How does the Incredible storage work?

[Rakster]

Hi, I'm new to android and am trying to figure out how storage works on my incredible. I have a 2 gig sd card, 8 gigabytes of internal memory and something called "phone" memory in the amount of 748 mb. What goes on each? I put some music on(double twist) and it went onto the SD card. It seems like apps are randomly installing on both internal memory and the SD card. Ideally I want all the apps to go on the 8 gig internal along with pictures and put music on the sd card. I also just got a 16 gig sd micro, do I need to transfer the apps from the old sd card onto this one or will they automatically reinstall? Whats the 748 mb phone storage for? Thanks for any clarification!

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[hobby31]

Well, the incredible is the first android phone to actually come with some sizeable internal memory. Most android phones come with a small amount of internal memory that is divided between the system and app storage. So, the 748 mb phone storage is for apps to be installed on as of this time android doesn't support installing apps to an sd card. So your 16gb card would be used to store photos, videos, music and a few other things. Now, some apps developers have started to install a small portion of their apps on the internal storage and the bulk of other files on the sd card that it accesses when needed. If you look at any of the "polarbit" games in the market theses games are pretty large. Some are like 16 mb and some 45 mb. The game ExZeus is close to 70 mb. Now, imagine installing that to the phone storage. you would be out of space in no time. The developer of ExZeus slimmed their game down to a small amount of mb to install to the phone storage and the rest is downloaded onto the sdcard and accessed by the program as needed. ie...when advancing to different levels and stuff. Which is quite clever and a good use of the sd card. Now, the incredible is the first android phone to actually have a huge amount of internal storage. The 8gb isnt used by the system and is accessed like it was a sdcard. No apps are installed there. So when you download and install an app, it is installed to the 748 mb of space you have. Now, when the incredible was being reviewed and tested prior to release it was found that some apps wouldn't run correctly because they didn't actually see the internal 8gb of memory as storage space and was looking for an sdcard to store some info and when they couldn't find one the apps wouldn't function correctly. Verizon decided at the last minute to include a 2gb sdcard to prevent this from happening. All that needs to happen is the developers will have to update their apps to look at the internal storage. So, most apps that are included out of the box recognize the internal storage and funtion fine. ie..the HTC music player will see music on the internal storage but some after market apps you download from the market might not see the music on the internal storage as the app wasn't set up to look there. It was recently released that google will be implementing a way for apps to be installed on the sd card with a future update.

Now the problem is, android is Linux based and drives are formated in a diffferent format than Windows. For some reason, Windows will not recognize a linux formated drive. I think it's on purpose as Micro$oft doesn't really support open source. A linux based system will recogonize a windows format. The sdcard is formated in what is know as fat32 file system. This is done so it is easier for us users to be able to connect their phones to their PC's as most users use windows. Now, linux uses a number of formats. Android, I think uses what's know as ext3 or ext4 format. Apps are written to run in this format. Apps would not run in the fat32 format, I'm pretty sure..someone correct me if i'm wrong. Now, once rooted there is a way to install apps to the sdcard and it's called "apps2sd". Using this method, you duel format the sdcard with 2 diffferent file systems. You take a small portion of the sdcard and format it to ext4 and the rest to fat32. You create "sym" links in the android system to actually look and recognize the partition on the sdcard to use as if it were internal system storage.

Sell, give away or just hang on the the 2gb card. Put the 16gb in the incredible, transfer your media over to it. Wait for apps to get updated to see the 8gb internal memory. Then you'll have 24gb for starage. i think the camera stores pictures you've taken from the incredible on the 8gb now. Well, that's my 2 cents worth and maybe somebody else can correct me if I'm wrong here or there.

[MiXoLoGiSt]

Threads merged....

No worries Rakster all fixed.

[gcranshaw]

So, can you then completely format the SD card with EXT3 or EXT4? I would be using the card mostly just in the phone, but have the means to access those file systems. Is this possible?

[jdmba]

Very nice write up ... so here's MY question ... if my 16GB microSD card ever shows up (warning ... NEVER order from NEWEGG with EGGSAVER shipping), what steps do I take, from sealed package to enjoying some music, to get my MP3's onto the microSD card using my PC?

[Rakster]

Hobby31, thanks for the very comprehensive response - saved me hrs of research.