Phone can't see SD Card but Windows can via USB

mr-b

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Feb 25, 2014
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I'm sure there is is a very simple answer to my issue but all the storage terminology in Android has me confused!

Background - I just installed CWM and then Cyanogen 10.2 stable on my S3 (which was running stock 4.3 and had become unbearably slow).
Now I am trying to reinstall some apps that have the .apk files stored on my SD Card, but although Windows can see my SD Card when the phone is plugged in via USB, Android utilities e.g. AppInstaller or My Files don't seem to be able to see the SD card. I know they used to in the past but I can't recall how. :-( Settings, Storage can see both the Internal Storage and SD card fine, it's just the android file manager utils can't.

The other weird thing is that My Files can see an Internal Storage/storage/extsdcard folder, but that appears to point to something else entirely with a subset of some files that were on my SD card - but it's certainly not the actual SD card.
My Files and File Manager's top level folder seems to start at "0" whatever that is, AppInstaller says it's /storage/emulated/0 -still haven't the foggiest what that file structure hierarchy means - and I've used Linux before! There's doesn't appear to be a basic top level root folder which I find odd.

How can Android see my SD card again?
 
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GSDer

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Jan 30, 2011
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Welcome to the forums!

Since your phone is rooted you should be using a file manager that supports root access (ex. ES File Explorer http://market.android.com/details?id=com.estrongs.android.pop - note: there's a setting to enable root access). Then you can see the whole file system starting at / and you'll see the SD card at /storage/extSdCard and the internal memory at /storage/emulated/0.

Sent from my rooted, debloated, deodexed Sinclair ZX-80 running CM -0.001 using Tapatalk
 

mr-b

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Feb 25, 2014
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Thanks for that.
It's odd though that before when I was just running stock firmware non-rooted, that My Files & AppInstaller could both see the SDCard - but I just can't recall how I navigated there. Anyway ES File Explorer is fine.