Upgrading micro SD troubleshooting

[itslikeimsayin]

I'm going a little nuts here, trying to upgrade from the Optimus S's stock 2 GB micro SD to an 8 GB card I bought today. I started by unmounting the 2 GB card in the phone, removed it and copied everything to my computer desktop. I then put the new 8 GB card in the phone, formatted it, unmounted it and removed it. I then put it in my card reader and copied all the files from the 2 GB card (from the desktop) to the 8 GB card. Everything seemed fine and operable, but then I came to realize several apps are now missing, and others display odd names instead of their typical format.

Figuring something went wrong, I tried the whole thing again on my Mac. (The first time was on a PC.) Same deal. When I put the original 2 GB card back in the phone, everything returns to normal, which seems positive, but doesn't help as far as increasing my storage space.

What could I be doing wrong? Thanks.

 

[DoesItMatter]

How are you formatting that card?

Under a Windows machine - it should be formatted as Fat-32

Under a Mac - you should choose EXT2 format

Those are the only 2 formats you should use for the SD card

You can also get a bootable ISO off the internet called GPARTED

You can do the card 1/2 Fat-32 and 1/2 EXT2

Do not format the card as NTFS or HPFS - the phone won't recognize it.

 

[itslikeimsayin]

Thanks. I formatted it by doing the "Format SD Card" command on the phone in the "SD Card & Phone Storage" settings. Do I need to do something else once it's connected to the computer?

Would it help if I sent some of the apps I had on my SD card back to the phone before doing this? I assume that would lead to fewer moved files, and hopefully fewer problems.

 

[DoesItMatter]

I always moved any data from sd-card -> computer
then computer -> new sd-card

via a usb micro-sd adapter - never the phone

more reliable data transfer that way.

 

[tirith]

thing is, i've never had a problem taking my apps and putting them on the phone. Its more work but at the same time, less work, if you know what I mean.

kind of your preference, also depending on total size of apps. (I typically dont run many, so I can fit them all on the phones internal memory, minus maybe one or two of the larger apps.)

 

[itslikeimsayin]

I always moved any data from sd-card -> computer
then computer -> new sd-card

via a usb micro-sd adapter - never the phone

more reliable data transfer that way.

That's what I did, too. But I put the new micro SD in the phone first just to format it. Then removed it and put it in my card reader and attached it to the computer.

 

[itslikeimsayin]

Just to provide more information about my dilemma, I had used an app called Free Advanced Task Manager to move compatible apps to the SD card. Could that in any way be causing the issues? When looking at the folder I created on my computer, the content of my original 2GB SD card doesn't seem perfectly aligned with the apps that Free Advanced Task Manager claims are now stored on my SD.

 

[picasticks]

FWIW when I did this I just used my phone and computer and didn't have any problems.

This is on my old Powerbook so you can do it on your Mac. I would recommend that or a Linux box over a PC if you have access to both and don't care what you use, since UNIX file permissions aren't going to get screwed up by copying back and forth to NTFS.

1. Back up the files to your mac. I probably did "rsync -a" but you could also do tar to back up to a file. So if your sdcard is mounted on your mac as "NO NAME" like mine, do:

cd /Volumes/NO\ NAME/
tar -cf ~/tmp.tar ./

2. Unmount/eject, turn off USB storage, put in the new card and format it, then turn on USB storage and plug back into your mac. I figured formatting the card on the phone would be idiotproof and it worked for me.

3. Untar files onto the new card.

cd /Volumes/NO\ NAME/
tar -xf ~/tmp.tar

This method gets everything, including hidden files and folders like .android_secure.

OR, if you have a card reader, you could do without creating the tar file on your HD. Put the old card in the card reader, put the new one in the phone and format it, then with both filesystems mounted on your mac, just do "rsync -a" to copy everything from A to B.

 

[drewwalton19216801]

FWIW when I did this I just used my phone and computer and didn't have any problems.

This is on my old Powerbook so you can do it on your Mac. I would recommend that or a Linux box over a PC if you have access to both and don't care since UNIX file permissions aren't going to get screwed up by copying back and forth to NTFS.

1. Back up the files to your mac. I probably did "rsync -a" but you could also do tar to back up to a file. So if your sdcard is mounted on your mac as "NO NAME" like mine, do:

cd /Volumes/NO\ NAME/
tar -cf ~/tmp.tar ./

2. Unmount/eject, turn off USB storage, put in the new card and format it, then turn on USB storage and plug back into your mac. I figured formatting the card on the phone would be idiotproof and it worked for me.

3. Untar files onto the new card.

cd /Volumes/NO\ NAME/
tar -xf ~/tmp.tar

This method gets everything, including hidden files and folders like .android_secure.

I would be willing to bet that the UNIX file permissions getting screwed up from copying to NTFS and back probably did the damage. As picasticks said, do it from a Linux or Mac box if at all possible.

 

[picasticks]

I would be willing to bet that the UNIX file permissions getting screwed up from copying to NTFS and back probably did the damage. As picasticks said, do it from a Linux or Mac box if at all possible.

Either that or my other guess would be drag-and-drop files thru the GUI missed .android_secure or some other hidden file/dir.

Anyways, I did the simple "copy files to computer, yank old card and put new card in, copy files back" and it worked fine for me.

You could also backup all apps with Titanium Backup and then restore them if apps are going missing.

 

[itslikeimsayin]

Thank you for all the advice and suggestions, people. I ended up uninstalling any non-essential apps and moving those that I still had on my SD card to the internal phone memory. Then I formatted the 8GB card on my Mac and just started from scratch, moving the apps that can be moved to the new card and re-downloading those I uninstalled.

I don't know why things didn't go smoothly for me, but now everything is just how I wanted it and working great, so I'm happy.