Database Users

How to format internal storage in Philz Recovery?

Hi guys,
I've got a lot of junk folders on my INTERNAL storage that have been left by old apps etc.
What is a safe way to format the internal storage?
When the internal storage is formatted, will I have to reflash recovery/ROM etc?
Cheers

Why not use the Wipe function in recovery? It securely formats your internal storage. It means all your app data will be gone, though, and you'll get a clean phone, as if you've just got it.
Sent from my GT-I9500 using Tapatalk

Go under mounts and storage in Philz, you will see option to wipe internal sd there. It's called format data as far as I know.

cined said:
Hi guys,
I've got a lot of junk folders on my INTERNAL storage that have been left by old apps etc.
What is a safe way to format the internal storage?
When the internal storage is formatted, will I have to reflash recovery/ROM etc?
Cheers
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
in recovery go to mounts and strorage and select format -data sd card- not sdcard1 (this is ext sd card)
you dont have to flash the rom again.

Into the abyss.
Also, does formatting remove all partitions that may have been made on the disk? If you are flashing roms they change what on the system, and the card(s) are left alone, correct? I'm just getting an SPH-710 the S3, but they use Philz Touch too. I came from a Transform Ultra, which was tough to manage keeping things off the Internal storage. Kinda lost on how to handle all the options on the SG3. Or, should I just leave it all alone?
??? Thanks, as always for shepherding us newbs across to the promise land.

Multiple partition on external SD card?

With the new SD card option in Marshmallow, I'm wondering how Android would react if I decided to split my SD card in two partitions? Would it be possible to use one partition as a memory extension, using the new option, while the second partition would be used as a standard storage device?
The way I see it, the new Marshmallow feature is great but, it make you loose the ability to use external SD card as a way to transfer big file from your pc to your phone. That's why it would be great to have one partition for traditional storage and another for memory extension. We'd just have to make sure the phone isn't running when we eject the SD card, to make sure no files are damaged in the memory extensions partition.

Funnily I was wondering the same thing. I dont think it will be possible as android formats the card when you opt for adaptive storage. But would it wipe partitions? Probably I suspect. One way to find out.....

Features of Marshmallow - Episode 1 : Using microSD card as internal storage

New android version Marshmallow has a feature to use microSD card as internal storage.
When Marshmallow detects a microSD card for the first time it asks to chose Portable or Internal storage mode.
If you choose "Use as portable storage" you will use it as before. You can save your photos, videos, some applications or their data,
backup/restore your phone, etc. and you can see your files if you take it out of your phone and connect to another device or PC, as usual.
But if you choose "Use as internal storage" and click "ERASE&FORMAT" button at next screen,
then your microSD card will be formatted as ext4 and encrypted. You will loose everything in your microSD card and it will
become your only internal storage. Now, If you take it out of your phone and connect to another device or PC, it will not possible to see your files
since it is encrypted. Your microSD is usable only with your phone.
Than, what is the advantage of using microSD card as internal storage?
If your phone's real internal storage very small (ex: 4gb) and you have trouble installing new apps then you may put a 32 GB microSD card and use it as internal storage. Then your internal storage will be 32 GB (Not total of 36GB).
It will act as your phone's internal storage.
Disadvantages?
microSD card used as internal storage is useless out of your phone since it is encrypted. You can not use it taking out of your phone and putting into another device to transfer your photos, music files, zipped ROM files etc.
It will not be visible as external storage anymore.
Phone's real internal storage is not visible.
So,
If your phone's real internal storage is not too small and especially if you want to use your external storage as usual, there is no need to use a microSD card as internal storage.

