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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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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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Click to collapse
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
General questions regarding the storage restrictions for installing apps. I have noticed that the internal storage is split for apps from rest of the stuff (movies, books, pictures, etc...). I find this pretty annoying and would like to remove this restriction. I plan to root the device but need a way to combined the storage to make it be as one whole storage for the use of apps, movies, music, and such...
Any easy process of doing this?
Apps refers to the internal storage. Everything else is the included SD card.
Sent from my Kindle Fire using Tapatalk
from what I've seen it would require repartitioning, and would likely cause more problems than it would be worth. It would almost certainly break the original OS, dunno if CM7 can work with that kind of partitioning.
As especially folks in this forum know, Android likes having free storage space for data and app updates. Depending on the apps you use and what you are trying to update, an Android device can start having install errors and start also slowing down anywhere on average from 500MB to 1GB.
The Nook HD+ though seems to start getting freaky if less than 3GB. I noticed this after reinstalling NFSMW, which needs 2.26GB to operate. Everything was fine when I installed this game with more space, but I had about 2.9GB free after installing that game as one of my apps to remain on the Nook. Once going below 3GB, all apps were very-very slow to start (5 to 10 seconds) and a lot of app crashes. I booted to the image disk and cleared cache, but the only thing that worked was to unintall NFSMW (I also had to manually delete the 1.8GB data file, since it did not uninstall).
The Nook HD+ from that point went from a speedy great device to near junk. I have tested this several times with other large apps with the same result.
On a positive note, the Nook HD+ works great with all Bluetooth gamepads I tested and the emulators. Did not try a PS3 controller, since did not expect it work.
With the Nook HD/HD+, the /data storage system is different than many older devices. If you look at my HD/HD+ Tips thread linked in my signature you will learn more. The bottom line is that /data and /media (sdcard) share the free space on the device. The HD+ comes with either 12GB or 28GB of free space depending on which model you have. As you add media files you start restricting /data. So to get more /data space, delete files on sdcard or move them to external SD.
Sent from my Nook HD+ running CM10.1 on emmc.
Given your great results making the device better, your word holds firm meaning for me. The issue here though is I see discrete totals in the storage tab for both internal and micro sd and see no aggrergate total for both. I have had 624mb free in the 32gb micro sd since getting the Nook and had about 5.5GB free with internal. Everything is fine until the internal gets below 3GB and the tablet turns to mud. The micro sd content has not deviated. Added: I have also used without the sd card installed and same issue. Performance is awful if near or less than 3gb.
Also, even after getting storage back to 5.5GB free, the device does not seem as zippy in spite of claering the cache as well. The device is not getting hot, so not an issue of a rogue app sucking up cpu cycles. I thought maybe the battery saver mode was activated, but it is not. That would not have slowed things down that much anyway.
Also, for some reason games like Asphalt 7 take forever to load up. Some big games are about normal, some take literally six to ten times longer to load up (on average). A7 seems the worst of the games for loading slow. I think I recall a few reviews commenting on this, but did not understand what they were talking about. Must be the way the data is compiled and placed in storage.
Added: Actually after more review, all the games I have tested load slowly. This is in contrast to when games install, it is faster than other devices. I did not notice when testing since was more a focus on gameplay. Some games load up real fast on other devices, so I did not notice when others were slow. Was testing off and on through several days with no time contraints. The big data games are the snail slow loaders.
That is odd to have the device that is the fastest installing games and updating, but the absolute slowest loading them to play. They are not slow during gameplay, but do slow down when levels load.
rushless said:
Given your great results making the device better, your word holds firm meaning for me. The issue here though is I see discrete totals in the storage tab for both internal and micro sd and see no aggrergate total for both. I have had 624mb free in the 32gb micro sd since getting the Nook and had about 5.5GB free with internal. Everything is fine until the internal gets below 3GB and the tablet turns to mud. The micro sd content has not deviated. Added: I have also used without the sd card installed and same issue. Performance is awful if near or less than 3gb.
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Click to collapse
Part of the problem is you are confusing "SD card" and "sdcard". They are two different things. "SD card" in settings is your external SD. And internal is the combined /data and /media (sdcard). If you were to look at "sdcard" with your file manager, you would see the same amount of free space available as it shows in settings for internal. If you look at /mnt/ext_sdcard with your file manager, you will see it has the same amount of free space shown in "SD card" in settings.
So how the confusion comes about is that apps use the internal "sdcard" to store their media data files instead of the external SD. This decreases the amount of free space for new apps to install to and operate.
If you want your apps to use the external SD for storing their media files, I have a zip on my HD/HD+ CWM thread linked in my signature that will swap the internal "sdcard" and the external "ext_sdcard" so that apps will use the external SD. Doing that helps in two ways. It stops your apps from clogging up your internal space with media files, leaving more room for your apps themselves. Second, generally large external SDs have even more media space.
