So a month ago I got a fast 32 gigabyte SD card so that the 4 gigabytes of internal memory wouldn't be bogged down and I could have all my music on my phone. Now cut to about 4 gigs being used on the card, and now whenever I try to transfer apps to the SD card it claims it doesn't have enough storage, and reformatting would be hell, so do you guys have a better alternative to my problem?
What format is the card formatted in? Do you have root? Maybe you could partition the card.
Android can be a pain when it comes to SD cards. They started locking them down a few revisions ago. If you want to store apps on it, you might need to format the card for use as internal storage. If this is the case, you won't be able to take it out and use it on a computer, to copy files etc.
If your internal storage is full (or almost full) Android will act really weird. If you're rooted the best thing you can do is use Link2SD, make an ext4 partition on the SD card and link all of your apps to the SD card. Android will act like the apps are on the internal storage so it won't act weird.
did you get it from china? (alibaba aliexpress dx or else)
Google pretty much rebuilt android with marshmallow. Its has many new features along with several security enhancements. They have also changed how removable storage is handled. This is good and bad depending on how you look at it and how you use the device.
Android has 2 types of removable storage now. The first one is portable storage. Portable storage allows you to transfer the removable storage to other devices. This is like the older storage method in android. It allows the user to directly write to the sdcard and organize in their own way. It has a few drawbacks including not being able to transfer apps to the sdcard, encrypt the sdcard, etc.
The second type of storage is "Internal Storage" or Adoptable storage. This new type of storage was added in android marshmallow. Adoptable storage will encrypt your sdcard and treat it as part of the internal storage. This is great if you have a cheap generic phone that only has a few hunred megabytes for personal storage and you need more space. Adobtable storage also has many drawbacks.
The main drawback is that it becomes part of your phone. If something happens to the sdcard then the phone will stop working and you will be forced to factory reset the device. Another drawback is that you cant just pull out the sdcard if something happens to your phone like dropping it in water. This is because the sdcard is encrypted with your devices encryption key. You can extract the encryption key but i HIGHLY reccomend against this because it will severely cripple the security of the entire device. Another drawback is not being able to transfer some apps to the sdcard because it is STILL opt-in for a app developer. You will also run into problems with the sdcard not being as fast as the internal storage by a fair margin.
A great post on reddit if you want to learn more about it.
Ok. A fairly long post and a bit ranty but there are pros and cons to each solution with the new android storage implementation. If you have to transfer apps then i would recommend expandable storage or personal storage with Link2SD.
I personally would go with personal storage as it gives you much more control over what is and is not put on the sdcard
1 Like
Bought it from Staples,
My problem lies in the fact that I set up the SD card as internal storage, and whenever I try to transfer apps it just goes fuck you. Now I something of a theory to why, but it's existence would delimit from my phone, I have about 3 gigabytes of MP3s on there, and they are all in downloads, and maybe Android is looking at the file system and reading that the storage is full.
I have considered this, but the problem is that my phone (Blu Dash G) has an update on the phone, but it can't install because it lacks the storage, so if I root I can't update, and I want patches, unless I can just find the files and do it manually.
yeah. the expandable storage is a giantic mess because android tries to manage everything on its own with out some kind of raid
So is rooting recommended by @MetalizeYourBrain the only path if I want to unfuck my phone and improve the experience?
Well you're on Marshmellow and you have pending updates si I guess your best bet is to try to use the "adoptable" storage and convert your micro sd card into internal storage. This process should fix the issue and keep your phone able to update. If this fails I guess your only option is to root and use the method I talked about before. Root is the last option.
Before using the "adoptable storage" feature beware that you cannot use your micro sd card freely and that it will be locked down to work only in your phone unless you format it. Also free up as much space as you can before doing this operation because you're going to work with your storage so Android might need space to cache files while working on that thing.
The problem is that it is already adoptable storage, it just won't transfer
With adoptable storage you don't have to transfer anything, you can install apps directly onto the micro sd card.