Database Users

memory stick folders?

Hi,
I'm eagerly waiting for my X1 (2 month wait ) and I have already bought a 16 gig sd card to put music and bits on.
So I can transfer my music over can someone tell me the folder names/structure for the memory card so I can create the right folders and not waste my time.
Thanks

You can create whatever folders you like. Everything is up to the user.
I would advise to make a Program Files folder though. Although the first app you install on the storage card should create one for itself, you never know.

I suggest you make the following folders:
-Music: For your MP3s and stuff
-Pictures: For your pitures. Note that the camera will put the pictures in /DCIM/100XPRIA. Haven't found a way to remap this... (That actually works).
-Software: CAB-Files for all your software so you have them whenever you need them. Make sure you get CAB-Files of the software you're using, not ActiveSync installers that have to be run on your PC.
-Notes: It is intelligent to have Windows store your Notes on the MicroSD card. You have to make this setting manually.
-Movies: For your movies if you intend to watch them
More folders will be created automatically, such as the programs folder mentioned by orelsi, 2 folders for Windows Media Player and Inboxfolder (If you choose to store Emails on the storage card). Notice that if you plan to use a navigation software, it will most likely create a folder in the storage card root. Sometimes even multiple folders. I think TomTom quite sucks regarding this. So in order to keep your "real" files apart from any Settings/Navigation Maps/etc, you may want to create a folder named Files or something, that holds all of the folders in the list above. This makes administration of your files a lot easier but it can slow down access times because you always have to go to storage card, then choose the folder, then choose the category and then the file. Of course this depends on your setup. You can easily create a direct shortcut to that subfolder.
One more thing: Regularily check your MicroSD card with Windows for faults. I find there are problems with this quite often and you can lose data easily.

Cheers Guys

[Q] Limited access to external SD Card by some apps

Hi,
I've done a search and haven't been able to find anything solid on this so I apologize if it's been covered. I've been using the Atrix for a few days now and I noticed that when I view click on the "Files" app (the default file viewer that comes with the Atrix) it comes up with a list of the following options:
Internal phone storage
SD card
Shared folders
Protected Content
This is different than previous Android phones I've used in that I get a file structure instead of options of where to look. That's fine; I can just click on one of those options to view the contents. However, I use a application at work to use my phone as a glorified picture frame. It's called Slideshow Bob and it does not recognize the external SD Card. This hasn't been an issue with prior Android devices, but from little I can glean from doing an online search, this does seem to be a limitation with some Motorola models. Again, I have had no problem accessing my pictures in Slideshow Bob from any of the Samsung Android devices I own and this is my first Motorola phone with this OS so I'm wondering if this is a bug that will be remedied or if they've basically limited file access from apps on this phone. I'm sure that's not the case with every app, but it certainly is for some. Anyone else have any issues or workarounds they'd like to share?

iirc, none of the currently released Samsung Android devices have built-in storage plus an expansion slot, which is why you've likely never seen the issue.
Basically, Android was never designed to have more than one expansion slot, so that ends up being mounted in /mnt/sdcard (or /sdcard, with one symlinked to the other). Since there's no standard on where additional storage ends up being (and most programs assume there's no additional storage anyways), programs usually don't know where to look.

There is probably an option is Slideshow Bob of where to get the pictures, try /mnt/sdcard-ext/[folder name], where [folder name] is the name of the folder on the external sd card where the pictures are.

Sogarth said:
iirc, none of the currently released Samsung Android devices have built-in storage plus an expansion slot, which is why you've likely never seen the issue.
Basically, Android was never designed to have more than one expansion slot, so that ends up being mounted in /mnt/sdcard (or /sdcard, with one symlinked to the other). Since there's no standard on where additional storage ends up being (and most programs assume there's no additional storage anyways), programs usually don't know where to look.
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Click to collapse
Hi,
My Samsung Captivate had 16GB of built-in memory and an SD expansion card slot which I filled with an additional 16GB card. In the android file manager I could access the expansion card by going into the ext_sd (or something like that) under the main sdcard directory. I could also see this folder in Slideshow Bob.