darkRd said:
New android version Marshmallow has a feature to use microSD card as internal storage.
When Marshmallow detects a microSD card for the first time it asks to chose Portable or Internal storage mode.
If you choose "Use as portable storage" you will use it as before. You can save your photos, videos, some applications or their data,
backup/restore your phone, etc. and you can see your files if you take it out of your phone and connect to another device or PC, as usual.
But if you choose "Use as internal storage" and click "ERASE&FORMAT" button at next screen,
then your microSD card will be formatted as ext4 and encrypted. You will loose everything in your microSD card and it will
become your only internal storage. Now, If you take it out of your phone and connect to another device or PC, it will not possible to see your files
since it is encrypted. Your microSD is usable only with your phone.
Than, what is the advantage of using microSD card as internal storage?
If your phone's real internal storage very small (ex: 4gb) and you have trouble installing new apps then you may put a 32 GB microSD card and use it as internal storage. Then your internal storage will be 32 GB (Not total of 36GB).
It will act as your phone's internal storage.
Disadvantages?
microSD card used as internal storage is useless out of your phone since it is encrypted. You can not use it taking out of your phone and putting into another device to transfer your photos, music files, zipped ROM files etc.
It will not be visible as external storage anymore.
Phone's real internal storage is not visible.
So,
If your phone's real internal storage is not too small and especially if you want to use your external storage as usual, there is no need to use a microSD card as internal storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No way to read or write in ext4 in pc???

jaswinprakash said:
No way to read or write in ext4 in pc???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Possible, on Linux

Ranpe said:
Possible, on Linux
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But its still encrypted, so that won't help I guess. Also once you flash your phone or something, the contents won't be available anymore I think. It's just a guess though, I don't know how it is decrypted and all.
Sent from my MotoG3-TE using XDA Forums

jaswinprakash said:
No way to read or write in ext4 in pc???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It seems to be not possible out of your phone by anyway since it is encrypted.
I don't not know whether it is possible to extract encryption key from phone and decrypt the files using this key but this shouldn't be possible because of security reasons.
No one desires access to the important files in the sd card if it is captured by any one else.

darkRd said:
It seems to be not possible out of your phone by anyway since it is encrypted.
I don't not know whether it is possible to extract encryption key from phone and decrypt the files using this key but this shouldn't be possible because of security reasons.
No one desires access to the important files in the sd card if it is captured by any one else.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is possible done it in my Lenovo A328. Courtesy of this mod:
http : / / forum.xda-developers.com / android / development / rom-flight-a328-custom-rom-based-150429-t3137708

No Access to SD Card Please Help

16gb isnt enough, bought a 64gb sandisk sd card but after inserting it in and setting up as portable storage, my phone cant write files to it??? I have to use a special browser with root access just to delete some pics. On my old phones it had a directory name like "sdcard1" but on this it has "9DAE-180F". Its recognizing it like a otg usb drive. Which i think is my mistake cuz i chose "setup as portable storage"
Now i have a lot of data on my sd card which would be a pain in the ass to backup and then retry formatting as internal storage. So what i wanna know is will it have proper sd card access for all normal apps and behave like a normal sd card like all other phones i ever used? Or am i just gonna waste time trying out all this.and formatting wouldnt work?

alihassan1397 said:
16gb isnt enough, bought a 64gb sandisk sd card but after inserting it in and setting up as portable storage, my phone cant write files to it??? I have to use a special browser with root access just to delete some pics. On my old phones it had a directory name like "sdcard1" but on this it has "9DAE-180F". Its recognizing it like a otg usb drive. Which i think is my mistake cuz i chose "setup as portable storage"
Now i have a lot of data on my sd card which would be a pain in the ass to backup and then retry formatting as internal storage. So what i wanna know is will it have proper sd card access for all normal apps and behave like a normal sd card like all other phones i ever used? Or am i just gonna waste time trying out all this.and formatting wouldnt work?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe in MM and above we have to explicitly allow apps to access the external storage. check your gallery/photo app permissions and see if access to 'storage' is enabled

Update: i backed up all the data and when i formatted the card as an internal storage it extends the internal storage. Which solved the issue . But when i remove the sd card and connect it seperately some files show up and some dont. U dont know if the files is weather stored in internal or external storage which i dont care about anyways cuz im never getting the sd card out of the phone again. Lovin it

alihassan1397 said:
Update: i backed up all the data and when i formatted the card as an internal storage it extends the internal storage. Which solved the issue . But when i remove the sd card and connect it seperately some files show up and some dont. U dont know if the files is weather stored in internal or external storage which i dont care about anyways cuz im never getting the sd card out of the phone again. Lovin it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
android will encrypt the sd card if you set it as internal storage and you won't be able to access the content outside the phone, so if your phone goes crazy or bricked, there's high chance that you'll lose your files forever

