My moto G mk3 prompted me to update to android 6 the other day, once it finished it said my SD card was new and required formatting. It gave me the option to format it as internal storage or as a portable storage. Portable allowed me to store files but not apps and let me access the files directly from my PC via USB... Internal let me use the SD card for apps, nothing else and the file system was hidden.
Neither of these options is suitable for my usage of the phone, I need to be able to dump my music/images/videos on the SD card as well as my apps. The phone only has 4.5GB of usable internal storage after the OS takes its share.
Is there a work around for this SD card restriction? I've had a lot of trouble trying to figure out how to get android 5.1.1 back, I found the right firmware version but can't get it on the phone...
You could always download the firmware while on your phone and use a file explorer to move the files from your download folder to your root. I believe when Android 4.0 came out, they stopped the functionality to install apps on the sd card.
What do you see on your pc when you hook up your phone through USB. Also, you might have to open the swipe down menu and select the touch for more options because it might be charging through USB by default, you should now see all your files.
I was mainly referring to this: Then select File Transfers:
When I change it to "file transfer" from "charge only" it only shows me the internal memory. Before it showed me "internal storage" and "SD card". It let me have whatever I wanted on there in android 5.1.1.
Just tried it now, can't get to the SD card or OS partition by changing that setting... Perhaps it needs to be formatted to "portable" instead of "internal"...?
For some reason, the SD card stopped working during formatting (done a few factory resets due to a Facebook app bug & hoping it would bring 5.1.1 back lol) and now, even after taking it out and puting it back again, it doesn't show up in the phone's settings --> Storage & USB any more... I don't like this sign haha...
if you wish to go back a "firmware" all you can find the old firmware, all you have to do is root the device and reinstall it with a custom recovery. That's IF you have the device rooted, if not you're stuck on Marshamallow (if you're on it)
Hm, well I think the SD card is dead now, anyways... Just put it into my computer and it's showing as "Unknown device"... wasn't showing in the phone, either. (usually allowed me to reformat, but now it doesn't show up at all...)
That's £44 down the drain after only 30 days haha...
Just put it back in the phone, made sure to put it as far in as possible. Says "Corrupted". I guess i'll just format it again and then look for that /storage/emulated/o or /nmt folder.
EDIT: Nope, tries to format the card and it dies half way through. Something wrong here...
Not dead, its just Windows not supporting filesystems. Linux will read it fine, or format it fine.
If you've formatted it as internal storage, you should see an increase in your internal storage. Android doesnt use internal just for apps, it uses it for everything.
You could just mount it (the phone) on your computer to transfer files as normal, and use the combined internal storage..?
Hm, when I format the SD card as "Internal" it doesn't increase my internal storage to 64GB, it stays the same. SD card shows up in Settings --> storage & USB but when I enable file transfer only the internal storage shows up and it's 4.5GB in size.
Also can't find any folder like storage/emulated/0 or /mnt...
