Hi, I have a micro SD Card inserted in my FP3+. As far as I can see, this is included as extended storage. There are also a few apps installed on the card that I moved over there some time ago. Unfortunately, the system doesn’t seem to use the card.
Questions:
In which setting can I see how the card is integrated into the system?
How can I change it so that photos, for example, are automatically saved on the micro SD card?
There are 128 GB of unused memory on the card - a great pity.
My system:
FP3+ /e/OS pre installed
Version 1.0 (Alicante)
Settings > Storage should show both the built-in internal storage and the SD card.
Recent experience shows SD cards formatted as “(extended) internal storage” cause all sorts of issues. I would recommend you re-format the card as “portable storage” (make sure to save the data from the card elsewhere before, re-formatting erases all data on the card). This won’t allow to move apps to the card, but you can move files and folders there manually.
With some extra steps, direct saving of new photos to the card might work (after changing the card format), but others will need to provide instructions for that. For me it’s enough to shovel larger blocks of files to my (portable storage) SD card.
Unfortunately, this is not the case with me. The SD card is shown separately, but the total memory is shown (incl. SD card). Hence the question. I suspect I need to reset the phone completely because I formatted the SD card as extended memory after I bought the phone - and it obviously didn’t work. If I take the card out, the apps will probably be gone too. And that includes some of the apps I use most (password manager, etc.).
Too bad, I thought the problem was solved with version 1.0.
I got out of this situation with an OTG USB drive. I backed up all I could from the SD card to the OTG. I removed the SD card, checked that the device was sufficiently complete without the SD card, over a period of days. (The SD card is more or less unreadable by PC!).
What I actually did was install a new SD card, ensuring it was set as extended storage, restored my backups and moved on.
The old SD card was of course easily reformatted for another device.
I think it is important to take the SD card out, preferably after a backup, to test the device with card absent.
When extending Internal Storage with an SD card, removing it from the phone would not be recommended and in many cases would result in an unusable system. This would have to be expected when removing a part of the Internal Storage, even if trouble perhaps doesn’t always materialise immediately.
If you wanted to be able to remove the SD card, it should be formatted as external/ portable storage. Whether the contents would be readable on a computer should then be a question of filesystem support on the computer.
How did you format the card? As Internal Storage or as external/ portable storage?
In case of external/ portable storage in Settings - Storage the card would be listed as “Portable Storage” and it would have an Eject icon on the right side next to it. Not being able to move/ install Apps to it then would be normal.
In general:
I’m sensing a slight danger of a terminology problem (extended? external?), but it might be just be me. Anyway …
I never use SD cards as anything other than external/ portable storage, so I don’t know what the current terminology in /e/OS is for the opposite case.
Whatever you want to call it, integrating/ incorporating an SD card into Internal Storage or extending Internal Storage with an SD card is really inviting trouble.
This was always true conceptionally while perhaps not broadly visible in practice, but as @urs_lesse rightfully pointed out recent Android seems to have taken the risk of compromising the whole Internal Storage and with this the functioning of the phone by using an SD card this way to a whole new level. Users are finding out the hard way by losing data (they don’t have a backup of).
Make an informed decision when formatting an SD card for use in the phone!
It’s your data which is on the card, or from some moment on might not be on it anymore.
I certainly agree to exercise caution. My story might be a one off; at the time I did this, within a month of starting the device with /e/, my thinking was as follows.
I had installed /e/ on the device, then I ran First start wizard and invited inappropriate use of the SD card to “share” the partition /sdcard – I took on trust that the /data and /system partitions were not compromised!
Once I decided to undo the situation I created an independent backup to OTG.
Now, when I removed the SD card, the phone had changed. However I had only been using it conservatively.
I was not aware of any permanent loss. I think I did this in Oreo, not Android 10. I think at the time that I unmounted the “internally installed” SD card I received a warning about loss of data, which of course occurred. I had my manual backup to protect me.
I do not wish to imply that my suggestion would be completely risk free.
Edit, a sure sign of an “inappropriately” internally installed SD card is if you know an SD card is present in the device, but it is not revealed by the Files app. In this image my SD card is external = ok.
ok, so nothing has changed. Either reset the phone to factory settings and use the SD card as external memory, or do not use it at all if it has already been formatted as internal memory.
what was your starting version of /e/ when you got the phone?
for the FP3, “adoptable” storage was deprecated a few months ago at
… so if it was adoptable prior to this change, imho you’d see problems to mount it. As others noted, you’d need to migrate to “portable” what requires a reset of your userdata
@tcecyk it was Android 9, don’t know which version of /e/. I bought it at Murena about over 1 1/2 years ago. So I don’t mind. I think I will reformat it for mobile use maybe.
