in the ./TWRP directory in your internal storage. The settings files ( ./TWRP/.twrps , note the dot before twrps, use ls -a to find it) is always located in here, but the default location for backups can be changed from your internal storage to your external storage via TWRP's GUI.
To change default storage location, follow:
1: Reboot to recovery. Enter encryption pattern/PIN/passphrase if needed.
2: Tap Mount, then tap Select Storage. Note at the top of the screen, under the Mount title, is something akin to EMMC or Internal Storage or Internal, you get the idea. This will change in the following steps.
3: Tap the radio button of the storage you want to default to in the popup that appears, then press OK.
4: Verify that the display now reads SD card, External Storage, whatever.
5: Under Home > Backup, the Storage: line should now read External/ SD Card / whatever, instead of the Internal Storage variant.
6: Optional: Make a backup, just to see where it says the backup location is in the log.
To reverse modification, follow instruction again.
Do note that failure to provide the SD card, or failure to mount it, will result in TWRP defaulting back to internal storage, which may fail due to lack of space. Not a problem for me ( 128G SD card represent ), but something to think about.
To transfer the backup from the internal storage to the external, reboot back to Android, and use a file manager to move the entirety of the BACKUPS folder from INTERNAL/TWRP to EXTERNAL/TWRP . Without more information about your build, I can't provide paths to follow, but mine would be:
Internal Location: /storage/emulated/0/TWRP/BACKUPS/(SERIAL NUMBER)/(TIMESTAMP_OF_BACKUP)
External Location: /storage/(SDCARD GIBBERISH)/TWRP/BACKUPS/(SERIAL NUMBER)/(TIMESTAMP_OF_BACKUP)
Note that TWRP will require that each backup is located in the same directory as the serial number of your phone, so i.e. mine must be in:
/storage/98A4-1D0F/TWRP/BACKUPS/e6209199/2016-08-03--21-16-31
for a backup made on the 3rd of August, 2016 at 9:16:31 UTC.
If anything is unclear, feel free to reply!
Happy flashing!
Thanks! I'll have to give this a try when I've got some time tonight
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