Quote:
Originally Posted by MajorDizaster
Anyhow, I read a review on the Microcenter site that stated "you can not put apps on the expandable microSD". I am too new to Android to know how to do this, but was wondering if this really was the case. Can some one confirm? Also, what about if it is rooted?
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An update to this: It
is possible to store apps on an external card, but it requires hacking. I just finished doing it. I was at the point where things like Google Sheets would not successfully upgrade because of insufficient storage space, and needed more space.
The problem is that external cards come formatted as FAT32. The FAT filesystem doesn't support permissions and other attributes needed.
To have apps on the external card, several things are necessary.
First, the device
must be rooted. It cannot be done on an unrooted device.
Second, the external card must be re-partitioned, and a Linux file system used on the second partition.
Third, you need software than can handle moving the apps. You don't install apps directly to the external card. You install them normally, then move them to the card after install.
I have a 32GB microSD card in my A727. I ejected it from the device, popped it into a microSD->standard SD adapter, and plugged it into my Windows box to the the partitioning. (It could be done from Linux, too, but I happened to be in Windows at the time. Re-partitioning can be done with the Linux GPartEd partition manager in Linux, or with GPartEd run from a LiveCD, or with a Windows tool like
MiniTool Partition Manager.
I created a new 2GB partition on the card. MiniTool moved existing stuff as required, and carved out a 2GB slice at the end of the card. I formatted that slice as Linux ext4. (ext2 or ext3 should work as well - ext3 is ext2 with journaling support, and ext4 adds support for extents. Neither is relevant here.) I also marked the new partition as Primary, which is required, and changed the partition ID to indicate a Linux filesystem.
Once that was done, I put the card back into the tablet and rebooted it. This is necessary to get Android to detect the new partition.
Once rooted, I could start moving things. I used a freeware app from the Play Store called
Link2SD. It presents a list of installed applications that are candidates for moving. Apps already moved to the internal 1GB sdcard are noted. I used it on apps which weren't.
When you select an app for moving, Link2SD moves the app to the partition on the external card, and creates a symbolic link in the root filesystem so Android will see the app and run it from the card.
Using Link2SD, I could move large apps like Google Sheets to the card to free application storage. My free application storage space rose from 88MB to 292MB, and I didn't move everything I
could have moved. After moving stuff, I was able to install things like a beta Android version of
Apache OpenOffice, which is
huge. (Whether I'll keep it is another matter, but I needed to install it to test whether it was usable enough to keep.)
There is also an open source application called
Mounts2SD that does the same things Link2SD does. I have it here, but couldn't get it to work, so I used Link2SD instead. (I think I know what the problem was, and it works for others, so it's worth a look.
Thus far, I'm quite pleased.
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Dennis