Soldato
- Joined
- 18 Apr 2003
- Posts
- 2,685
- Location
- England
I got tired of having to keep moving manual photos from Internal memory & setting games etc. to use external memory & still running out of Internal memory. Especially after going VR as the dumb Oculus software only installs to Internal memory inc large videos!
I started writing a guide for myself for this so I could repeat the process easily & just made it more user friendly for others. Oh, I just wrote half of it from memory so let me know if a step is wrong.
Its a more thorough version of the discovery from MoDaCo, just Google S7 adaptable storage for that.
I'm still in day 1 of testing & just discovered the camera pro mode wont store RAW images, so its not all rosy but worth it for me mainly because of the dumb Oculus app.
Android adaptable storage instructions, working on S7 & maybe S5 + others on Marshmallow (be very careful)
Note: if you brick your phone, lose your data or trigger World War 3 etc. then you’ve done this at your own risk and I accept no responsibility.
Backup for a reset
Backup to PC the contents of the SD card eg. photos, videos then format SD card, then factory reset phone.
Enable USB debugging
Tap five times on the build number of the Galaxy in the software settings area, then in “Developer options” enable USB debugging.
Connect to a PC with ADB drivers installed
Open a command window or terminal on a PC, connect phone to PC and type “adb shell”, you may need confirm “ok” on phone and type “adb shell” again (if this command does not work then install ADB drivers). Then type “sm list-disks” to see the storage disks on the phone.
Partition the SD card memory
If your disk was listed in the command above as eg. “179,0” then to use all this as adaptable storage type “sm partition disk:179,0 private”.
Note: it’s possible to split the SD card so some memory is not adaptable storage but this may cause issues, plus how often do you remove the SD card and read the data in a PC or photo booth.
Follow-up
Install a few large apps with eg a large data file (game or map app).
Then click on SD Card in storage settings, then click “more” in top right, then select “migrate data”. The phone will then be ‘conditioned’ to treat the SD card as adaptable storage.
Note: the “migrate data” option should only be used once and not used from the Internal memory section.
After the data migration is complete the SD card size should show correctly when connected to a PC, eg. a 64GB card will show as around 59GB of free phone memory! With no SD card showing on the PC.
Note: only the phone will now be able access the SD card, or maybe Linux.
Note: copying contents from PC to phone memory on a PC will now automatically be sent to the SD card... useful for that 1GB QuakeVR folder that has to be on Internal memory.
Issues
Due to the way the SD card is formatted the Storage settings will not show the correct size, do not worry about this as it will still work fine… Just keep an eye on the Internal storage left during normal usage.
Instead of normally having to select in the app storage settings to move the app to external storage the phone will now automatically do this. Although the phone maybe a bit over enthusiastic with the amount of data being shunted to the SD card and some apps that rely on a fast data access from internal memory may fail, such as the burst camera mode.
Note: use a fast memory card!
Camera Pro RAW photo mode will not work, but at least manual photos are now stored on the SD Card and you don’t have to keep moving them out of the Internal memory.
Apps will generally still be installed to internal memory so this can still run out! This method just forces the phone to try and install as much non app data as possible to the SD card. Including photos, videos etc. or files copied over from the PC, which is why only the Phone memory shows on the PC as the same size as the SD card. This will also stop you intentionally copying from a PC to the phones faster Internal memory as well!
End result
I now have 20GB free on a S7e after installing all my apps instead of 10GB.
I started writing a guide for myself for this so I could repeat the process easily & just made it more user friendly for others. Oh, I just wrote half of it from memory so let me know if a step is wrong.
Its a more thorough version of the discovery from MoDaCo, just Google S7 adaptable storage for that.
I'm still in day 1 of testing & just discovered the camera pro mode wont store RAW images, so its not all rosy but worth it for me mainly because of the dumb Oculus app.
Android adaptable storage instructions, working on S7 & maybe S5 + others on Marshmallow (be very careful)
Note: if you brick your phone, lose your data or trigger World War 3 etc. then you’ve done this at your own risk and I accept no responsibility.
Backup for a reset
Backup to PC the contents of the SD card eg. photos, videos then format SD card, then factory reset phone.
Enable USB debugging
Tap five times on the build number of the Galaxy in the software settings area, then in “Developer options” enable USB debugging.
Connect to a PC with ADB drivers installed
Open a command window or terminal on a PC, connect phone to PC and type “adb shell”, you may need confirm “ok” on phone and type “adb shell” again (if this command does not work then install ADB drivers). Then type “sm list-disks” to see the storage disks on the phone.
Partition the SD card memory
If your disk was listed in the command above as eg. “179,0” then to use all this as adaptable storage type “sm partition disk:179,0 private”.
Note: it’s possible to split the SD card so some memory is not adaptable storage but this may cause issues, plus how often do you remove the SD card and read the data in a PC or photo booth.
Follow-up
Install a few large apps with eg a large data file (game or map app).
Then click on SD Card in storage settings, then click “more” in top right, then select “migrate data”. The phone will then be ‘conditioned’ to treat the SD card as adaptable storage.
Note: the “migrate data” option should only be used once and not used from the Internal memory section.
After the data migration is complete the SD card size should show correctly when connected to a PC, eg. a 64GB card will show as around 59GB of free phone memory! With no SD card showing on the PC.
Note: only the phone will now be able access the SD card, or maybe Linux.
Note: copying contents from PC to phone memory on a PC will now automatically be sent to the SD card... useful for that 1GB QuakeVR folder that has to be on Internal memory.
Issues
Due to the way the SD card is formatted the Storage settings will not show the correct size, do not worry about this as it will still work fine… Just keep an eye on the Internal storage left during normal usage.
Instead of normally having to select in the app storage settings to move the app to external storage the phone will now automatically do this. Although the phone maybe a bit over enthusiastic with the amount of data being shunted to the SD card and some apps that rely on a fast data access from internal memory may fail, such as the burst camera mode.
Note: use a fast memory card!
Camera Pro RAW photo mode will not work, but at least manual photos are now stored on the SD Card and you don’t have to keep moving them out of the Internal memory.
Apps will generally still be installed to internal memory so this can still run out! This method just forces the phone to try and install as much non app data as possible to the SD card. Including photos, videos etc. or files copied over from the PC, which is why only the Phone memory shows on the PC as the same size as the SD card. This will also stop you intentionally copying from a PC to the phones faster Internal memory as well!
End result
I now have 20GB free on a S7e after installing all my apps instead of 10GB.
