Hi guys,
I've done a lot of research into this and have read multiple posts about it, but can't seem to find a decent solution....
Basically, adoptable storage on 6.0 will format the SD card in such a way that only your phone can recognize it. TWRP and your PC won't be able to read the SD card at all. In that case, what's the best way to bypass this?
I'm assuming that you just format 50% of the card as adoptable storage, so the rest can be used by TWRP/PC? It just seems kind of annoying because if you need to flash a new ROM, or if your ROM has issues etc, you'd have to constantly move the data to your SD card's normal storage, otherwise it's unreadable. I'm talking about stuff like Titanium Backups, which I believe can't be saved onto the normal SD card storage, etc.
Looks like I found the answer myself.
Don't bother using that script from Modaco (unless you're on stock 6.0 ROMs). Just format the card as adoptable SD in the ROM itself (I'm using Resurrection Remix), then reboot. Your PC will pick up the SD card via MTP no problem. If that doesn't work, boot into TWRP (make sure you're using 3.0.2.2-test as of this current writing) and select micro-SD (adoptable storage). It should show up via MTP as well.
Looks like nothing is affected as TWRP and my PC can still read the card despite being formatted as adoptable. Problem solved.
Update 2:
If you are using stock official ROM, then adoptable storage won't be visible via MTP. You can use TWRP to access it though, but make sure you're using the latest TWRP. On the phone itself, you can use something like Root Explorer and browse to the following path to access the adoptable storage contents:
/mnt/expand/xyzblahblah/media/0
the xyzblahblah part is a long random string. It might look different on your phone.
Note that Titanium Backup can't recognize this path. You can browse to it, but it can't access it. Best to format your card as 50/50 adoptable/portable storage.
Related
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
MM brought the adopted internal storage option for SD cards, which combines your SD space with your device space. It still has a few bugs with certain apps but for the most part is pretty fluid. The traditional portable storage works as usually expected but also encounters some bugs in MM.
Personally I'm having a hard time choosing between the two and some people seem to dislike the adopted storage.
Which do you use and which do you prefer?
Now that twrp works adopted is almost mandatory for 16gb model.
I found Adoptable Storage poorly thought out and implemented. Google should've pushed devs to support it. It doesn't combine storage either. There are just two internal drives (one embedded, one SD).
Moving apps to the SD card now takes quite a few more steps. There's no overview of apps able to move or installed on the SD card, and no way to multi-select apps for moving.
On top of that, system apps completely ignore the adopted storage drive and you can't select what drive to store files on. It's supposed to be automatic, but it's not. Once you fill the eMMC, apps that don't support SD cards will start to fail as they can't store data.
Portable storage, I keep my music, movies, pictures, ROMs, and nandroids on my microsd card. Every once in a while I pop out the card and either move new media to it or move backups from my PC. I also sometimes wipe internal and accidentally wipe my roms and flashable zips, so in that case I pop out the memory card put it in my PC and download whatever I need from there and pop it back in. The option to manage media from a PC far outweighs having extra (half-baked) internal storage for me.
I haven't tried using adoptable storage yet with updated TWRP, but I find keeping the SD card as portable is more convenient if you're into flashing custom ROMs every few weeks/months. You can keep all your backups and other files on it and wipe everything else including the internal storage during clean flashes. I might look to see how well adoptable storage works now later.
nv2k said:
I haven't tried using adoptable storage yet with updated TWRP, but I find keeping the SD card as portable is more convenient if you're into flashing custom ROMs every few weeks/months. You can keep all your backups and other files on it and wipe everything else including the internal storage during clean flashes. I might look to see how well adoptable storage works now later.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Say you don't flash ROMs very often, and usually have backups uploaded to the cloud. I'd there a dire need for a portal SD? Also, if adopted storage is used and you flash a ROM, does that essentially wipe all the apps/data?
In your case, portable storage wouldn't be necessary. As I haven't tested it, I can't say for sure how flashing new roms would work with adoptable storage. My guess is that you would only wipe the system if you want to keep your data, but I'd do some research before going through with that.
They both suck with the 16GB model which I stupidly bought because I figured I could throw a 64GB SD card in it and be good. Unfortunately it doesn't work as advertised and I didn't find out the SD card is basically useless until after Best Buy's 2 week return window was up.
First I tried setting it up as portable. I could set Google Music to cache and download music to the SD card, but when I went to install Star Wars KOTR I was out of space. So then I formatted it as internal. It doesn't really work as expected. I was able to install all my apps including KOTR, but then Google Play Music will only cache music to the internal storage and my device was full after downloading just a few albums.