Now, about your 32GB external SD having only 624MB free, you must have your CWM SD or a Hybrid SD inserted in the slot for it to only show 624MB free. Either that or you have a HUGE amount of media files there.
If you have your CWM SD inserted, you should not be using it for external storage, it should be removed and stored away and another card used.
If you have the Hybrid SD inserted, you need to flash my zip from my Hybrid thread that lets stock see the large media partition on the Hybrid SD instead of just the small boot partition.
I know it is confusing, but once you understand it, you can set your system up to hum.
Sent from my Nook HD+ running CM10.1 on emmc.
I appreciate the difference between the storage and that is what I am referring to. Mapping has been that way since ICS. It was changed after HC due to Android team getting rid of apps2sd. App data needs to be mapped to the first concurrent "sd" that is mapped. The internal "sd". My external sd is loaded with MAMEreloaded and PSX roms, so yes, it is filled up with 624mb left and the internal sd (called same thing on all ICS and JB devices) has 5.5gb free.
That was my point about the operational floor, since the HD+ appears to not like going below 3gb. BTW' though I missed the the terminology on permissions and unknown sources, it does not mean I am a tech illiterate In my defense though, from a framework standpoint, they are the same thing as far as permissions to access secure layers of the framework. If Android team had their complete way, no side loading would be allowed and external sd cards would be gone as well. They seem to strive to be more like iOS more each year.
In summary, I appreciate that the external card is mapped with an ext suffix. At least that is how it shows on all my current devices via ES Explorer.
rushless said:
I appreciate the difference between the storage and that is what I am referring to. Mapping has been that way since ICS. It was changed after HC due to Android team getting rid of apps2sd. App data needs to be mapped to the first concurrent "sd" that is mapped. The internal "sd". My external sd is loaded with MAMEreloaded and PSX roms, so yes, it is filled up with 624mb left and the internal sd (called same thing on all ICS and JB devices) has 5.5gb free.
That was my point about the operational floor, since the HD+ appears to not like going below 3gb. BTW' though I missed the the terminology on permissions and unknown sources, it does not mean I am a tech illiterate
In summary, I appreciate that the external card is mapped with an ext suffix. At least that is how it shows on all my current devices via ES Explorer.
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Well, since your external SD is loaded with non HD+ stuff, why not get another SD, do the swap zip, and have plenty of room internally so it does not turn to mud.
Sent from my Nook HD+ running CM10.1 on emmc.
Having issues with my connection, so my edit was parsed. Now complete in the reply above.
All I was asking is if the floor for internal storage was 3gb, since that is when I ran into mud. I have plenty of cards, but apps can not be installed to the external card. I have a lot of Gameloft and EA games, so run out of space quickly. Since the Nook seems to have read issues with large data files, I will remove the large data file games. Problem solved! I have them all on my 128g iPad 4 anyway. Just mainly wanted to test them out on the Nook to see if it could handle them. I guess the answer is "kind of", due to the apparent read issues it seems to have with those games. Compared to my Excite 7.7 and TF300, all large games load slower, but seem to play fine when finally loaded and until new data needs to be read into ram. The iPad makes them all seem slow in comparison.
rushless said:
Having issues with my connection, so my edit was parsed. Now complete in the reply above.
All I was asking is if the floor for internal storage was 3gb, since that is when I ran into mud. I have plenty of cards, but apps can not be installed to the external card. I have a lot of Gameloft and EA games, so run out of space quickly. Since the Nook seems to have read issues with large data files, I will remove the large data file games. Problem solved! I have them all on my 128g iPad 4 anyway. Just mainly wanted to test them out on the Nook to see if it could handle them. I guess the answer is "kind of", due to the apparent read issues it seems to have with those games. Compared to my Excite 7.7 and TF300, all large games load slower, but seem to play fine when finally loaded and until new data needs to be read into ram. The iPad makes them all seem slow in comparison.
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One final note. If you do the swap, those large data files for the gameloft games, etc, get installed to external SD. They are designed so those extra files run from SD even if the app itself must be on /data.
Sent from my Nook HD+ running CM10.1 on emmc.
Not to question per say, but I do not think data goes to the external card. All is installed to the internal storage with no option to do otherwise for any of the games I have tested. I had a 16gb that was empty when I first got the tablet and installed Nova and MW3. The external card was empty until I put game roms on it. It eventually became my image disk for flashing unkown sources.
What am I missing? Thanks.
rushless said:
Not to question per say, but I do not think data goes to the external card. All is installed to the internal storage with no option to do otherwise for any of the games I have tested. I had a 16gb that was empty when I first got the tablet and installed Nova and MW3. The external card was empty until I put game roms on it. It eventually became my image disk for flashing unkown sources.
What am I missing? Thanks.
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Click to collapse
You are missing the fact that you did not flash my swap zip and reboot so that the external SD becomes sdcard and the gameloft will install the data files there.
