Xpost - back up an android phone, reformat SD card then restore?

[David]

I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 which is out of space; no doubt creeping bit rot and cruft.

I have moved data (from any application which allows it) to the SD card, so I don't have the space to move it back and I can't just reformat the SD card because it has application data on it.

Logical way to go is to back up the phone Apps, reformat the SD card as internal storage, then restore.

The question, I think, is can you back up Apps (including data) which are split across memory and SD card and then restore to just memory (which has suddenly become much larger)?

Anyone managed to do this?

Cheers

Dave R

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

I disagree mildly. Logical way to go is to spend a few quid on a much larger SD card, copy the content across using a PC, bang it in and forget about it.

Cheers - Jaimie

[David]

There is plenty of spare space on the SD card.

There is no spare space on the internal memory.

I understand that if you use the SD card as internal storage it is treated as an extended part of the internal memory and you can fit more applications in.

Cheers

Dave R

[Andy Burns]

Does it run a recent enough version of Android to support adoptable storage? ISTR it was introduced in 6.0, but Samsung were slow to enable it, and the S4 tops out at 5.0 anyway.

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

Oh, righto. Sorry, misunderstood.

It is, if it's supported. The usual doubling of risk as you're effectively making a RAID0 combined disk, though. Are you sure your phone supports it? Few do.

Cheers - Jaimie

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not good understanding.

Manufacturers dont like you banging in gemeraic cards and using them as phone memory.

So they cripple the phones so that apps wont necessarily insall on the cards.

Then sell you a phone with more memory.

[David]

Google suggests that the S4 supports it.

However nobody seems to have posted on the Fora asking about how to preserve your Apps if they are split across phone and card.

I may well ditch as many Apps as possible (which don't have historical data), move everything back into memory and then look at formatting the SD card.

Cheers

Dave R

[Andy Burns]

If it's running android 5, I don't see how it can support a feature that was only introduced in android 6, and apparently isn't even enabled by Samsung in their android 9 versions

[The Natural Philosopher]

SD car, some will not and some will IF they are installed with it present.

TomTom GO being the bastard one. I installed it before the SD card and it wont use the SD card for maps.

Unless I totally uninstall it and reinstall with the card in.

[Andy Burns]

There's

"using the SD card"

and there's

"using the SD card to extend internal storage (aka adoptable storage)"

[Chris Bartram]

I'd argue that keeping the apps on the phone and moving other content (music, photos etc) is easier, better supported, and will perform better, *if* you can free enough space to do so. Have you cleared the cache in the Settings..Storage menu? That can take up a lot of space (enough to make SWMBO's old first-generation 8GB Motorola G start to complain).

If you have uninstalled apps you no longer use, take a look at the filesystem from a PC- some leave a lot of cruft behind.

[David]

I think we may be talking about two different features.

One is where the SD card is removable and can be viewed e.g. in a PC but you can tell individual Apps to move some of themselves to the SD card. I have that. Not all Apps support this. I have used it as best I can and still run out of space in internal (not SD card) memory.

The other feature, which I am looking for, is where the SD card is formatted and encrypted and then treated (seamlessly I think) as part of the internal memory. This card cannot be removed without screwing up the phone completely. As far as I understand.

Now double checking that it is supported - initial Google search suggested that it was but as Andy points out this looking unlikely.

Cheers

Dave R

[Martin Brown]

Which is the easiest fix for bulk media, videos and photos.

The latter seems surprisingly rare even on kit and OS versions for which the instructions exist the branded manufacturers implementation may not.

ISTR you have to reformat it in a special way and it is only when you actually try to do it that you find out if your manufacturer has bothered to provide full functionality. If not then you merely trash the entire contents of the SD card and turn it into encrypted internal storage that can no longer be read by any other platform.

[Martin Brown]

It is in theory possible on some newer versions of Android. Chances are thought that older models running out of space won't run a high enough version of Android to let you do the necessarily incantations.

Unfortunately it isn't always possible to use it even if the version you have theoretically provides the function your phone maker may not.

They will usually all accept an SD card as additional storage for media content. What they won't do is let you add it as a seamless extension of the original solid state memory.

Always been a part of their upgrade policy (Apple is worst for this).

[whisky-dave]

How is Apple worse for this, you buy the phone knowing how much memory it has. Your aren't told that if you need more memory just buy a SD card which although cheap you sometimes find you just can't use as you expect to, so you've ended up buying a phone without enough memory, how is that better, I know it might be cheaper but is that better ?

If you want more memory on an iphone you can use icloud and offload some of yuor apps to it. On my iphone I have the option to uplaod unused apps (retaining the my data on the phone) and this will save me 12.37GB, or upload my photos of 3.5GB if I need to save space. But as I thought before I brought I've yet to run out of memeory on any iDevice I've owned.

It's like buying a car with enough seats it it for your intended use.

[Daniel James]

The question of whether or not an app will install to SD card is a function of the app, not of the phone (at least, it is if Android is properly implemented on the phone ... and if it isn't you have bigger problems to worry about). There is a flag that the app developer has to set in the manifest for the app to say that it can run from an external card, but few developers seem to understand about, and those that do seem not to do any testing to make sure their apps work.

Until quite recently most Android phones available on the UK market weren't available with anything other than 16GB (or less, for cheap crap).

Unfortunately, Android 6 and above -- the ones that let you use an SD card as an extension of internal memory -- no longer allows you to move apps to a 'regular' (aka "portable storage") SD card, for "security" reasons. The result of that is that, on those Android versions, if you want to be able to store apps on your SD card then you have to format it as "internal" and you cannot then use it to transfer files (e.g. photos) to a PC ... or (because it'll be encrypted) recover data from it if the phone dies.