Nothing stopping you from using a different method to store music on your device.
lafester said:
Nothing stopping you from using a different method to store music on your device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True, I could just download it all and copy it to the SD, but I've had issues doing that in the past. Google Play shows 2 copies of every song, one local and one cloud. Plus I subscribe to Google Play Music, there is no way to use another method to store songs that are part of the subscription that I don't own.
I've had at least one app (Geometry Dash) fail when using adopted storage. I'm using portable storage right now.
And won't adopted storage become unrecognized if you wipe /data (ex after installing a new ROM)? Seems like a pain to copy the contents of SD-Card before and after switching ROMs or restoring nandroids. I'm considering using TWRP to partition my SD-Card instead and doing a more traditional apps2sd.
Hi, I'm using Dirty Unicorns on my Redmi2. Since it's marshmallow, I'm using adoptable storage, i.e. using my sd card as internal storage, so I can install apps to the sd card. but since this mode formats and encrypts the sd card, I can't access files that I want to flash with TWRP when booting recovery. I thought TWRP 3 was supposed to support adoptable storage, but even after updating it I can't seem to get it working. Am I forgetting something here?
Thanks in advance.
Where in the Aroma File manager are you Searching for your SD card ? Pls attach a Screenshot of the directory , using root explorer
You must identify where exactly your adoptable SD card mounted to. You can search for it using CM File manager. It should be like /mnt/storage/XXX.
Hi
OK, so this is my question: I just installed LineageOS 15.0 on my XT1685 . And when I was using the stock ROM (N), I used my SD card to store pictures, videos, etc. After installing O, this option seemed to have disappeared for some reason. First, I couldn't get to choose save location from the stock camera app that came with the Gapps ( https://www.androidfilehost.com/?fid=817550096634797336 ). Then I tried installing Open Camera, but then I got this issue with not being able to write to the SD card (see attachment).
At this point my SD card was formatted as "portable". And I just could NOT get Oreo to understand that I wanted to use it as a default for storing pictures and video. After a while I gave up, and re-formatted as "internal". Which basicly means that now the phone's storage and the external storage are kinda "integrated" in a way.. the SD has become a part of a greater whole..
Which leads me to my actual question...:
Why is it that I could not get it to work as it did on Nougat - as portable, basicly..
And also; how to get around this?
Just to be clear, this is a general Android question (I think), NOT a question specific to the Lineage ROM (which is awesome btw, imo!)
Thanks,
- H
I have AOSP Extend Oreo on my g5+. I put open camera on my phone and was able to store pics on the SD card. However, it stopped working and won't store pics at all. I installed the native moto camera app, but it won't let me store pics to the SD card. I'm hoping someone can provide some assistance.
I am on stock Oreo and I currently use my SD as portable. Formatting the sd as Internal eventually led to 3 different corrupted sd cards after some time, so, if your problem is not software-related, try to stick to formatting the card as portable storage.
I only know a part of the problem, which is happening to me too: a while after restarting the phone, I open my SD card in any file manager (I have Total Commander) and it doesn't show any file but both the file manager and the system shows the Sd card's occupied and free spaces, and I've had to dismount and remount the SD card in order to be able to get to any file or folder of it, but several minutes later the files become impossible to access again.
Are these files safe to delete? I was under the impression that with this being a 16gb phone I wouldn't be fighting for internal storage space after owning the phone just a few days and less than 10 installed apps.
Looks like your own backups... your internal storage wouldn't be full if you bothered to use a sd card.
If one does have an external SD card, I don't recall if TWRP defaults to storing there or if you need to select external SD - something to check on for TWRP newbies.
-n0cturne- said:
Looks like your own backups... your internal storage wouldn't be full if you bothered to use a sd card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've found TWRP to usually default to internal storage on every run, but once you set up the path/naming for your backups it usually sticks.
It seems like you are toying around with TWRP, possibly attempting to get ready to flash a custom rom. Given half the storage is system files, you'd barely be able to backup said default files to internal storage without running out of space.
You could always backup these files to a computer, delete them from the phone to free up enough space to download a rom (of which you should verify the md5 checksum), and hope everything goes perfectly.
If anything goes wrong, you'll need access to a computer and either use some advanced fastboot commands or.. an sd card, which you can easily swap on to a computer to download custom roms or backup files.
I would recommend getting a micro SD card for TWRP backups to avoid being fully dependent on a PC or internal storage. I like to have at least two TWRP backups on my micro SD. I know this phone works with 128GB - not sure about larger.