Sent from my Nook HD+ running CM10.1 on emmc.
Cool! I might check that out, but then I will probably be confined to that one card since both treated as one- correct?
I might not need it, since every large data game I have tried loads up a lot slower (in some cases like Asphalt 7 and Need for Speed Most Wanted, WAY too slow). I will stick with smaller games, emulators, web and media and leave the big dogs to my other tabs.
For $200 with a great display on an Android device, I will put up with the odd behavior with large data games by not installing them anymore
rushless said:
Cool! I might check that out, but then I will probably be confined to that one card since both treated as one- correct?
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Yes, anytime you would want to run that large game that had the data files on that one SD would have to be run with that SD inserted.
But most folks that do this swap have one very large SD (32 or 64GB) and always leave it inserted and all of their app's data is stored there. Books, game data, music, etc. Then they never fill up internal memory with media files that potentially could choke /data.
Sent from my Nook HD+ running CM10.1 on emmc.
I've done some searching, but the volume of content on these forums, along with the different operating modes, is making my head spin a bit. Advice or pointers to posts of particular importance gratefully appreciated. My HD+ is running 10.1 installed internally.
I plan to run with an external card in the SD slot, to keep content there and preserve internal space for applications, or app data that can't be pushed to the external card. I have the card (never used). Is there a file system choice for this card that maximizes performance? If so do I command the tablet to format the card, or do that on my supporting PC with SDFormatter?
I'm not clear if the patch to "swap" internal and external SD card locations is just for tablets running stock B&N software, or if this is also the desirable approach for a tablet running CM? If I don't use the patch, is there a post with guidelines for hacking configuration of existing apps (Kindle reader, Google books, etc) to use the external SD card?
Am I correct in understanding I may need to reference more than just the Google Play Store, to obtain apps that Google doesn't sanction (like an ad blocker for my browser)? Recommendations on alternate app stores ... Amazon's, other?
Do folks pull their eBook content straight to their tablet (via paid-content stores or free sources), or is the "better" practice to take a hop to your PC, into Calibre for conversion/backup/library management, and then down to the tablet?
One of my goals for the tablet is to catch up on a backlog of web site-based content that I need to read. I'd like to have the tablet pull content (in a "crawlish" kind of way with guidance/limits) while at home, tethered to power and next to solid WiFi, so I can read while traveling when I'm not the driver. Anyone know of a thread that is a good reference to setup of a solid, "offline browsing" strategy?
Thanks,
Alan Roberts
>Is there a file system choice for [SD] card that maximizes performance?
I don't think it matters. Use FAT32 or exFAT if you want to have >4GB files. NTFS or ext4 are alternatives, although their delayed-write feature means unmounting the card as versus simply yanking it out. Since it's for storage, it'll be mostly reads and not writes, and speed shouldn't be an issue.
>is [patch to swap int & ext SDcard location] the desirable approach for a tablet running CM?
Suggest sticking with plain vanilla unless there is good reason to do otherwise. Even with a 16GB Nook, there should be plenty of space for apps, and you can store large multimedia on ext SDcard w/o need for swap patch. Suggest you use the Nook more extensively to find out what your needs are, before making systemic changes to the OS.
>[may I] need to reference more than just the Google Play Store, to obtain apps that Google doesn't sanction
Goog Play Store is a superset of Amazon's store, so no need to have both. Some people want to include Amazon's as that has free apps daily. It's a preference, not a necessity. Sideloading apps has little to do with app stores. Aside from apps (you mentioned ad blocker) not available in 'stores', there are times when you simply want to install an apk file, as with apps on XDA and elsewhere. There's no need to do anything extra to sideload.
>Do folks pull their eBook content straight to their tablet
Unless your workflow goes through the PC, it's much simpler and faster to download straight to the tablet. You can of course download to the PC for functions other than reading.
>Anyone know of a thread that is a good reference to setup of a solid, "offline browsing" strategy?
Depends on what type of content you have in mind. There are RSS reader apps, Flipboard, etc. Suggest you go into Goog Play store and try some searches with relevant keywords, or search via Goog with same keywords + 'Android app' suffix.
Just wondering how y'all best utilize cloud storage on your device? This will be my first phone without expandable memory so, if possible, I'd like to set things up so the phone places pictures and other media automatically in the cloud rather than on my device... if that's even possible.
Anyway, just curious how yall have things set up to best utilize the cloud.
FWIW, I have a 50gig box account... so plenty of storage room (in addition to the 64 on the phone). Just need to figure out how to best utilize it!
I have used Dropbox and Copy for backup, but they both seemed to have bugs that prevented syncing from time to time; not to mention they are only free for the first few gigs. Now I use Google Photos for photo/video and it's amazing. MUCH better than either Dropbox or Copy if not only for the stability, but also the insane search features.
For other files I will probably end up using OTG or Pushbullet (small)/Google Drive (large) just to bounce files around between devices.