harolds said:
There is probably an option is Slideshow Bob of where to get the pictures, try /mnt/sdcard-ext/[folder name], where [folder name] is the name of the folder on the external sd card where the pictures are.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
There is no such option. There is an option for the default folder, but it's a text field you have to type in, not a directory structure. I tried typing in the path to the external sd card, /sdcard-ext/MEDIA, directly (which ASTRO file manager shows exists), but the app says the directory does not exist. I really think Motorola is doing something to limit what apps can and cannot access for whatever reason. This has never been an issue with my Samsung Captivate or Galaxy Tab.

I think this actually has to do with the external sd card being mounted separate from the internal. In my previous devices the external card was seen as a directory on the internal sd card. With the Atrix it is an entirely separate item and some apps may not be able to access it as a result of having that different mounting. I don't have any other apps with which I need to navigate to a directory (other than various file managers) so I can't test how endemic this is. I imagine it might be an issue for apps that rely on a folder structure for data access such as music apps that are folder based instead of reading from what's in the media library.

I just tried another slideshow app. It is a problem, I think, with Slideshow Bob. It can't see any folders not on the internal sd card. In my Samsung devices the external card was viewed as a folder on the internal card and was, therefore, not a problem.

Apps having directory navigation problems on the Motorola Atrix
Kenny, I have the same problem with the PowerAmp app. My phone is also rooted and I have root explorer which shows me the music files exist. I can even play one file at a time with the power amp from explorer. But I get the same issue when I try to navigate to the music using poweramp. One more possibility is that the Atrix is running Android 2.2.1. Perhaps there is an issue with the upgrade. (I thing this "upgrade" is a disappointment compared to 2.2. I'd rather try Gingerbread.) AT&T has a 30 buyers remorse period and I've only had the Atrix for a week. I love the phone and I would hate to take it back but wtf? I'm just like the rest of you, I just want the damn thing to work!
p.s. My wife's Samsung Captivate never had this issue either.

Update: I found this issue in the Poweramp forum and I also spoke to an at&t support specialist and they verified what was said earlier about the problem is in the difference between the Atrix file system versus the Captivate. The Captivate mounts the external sd card as a folder inside the internal sd card while the Atrix has it mounted separately. The Poweramp administrators promise a fix in a week so I'm glad they are aware of the problem. This seems like an easy bug to fix. I will snoop around the market to see if an app can "trick" the Atrix file system to put the external sd in an internal sd folder. If anyone is aware of such an app, let us know.
The Atrix is promised the Gingerbread upgrade later this year. It has a new file system (ext4) which promises to be faster for phones like our Atrix or the Nexus. As I said, it seem an easy problem to fix, I'm sure this problem will be a thing of the past by then, I'm going to keep my Atrix and wait.
Kenny, you might want to check your app's web site to see if they have a fix in the making.

The Atrix being my first android phone im still learning things every day and I have had similar issues with the sd card and storage partitions. while checking out different files and what not I stumbled upon this default.prop file which contains the following..
#
# ADDITIONAL_DEFAULT_PROPERTIES
#
ro.secure=1
ro.allow.mock.location=0
ro.debuggable=0
persist.service.adb.enable=0
EXTERNAL_STORAGE_MOUNT=/mnt/sdcard
I was wondering if any one with more android experience is familiar with creating and editing prop files for certain activities could confirm if we switch the last line to sdcard-ext if this would now read or set our external sd card to be the sd card that the system and most apps read and write to. I haven't tested it myself but being familiar with different registry edits in winmo and windows im thinking this will work.. anyone agree or have some information they can share?
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App

[Q] external sd card general questions

hi, i've just got my iconia and I am also new on the Android world. A couple of things I've noticed about the external SD card that maybe somebody could help me to understand.
1.- when I hook my tablet to my windows 7 laptop, I get to see the internal memory on the win explorer but not the external card, so is this normal or do I have to look for more updated drivers on my PC?
2.- with the external SD card on I get to see my files on an android file manager and I get to open any file individually by getting the "select app for opening this file", but this is time consuming so I am wondering if my stock lumiread, gallery, multimedia player have the current limitation of only reading the content from the internal memory. If so, what free alternatives do I have to replace stock apps?

