I inserted an sdcard in my FP2.
Now I get two sdcards mounted :
sdcard0 for internal storage
sdcard1 for my physical card
How could I get rid of the sdcard0 ? I would like to let all internal space available for installing apps, and only use the physical card as file storage. Not only photos, also music, documents, videos, app data…
For example, I exported settings from some apps from my old phone to sdcard, and on the FP2 the apps look for them on sdcard0 and cannot find them because they are actually on sdcard1.
I read on this forum, and this problem has been solved on the FP1 with “unified storage”, is there an equivalent for FP2 ?
Unified storage merged two parts of the internal storage. The FP2 has this by default. In the FP1 even after the storage upgrade the internal storage can still be accessed via /storage/sdcard0, and the user installable SD-card shows up as /storage/sdcard1. This is essentially the same way as the FP2 handles data.
Completely disabling sdcard0 wouldn’t work with the security model on Android (apart from a security point of view there are other reasons you wouldn’t want to do that).
The way to fix this would be to point your apps to the correct folder via their settings, they should then be able to find the data. For example, if you move the map files for OsmAnd to a new location, and then change the settings in OsmAnd to point at the new location, it then detects the files perfectly well.
What you may be running in to is the newer Android 5 security model where apps need to request write access to the SD-card in a proper way. The default camera app unfortunately does not allow a way to change the storage folder to the SD-card, so in that case you’ll need a different app (or go through a process of rooting your phone, which you should only do if you understand what you are doing and what the implications are. Search the forum to find out how.). If you need more info on app write permissions for the SD-card, use the search function.
I understand that nowadays we have plenty of internal gigs, and the constraints have changed…
On older phones, I’m used of running out of internal space very quickly, and getting unable to install new apps. That’s why i bought a 64G external sdcard, and so i would rather store as much data as I can on it.
For example, if I download a very big map in oruxmaps, I don’t want to spoil valuable internal space for it.
Also, my data will then stay safe on the card when i will flash new ROMs.
If the internal storage is “merged”, it means that sdcard0 size is dynamic and shared with apps space ? Did I understand it well ?
If yes, then I understand that I just have to get used of juggling between those 2 spaces and keeping sdcard0 as low as possible, so it doesn’t take too much internal room.
Only, I would be more comfortable if the default card could be chosen system wise, and not per-app.
As far as I know (but I don’t have an FP2 to check) it is a fixed size in total, but the space can be flexibly shared between apps and user data.
I can understand why you’d want to do that. Unfortunately it seems this is a limitation in Android 5. People are rooting their phones to be able to grant system-wide write permission for the SD-card, but I’m not sure if anybody has found a way to emulate the Android 4 option of choosing a default write disk.
You can check the community feature request list for similar suggestions, or add your own suggestions for improvement. Whilst it may not immediately lead to the problem being tackled, work-arounds do also get linked there.
My 1st fear was that sdcard0 would have been a reserved space (partition), wasting some storage room. It seems it’s ‘shared’, so that’s not the case. If I don’t use the space, the system will have it for itself.
My other fear is to lose some files while flashing, for this one i only need to be careful I have to manually choose my external SD every time I can.
I have to manually choose my external SD every time I can.