Help SD Card storage without a Root

[bluthndr]

I am new to Android, but plenty PC literate with regard to file management. This is my first android after 3 iphones so there is some learning curve. I have a 16GB internal storage phone that is overfull already, and a 32GB SD card that is basically empty.

I use my phone for some digital magazines, music, audiobooks, and the usual smartphone stuff. I don't even have the phone how I want it yet, and I continually run out of space to install new apps.

All this touting of the extra storage available (one of the reasons I left iphones), but I don't see a way to store the music, zinio mags, apps, etc on the SD! Very frustrating. It's like giving someone a walk in freezer, then telling them they can only store some frozen peas in it, and making them keep all the frozen pizza, burgers, and steak out on the kitchen counter in a cooler.

Is there a reasonable way to store apps and digital media (zinio magazines and audible audio books) on the SD, or is the whole external SD storage just a gimick for marketing the phone that has no (or very limited) real use.

Please help.

 

[drexappeal]

I am new to Android, but plenty PC literate with regard to file management. This is my first android after 3 iphones so there is some learning curve. I have a 16GB internal storage phone that is overfull already, and a 32GB SD card that is basically empty.

I use my phone for some digital magazines, music, audiobooks, and the usual smartphone stuff. I don't even have the phone how I want it yet, and I continually run out of space to install new apps.

All this touting of the extra storage available (one of the reasons I left iphones), but I don't see a way to store the music, zinio mags, apps, etc on the SD! Very frustrating. It's like giving someone a walk in freezer, then telling them they can only store some frozen peas in it, and making them keep all the frozen pizza, burgers, and steak out on the kitchen counter in a cooler.

Is there a reasonable way to store apps and digital media (zinio magazines and audible audio books) on the SD, or is the whole external SD storage just a gimick for marketing the phone that has no (or very limited) real use.

Please help.

Music can be stored on the SD card for sure, if we're talking about hard files. Since you're a former iPhone user, what I would do is go to the PC or Mac that you have all your music sync'd to, connect your phone and be sure it's connected as a USB drive, then do the following:

1) Open the file explorer that you use most often
2) Go into the drive that identifies your external SD (I usually like to right click and check the properties, just to be sure that I'm looking at the drive name that's connected to the microSD)
3) Create a new folder on your external SD named Music
4) Go to your iTunes folder:
iTunes/iTunes Media/Music
5) Copy and paste whichever folders from whichever artists that you want to have on your phone.

For me, I'm pretty meticulous about what media I put on my phone, so I'm not much about Sync'ing hard files onto the phone. If you'd rather just be able to "sync" the hard files, I can't really help you in that regard, but hopefully someone else can.

As for the audio books and digital magazines, I'm assuming it all depends on the app that you used to download and whether or not those allow you to store the files on your SD card. Just for example, I use Flixster, which is an app that stores all my purchased blu-ray movies that also included a digital copy. That app does not identify movies that I download from flixster and place on my SD card, so my "solution" to that has been to create folders for each of the downloads and move the specific files for each movie, whenever I want to watch them "offline." It works for my needs, since the only time I really need to do this is when on a road trip. For some people, it's an "inconvenient" solution.

I hope at least some of this information helped.

 

[Bodestone]

You can move many of the installed apps to the SD card from Settings->Applications Manager.

The camera can be set to store on the SD card.

 

[NeoGrandizer]

You can move many of the installed apps to the SD card from Settings->Applications Manager.

If you root, then yes. But if you run stock, you cannot. Samsung removed that feature at Google's request. This started with the Note I believe. Even though there is a 'move to SD' option you were only shuffling the app into another internal partition on the phone and not the external SD card. The Note 2 does NOT have this option running stock.

The camera can be set to store on the SD card.

Correct. Just make sure you change it in the camera app's settings.