A couple of answers
First, if you install File Manager HD, you won't need to tether your Iconia to your laptop any more. In the app, open the 'menu' and touch 'LAN Connections'. Your Windows PC will show up as an IP address. Make sure to change the IP Address to a computer name (long press, rename) so that next time File Manager won't have to search for it every time. You will be able to transfer anything on the tab to the 'Public' folder on the PC, and vice versa. Depending on what folders are shared on the PC, you will be able to access more on the PC.
I keep my music on my external SD card in a folder named 'My Music'. The stock music/multimedia players found them with no problem.
I haven't tried moving any books for Lumiread to the external SD card, so all I can suggest is to look at the file structure and duplicate it on the ext SD card, copy a book into it (a new one, or move an existing one) and see if it finds it. I don't see anything within the app to set search/storage directories, but maybe it will scan everything like the music apps do.
Have fun with you new Tab. The more you play with it the more you will understand Honeycomb and it won't seem so foreign to you. It does pretty much everything every other OS does, just a little different way.
Kp

Thanks Ken, I downloaded FMHD and will try it soon. I also though about reproducing the lumiread folder on the ext sd card but no luck, so probably a future update on the app will fix that. I tried this as well copying the pictures folder (and also renaming it as 'My Pictures') but the stock gallery just won't see the image files, is there any chance you could see if you get the same results? I have not tried yet on the music stock app. Again, thanks for your help, it is great to find nice people on the web with similar tech passions as I do

Hello Ken, like that app. Wondering if it would be an easy way to tether to my HTC Evo? Thanks in advance for you thoughts.
Bob

Get Quickpic
sensei22 said:
Thanks Ken, I downloaded FMHD and will try it soon. I also though about reproducing the lumiread folder on the ext sd card but no luck, so probably a future update on the app will fix that. I tried this as well copying the pictures folder (and also renaming it as 'My Pictures') but the stock gallery just won't see the image files, is there any chance you could see if you get the same results? I have not tried yet on the music stock app. Again, thanks for your help, it is great to find nice people on the web with similar tech passions as I do
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Click to collapse
I use Quickpic from the Market (free) since it lets you choose which drives/directories to scan.
Here is what you do.
1. Create the My Pics directory on the External SD card with File Manager HD, put a few pics in it.
2. After installing Quickpic, start the app. It will display everything it finds on the internal SD Card.
3. Touch the Menu button from the main screen.
4. Choose SETTINGS-INCLUDED FOLDERS-ADD
5. Tap the double dots at the top of the list, it will display all the memory devices attached.
6. Tap EXTERNAL_SD. All directories on the card will be displayed. Press OK.
Now press the 'back' button and you will see your pics that are anywhere on the External SD card.
All I did to get the A500 music player to find the music on the External SD card was run the NemoPlayer app and open the music. Once I did that the regular music app found them, too.
Have fun!

Evo
pov1 said:
Hello Ken, like that app. Wondering if it would be an easy way to tether to my HTC Evo? Thanks in advance for you thoughts.
Bob
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Click to collapse
Don't quote me on this, but I don't think so. From what I have seen and heard so far it is only connecting to Windows shares. I don't have an Android phone to test with, so can't swear to it, but I know it doesn't see an iPhone, so likely won't see a Mac either.
Anyone else been able to connect to anything but a Windows share? Let us know if you have, and what app you used please.