pijes said:
android will encrypt the sd card if you set it as internal storage and you won't be able to access the content outside the phone, so if your phone goes crazy or bricked, there's high chance that you'll lose your files forever
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Damn man. This ****ty phone sucks.
2,3 days since I formatted as internal and now suddenly the sd card disappeared. IDK what happened. I was just browsing net and then there was the notification saying "sandisk sd card removed, please reinsert this device"
It just finished disappeared. Now it doesn't connect to anything tried reinserting , connecting to pc but no luck.
I'm sick and tired of this ****. I just wanna use the frikkin phone.
Thought I should restore via twrp but my backup was in sd card and twrp is also not detecting it.
Is there any way I can get my sd card working again?
After sdcard is fixed I'm gonna throw this piece of **** in a lake or something.
Please give me a solution anyone.
I had important data on that card.
It's a sandisk sd card 64gb

SD card for app storage

I'm using a 400GB SD card. I saw a comment about creating 2 different partitions on it as I want to use part of it for app storage and the other part for file storage, The second partition would be exFAT so I can remove the card and transfer my books, music, etc. to it by attaching the SD card to my laptop as I understand that Windows would not be able to recognize the partition that would be formatted as internal storage. I did format the SD card using my laptop as two separate partitions. My Samsung Galaxy Tab A saw both partitions. I selected the 96GB partition as I wanted to use that for app storage and selected the option to use it as internal storage. Unfortunately when I did that, it appears that the system set the whole CD card up for internal storage. Does anyone have any insight on how to accomplish this - use part of the SD card for internal storage and part of it for storage that would be recognizable by Windows? Thank you very much.

I have not tried, so take the advice as a suggestion, perhaps android can be "fooled", which I doubt.
After creating a bulk partition in android, move the SD to Windows and resize that partition, and create a second partition on the remaining capacity and hide it.
Now move the SD back to android and see what happens.
If android will reformat the partitions again then I can't advise anything else.
However, if android accepts the memory, then the next step is to discover the partition in Windows and recheck the SD in android.

ze7zez said:
I have not tried, so take the advice as a suggestion, perhaps android can be "fooled", which I doubt.
After creating a bulk partition in android, move the SD to Windows and resize that partition, and create a second partition on the remaining capacity and hide it.
Now move the SD back to android and see what happens.
If android will reformat the partitions again then I can't advise anything else.
However, if android accepts the memory, then the next step is to discover the partition in Windows and recheck the SD in android.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I was trying to work on that and now the Android Storage module (in Settings) keeps crashing when I open it. IDK what happened here. I've reformatted the SD card, I've removed the SD card, I've rebooted the table multiple times. I'm almost to the point of having to restore the tablet from scratch ... again.

Try this:
Link2SD - Apps on Google Play
Complete app management, move to SD, clear cache, remove bloatware and more
play.google.com

JR1979 said:
I'm using a 400GB SD card. I saw a comment about creating 2 different partitions on it as I want to use part of it for app storage and the other part for file storage, The second partition would be exFAT so I can remove the card and transfer my books, music, etc. to it by attaching the SD card to my laptop as I understand that Windows would not be able to recognize the partition that would be formatted as internal storage. I did format the SD card using my laptop as two separate partitions. My Samsung Galaxy Tab A saw both partitions. I selected the 96GB partition as I wanted to use that for app storage and selected the option to use it as internal storage. Unfortunately when I did that, it appears that the system set the whole CD card up for internal storage. Does anyone have any insight on how to accomplish this - use part of the SD card for internal storage and part of it for storage that would be recognizable by Windows? Thank you very much.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're trying to convert a partition in sd card as internal storage and leave the rest as an external storage. Not possible as far as I know.

TheMystic said:
You're trying to convert a partition in sd card as internal storage and leave the rest as an external storage. Not possible as far as I know.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats a bummer but that is what I was feeling was going to be the outcome. I guess I'll just go with it as internal storage then and be rlefated to wireless transfer of my books, etc. To the tablet. Any thoughts on why my Storage module keeps crashing now? Something definitely went nuts somewhere along the way here. It was running fine.. until I start poking around with this. I'll probably just do a rebuild again tonight.. if I can find my steps notes.

