Storage on a SD card is not really internal memory on HTC 10.

[BrettfromSydney]

Just wanted to alert people to a wrinkle I discovered today. When formatting an SD card as internal storage on an HTC 10 is still not true internal storage. I purchased a 32 GB HTC 10 about a month age and have generally been very happy with it. I put a 128GB card in the phone and formatted as internal memory - no probs. I checked that the phone was seeing the 128GB as internal storage and it was. Today I decided I would transfer my music files from my PC to the phone - about 50GB in all - using Windows Explorer. I transferred one or two artists folders to the music folder on the phone and then tested whether my Poweramp app would recognise and play the music. It did so. All good so far. I then set the rest of the music to copy but once the total data on the phone reached just under 32GB the data transfer ceased and I got the message that there was no more storage on the HTC. I contacted HTC support about this and they told me this was not a fault but is the way the phone is designed. I was told that the phone will use the SD card as "internal memory" for downloaded apps or data the phone itself creates, but that you cannot transfer data to it using a manual file transfer process. They insisted this was not a fault or a design deficiency but just a feature of the way the storage management works and there are no plans to fix this. Further, I was told that as of now, you cannot transfer data from the 32GB of internal memory to the SD card but that this is a bug and will be fixed in time. I am somewhat incredulous at this view that "internal memory" on an SD card is not really internal memory. It seems to me to make a farce of the feature and that users are much better off formatting their SD cards as portable storage. Perhaps I should have done more homework or read the fine print but I bought the line that I could put up to 2TB of memory in the phone via an SD card (notwithstanding that 128GB seems to be largest card you can buy today) and that it could be formatted to behave just like internal memory. It doesn't. It is nothing like internal memory and people should not think that there is equivalence in buying a HTC10 with a 128GB card and for example buying another brand of phone that has a true 128GB of internal memory. I think HTC should be clearer about that when promoting the feature. I have now reformatted the SD card as portable storage and will again try to transfer my files. I am assured that the my music app will still work with the phone set up that way.

 

[holz75]

You won't have any issue transferring files, and your music and photos apps will work perfectly. Besides, this way you can keep everything on your SD card and use it from phone to phone.

 

[weepatc]

Why did you format the card as internal memory when you were only adding music files. Was there a benefit in doing that?

 

[dpham00]

There certainly is a bit of confusion about using sd card as adoptable storage. If you mainly have media, I wouldn't use it.

It does help with app and app data which would automatically get installed on the sd card with adoptable storage enabled, but for most people, 32gb internal is enough. Now for those with 4gb or 8gb internal, I can see why you might want to use adoptable storage as it is pretty limited space for apps.

You can read more about it here
http://m.androidcentral.com/inside-marshmallow-adoptable-storage

 

[VagrantSaint]

Yeah I don't think it's a flaw or anything, just have to decide when it is best to format vs using it as an SD Card. In this case I would have just used it as removable media. Now if you format it and DL a lot of music or take a lot of pictures and video then you're on the right track

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[usguyver]

see the thing is I use Google music and I have all my music uploaded some using adaptive storage is fine for me. also I don't think what is being said is quite right because when you connect the phone to the computer using adaptive storage only the SD card shows up and I put a lot of videos on it about 35 gigs and it did not go to my internal storage but to the SD card and I have it formated yo internal memory.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[anon(604250)]

I picked up a PNY 64 GB UHS-3 card for cheap on Amazon and formatted it as internal memory. So far I haven't noticed any problems with latency. Any media on the phone is duplicated elsewhere, and as far as I'm concerned, the card won't be coming out of my phone anytime soon.

 

[Ulmus]

Same problem here with Moto G gen 3 on Marshmallow. Using a 32GB SD as "adopted storage" shows only 1.43GB of card memory used while internal storage shows warning "running out". With this setup there's no way you can move apps and data onto the SD card. I removed all but a few essential apps, all my photos and as much data as possible but internal is still "running out" while the SD card is almost empty. The idea that the "adopted" SD card works as "internal memory" is either a delusion or a scam, depending on how angry you feel. Either way it's a total fail. Question: How do I get back to "portable" memory?

 

[never2ice]

I am having the exact same experience with my HTC One A9. It has 32GB native internal memory. I installed a 128GB sd card and formatted it as internal (adopted) storage, thinking from HTC's phone descriptions that this meant I could essentially expand the phone's storage. After formatting, I performed the suggested migration routine to move data to the sd card. I have 28.76GB of 32GB used of phone storage, and 2.59GB of 117GB used of sd card. It's pretty ridiculous, this very nice SanDisk sd card I purchased is almost not getting used. I soon started getting all sorts of google apps failing to load. Turned out it was because my phone storage was almost completely full. All of my pics, vids, and new apps are still getting saved to the phone storage with no way to select to save to the sd card. I had to manually go through and move apps to the sd card to get my google apps to work. Turns out you can only move certain apps that are set to allow for it. I would say Android's current implementation of using sd cards as internal storage is rather misleading, or at least HTC's representation of it is. I really don't get the reason it can't just be merged with the phone storage. Everyone keeps saying if it was all treated as the same storage and your sd card failed, it would render your phone useless. Well woop dee doo, if any of the phone storage fails, my phone could be rendered useless. At the very least, give users the option to format as "merged" memory in addition to the current implementation. I'd rather have something that works well than this current misleading implementation that sucks as far as I'm concerned.

 

[RebeccaCool]

I'm not having any issues with this problem.

 

[juwster]

How can you move an app from your internal memory to your sd card? I am able to move photos with no issues but there seems to be no option for moving apps.

 

[RebeccaCool]

How can you move an app from your internal memory to your sd card? I am able to move photos with no issues but there seems to be no option for moving apps.

When I formatted my SD card to internal memory it automatically transferred everything to the card memory. Anything I install now goes to the card. I don't think I did anything specific to it.

 

[kistjo]

I had the same problem with a 32GB card, and got everything to work.

It is important to understand, that using the card as internal memory, it must replace the standard sdcard, which then become phone storage - otherwise the card is used as an alternative storage, e.g. as external storage for individual apps.

First you must format the new sdcard to internal storage. Then let the phone move data from the standard sdcard to the new one and convert the standard sdcard to phone memory. As I recall, I found the Move function in Phone storage settings (the 3 dots).