Questions about Nexus 4 File Transfers and Internal Storage Structure

1) i noticed that even though the nexus 4 don't have an Sd card slot and only internal storage, the internal storage is emulated as an external sd card. i found this when using espxe and also es file explorer to browse through the folders. so is this true, the internal storage on the nexus 4 is emulated as external sd card? is this true for all android devices too?
2) when i play my usb to to transfer files. it really did not matter which folder i put my files into cause all the apps read from the location and it'll scan all the folders in that location for the files anyway? for example even if i put a pdf inside the adobe reader folder or if i put it outside of the adobe folder, it'll still find it. so this means all android app reads from one top level folder?
again these are my speculations and i want to learn more about it, if anyone knows anything about this or knows any good links to sites that can explain these stuff to me, please link me. google's device support page only talks about very basic stuff, like how to use touch keyboard lol...

yes its emulated as external so is on samsung s2 and the micro sd card is usb storage.
the media scanner will look for new media after each transfer,
developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/data-storage.html

unable to transfer files to Nexus 4
jinjin12 - I just recently got my Nexus 4. what steps are you taking to trasnfer files onto the phone?
I can see the phone as a drive and I can browse the directories, but I am unable to actually transfer any files. I get some error about incorrect format and my only option is "ship" or Cancel, both obviously kills the transfer.
Once I get home I can show you the actually error dialogue.
I would appreciate your input.
Thanks.
ct13
jinjin12 said:
1) i noticed that even though the nexus 4 don't have an Sd card slot and only internal storage, the internal storage is emulated as an external sd card. i found this when using espxe and also es file explorer to browse through the folders. so is this true, the internal storage on the nexus 4 is emulated as external sd card? is this true for all android devices too?
2) when i play my usb to to transfer files. it really did not matter which folder i put my files into cause all the apps read from the location and it'll scan all the folders in that location for the files anyway? for example even if i put a pdf inside the adobe reader folder or if i put it outside of the adobe folder, it'll still find it. so this means all android app reads from one top level folder?
again these are my speculations and i want to learn more about it, if anyone knows anything about this or knows any good links to sites that can explain these stuff to me, please link me. google's device support page only talks about very basic stuff, like how to use touch keyboard lol...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

MTP-Connection not working -> empty internal memory

I just copied some photos from my phone to a windows xp computer, disconnected the phone, took some more pictures and wanted to copy them over. So the phone shows up, i clicked on DCIM and Camera, selected the photos, CTRL+C and CTRL+V on my computer, but nothing happend. So i tried drag+drop, but nothing happend, even after several tries. So i thought the computer has a problem (it's Windows!) and i restarted the PC and i still saw the pictures, but couldnt copy them. So i restarted the phone and what happend? The internal memory is empty (empty empty!)... And as it's mounted as MTP device there is no way to use a data recovery software like i could do with SD cards... i didn't like MTP devices before, but now i really hate the MTP protocol - something like that never happened to any other of my phones with internal and or external memory and which were all able to use USM aka mass storage mode. And who invented MTP? Microsoft...
Beside that:
* Windows 8 doesn't show its nice copy progress window when copying to an MTP device --> https://www.google.com/images?q=windows+8+copy
* Windows 8 doesn't offer copying with skipping existing files in the target (only copy new files). on the first match, it asks to overwrite. if you disagree the copy process stops.

So, can the phone see the contents, or have they entirely vanished from the phone's side as well?

it's neither here nor there, the data is just gone. thankfully i uploaded almost all photos to the cloud some days ago and everything else could be found somewhere, except the media files from whatsapp. so my concern is less about the lost data than that it happens again and i always found mtp slower and less reliable than mounting as a block devices (mass storage). beside that there is still alot windows software out there that doesnt work with mtp devices. the only benefit is that you can access the data on both systems at the same time. in general most points are already known, i just wonder what happend. is there anything for mtp devices like "safely remove hardware" for mass storage devices?

You could always switch protocols and "mount" it as a "camera device", in which case I believe you would have access only to the DCIM folder on the virtual SD. And, you if you need to transfer non-photo files around, you can always just resort to an on-device file explorer, moving from the Dropbox folder in and out, if you use that. Dropsync works really well for reasonably-sized files.

thanks for the hint. cause of that i already installed foldersync to backup files in the free 50gb box.net cloud which i never needed before. but it's never a bad idea to have a backup *sigh*