An SD Card Issue

[RandeepB]

Okay so let me first start off by saying I have a rooted Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini GT-I8190N running Android 4.1.2. Just clearing that off.

Okay so not too long ago I bought a 16GB SanDisk MicroSDHC card for my phone because I was running out of space on my phone's internal storage and this icon showed up constantly in my status bar and next to it it said "Storage space running out" and below that "Some system functions may not work". Tapping on it just led me to the storage menu in settings. I was getting sick of it so I bought the memory card. I figured 16GB was way more than enough.

So I went home, inserted the SD card into the slot, and switched on my phone to see if it had worked. Now, the icon still showed up but under the storage menu, underneath the Internal Storage section there was an SD card section. One segment showed the Total Space of the SD card (14.83GB), another showing the Available Space (14.83GB). Then there was another segment to unmount the SD card and another to format it.

After some research, I figured I needed to format the SD card. So I tapped on the 'Format SD Card' option. It brought me to a screen asking to confirm the password. I have no idea what it is and the box says nothing about a password. I even searched online and it was not 1234, 12345, 1111, the last 4 digits of my phone number, or anything of the sort, based on the ones I tried.

However, when I opened 'My Files', under 'All Files', instead of just the usual 'sdcard0' folder, there was another one, 'extSdCard', as well.

So now I'm confused. It shows me that annoying icon in the status bar, and I don't have the password to format the SD card. Yet I still have the SD card folder in 'My Files'. When I try to download things like apps it tells me I have insufficient storage space, even though the app size, 7MB for example, is less than my Available Internal Storage, which is currently 212MB.

So yeah I hope you understand my problem and I hope you can help! Even the slightest bit of help is greatly appreciated Also, thank you for taking some time to read this long post, I really appreciate it

 

[Golfdriver97]

Okay so let me first start off by saying I have a rooted Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini GT-I8190N running Android 4.1.2. Just clearing that off.

Okay so not too long ago I bought a 16GB SanDisk MicroSDHC card for my phone because I was running out of space on my phone's internal storage and this icon showed up constantly in my status bar and next to it it said "Storage space running out" and below that "Some system functions may not work". Tapping on it just led me to the storage menu in settings. I was getting sick of it so I bought the memory card. I figured 16GB was way more than enough.

So I went home, inserted the SD card into the slot, and switched on my phone to see if it had worked. Now, the icon still showed up but under the storage menu, underneath the Internal Storage section there was an SD card section. One segment showed the Total Space of the SD card (14.83GB), another showing the Available Space (14.83GB). Then there was another segment to unmount the SD card and another to format it.

After some research, I figured I needed to format the SD card. So I tapped on the 'Format SD Card' option. It brought me to a screen asking to confirm the password. I have no idea what it is and the box says nothing about a password. I even searched online and it was not 1234, 12345, 1111, the last 4 digits of my phone number, or anything of the sort, based on the ones I tried.

However, when I opened 'My Files', under 'All Files', instead of just the usual 'sdcard0' folder, there was another one, 'extSdCard', as well.

So now I'm confused. It shows me that annoying icon in the status bar, and I don't have the password to format the SD card. Yet I still have the SD card folder in 'My Files'. When I try to download things like apps it tells me I have insufficient storage space, even though the app size, 7MB for example, is less than my Available Internal Storage, which is currently 212MB.

So yeah I hope you understand my problem and I hope you can help! Even the slightest bit of help is greatly appreciated Also, thank you for taking some time to read this long post, I really appreciate it

Welcome to the forums.
Using the external SD card is limiting. You can move some app data to it but it normally isn't much, and that is if the app developer allows it at all. The SD card is fine for storing music, pictures, and videos.

I am sure if you pull all those off your internal and move them to your external, you will gain a fair amount of space.

I would also suggest reading through this guide by a fellow Ambassador: http://forums.androidcentral.com/am...roid-memory-how-deal-low-memory-warnings.html

 

[RandeepB]

Okay thanks a lot

 

[Rukbat]

sdcard0 (one of the most stupid things ever done in computing) is an area of internal memory that has nothing to do with the SD card. The card you bought and inserted is extSdCard. It has approximately (each card varies) 16GB of memory on the memory card that's part of the card. (They're usually a little larger than that to allow for bad cells to be mapped out.) Formatting the card (it comes formatted) takes space for the formatting information, leaving you with the 14.83GB you saw. The 16GB rating is 16 billion bytes. The 14.83 you see is actually 15.55 billion bytes. (In normal arithmetic, a billion is 1000*1000*1000. In computing, it's 1024*1024*1024. So storage devices are specified in the arithmetic "billion", while the computer uses the "power of two billion", giving you a smaller number for the same amount of storage.)