I also don't think it's possible to do what you have in mind. It's also important to remember that Windows will only mount the first partition of an SD card. It won't see any other partitions without 3rd party software installed.

JR1979 said:
Thats a bummer but that is what I was feeling was going to be the outcome. I guess I'll just go with it as internal storage then and be rlefated to wireless transfer of my books, etc. To the tablet. Any thoughts on why my Storage module keeps crashing now? Something definitely went nuts somewhere along the way here. It was running fine.. until I start poking around with this. I'll probably just do a rebuild again tonight.. if I can find my steps notes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The reason people want a micro SD card is to be able to move it around between devices, so it is not a good idea to convert it into 'internal storage' for two reasons:
1. You can no longer move the card around (not without reformatting it again).
2. This process would significantly slow down the system if the OS starts saving apps, data and files on the micro SD card because it sees this space as internal storage.
Because of how you partitioned the SD card and tried converting only a part of it as internal storage, my guess is the process caused corruption somewhere, and the system is crashing because of that. I'm afraid you'll have to do a factory reset and start from scratch. I hope your files are safe.

JR1979 said:
I'm using a 400GB SD card. I saw a comment about creating 2 different partitions on it as I want to use part of it for app storage and the other part for file storage, The second partition would be exFAT so I can remove the card and transfer my books, music, etc. to it by attaching the SD card to my laptop as I understand that Windows would not be able to recognize the partition that would be formatted as internal storage. I did format the SD card using my laptop as two separate partitions. My Samsung Galaxy Tab A saw both partitions. I selected the 96GB partition as I wanted to use that for app storage and selected the option to use it as internal storage. Unfortunately when I did that, it appears that the system set the whole CD card up for internal storage. Does anyone have any insight on how to accomplish this - use part of the SD card for internal storage and part of it for storage that would be recognizable by Windows? Thank you very much.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You should NEVER use an SD card for internal storage. They are MUCH to slow for that purpose. Today's SoC have RAM chips mounted directly on top and are several times faster than the fastest SD card bus. And low end tablets, which includes ALL Tab A devices, use a USB bus with limited bandwidth. So using faster SD cards is pointless as they will still only be as fast as the bus. SD cards are fine for storing video, audio, text and downloaded files, but NOT for running apps. Doing so will cause the device to be laggy at best, and cause crashes at worst.

blaacksheep said:
I also don't think it's possible to do what you have in mind. It's also important to remember that Windows will only mount the first partition of an SD card. It won't see any other partitions without 3rd party software installed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The two partitions on the USB flash drive can be seen* in Windows without third-party software.
*I don't have an English Windows interface.

ze7zez said:
The two partitions on the USB flash drive can be seen* in Windows without third-party software.
*I don't have an English Windows interface.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I meant that it won't mount the second partition, although you can see it in Disk Manager.

blaacksheep said:
I meant that it won't mount the second partition, although you can see it in Disk Manager.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Windows 10 mounts both of these partitions, assigns them letters and you can use them (read and write).

ze7zez said:
Windows 10 mounts both of these partitions, assigns them letters and you can use them (read and write).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I stand corrected! Previous versions of Windows could not do that.

ze7zez said:
The two partitions on the USB flash drive can be seen* in Windows without third-party software.
*I don't have an English Windows interface.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Something strange in that attachment. Since when do Android SD cards have NTFS partitions? As far as I know, the internal storage partitions that Windows couldn't read were formated as Ext3 or Ext4 and the external as either FAT32 or exFAT.

lewmur said:
Something strange in that attachment. Since when do Android SD cards have NTFS partitions? As far as I know, the internal storage partitions that Windows couldn't read were formated as Ext3 or Ext4 and the external as either FAT32 or exFAT.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't suggest the volume label. Partition K: is FAT. The example shows that Windows can show two partitions on a USB stick.

ze7zez said:
Don't suggest the volume label. Partition K: is FAT. The example shows that Windows can show two partitions on a USB stick.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course it can. It can show several. But NOT the two partitions created on an Android SD card because one of then is formated in a file system Windows doesn't recognize and that is what the poster was talking about.
edit: Disk Manager will actually show the partition but it won't be assigned a drive letter because Windows can't mount it.