Help SD Unmount/Remount and Settings

[SniffTheGlove]

Hi,

I have an Atrix, it's a stock phone from T-Mobile UK with 2.2 Android.

I have a 2Gb SanDisk Extreme II SD card in it.

I have noticed a problem with is starting to annoy me and looking for a soluition. I have search the forums and found some simialr threads but they don't fix things.

Now, I unmount the SD card so I can access the SD card as a mass storage device from my Win7 PC. I take off my photo's etc and then remount the SD card.

I have set up loads of small personalised mp3 snippets (10sec long) to play for different types of notifications, these are stored on the SD card in a ringtone folder.

Now when I have done the above unmount/remount, my ringtone settings all get lost and I end up having a random mp3 being chossen instead, so you can imaging that when an SMS, Email for any other form of notification happens I get loud music playing for the length of the track.

Is there a way to fix this as I can not believe that by just unmounting a card for 30sec and then remounting will lose the settings in many apps and call settings for notification ringtones.


The reason I unmount the SD card is that this is the only FAST was I can get my pictures off the camera. I have tried the moto phone portal which runs so slow that it takes 5mins to pull off 1 photo from the sd card to the PC, this is in wifi or USB mode.

I have also tried moto phone tools but this seems to only download 1 photo and a time (Ie no multi selecting).

So I have to unmount/remount if I want to transfer files quickly.

Thanks

 

[itsallgood]

I don't have an answer for your problem, but you can transfer your photos using the USB cable. This should be faster. (Its what I do).

 

[SniffTheGlove]

I don't have an answer for your problem, but you can transfer your photos using the USB cable. This should be faster. (Its what I do).

If I use Moto's Phone Portal or Moto's Phone Tool's then yes but it is very very slow, takes approx 5min to transfer 1 photo which is too slow to be sensible over the USB2 connection. If I unmount SD and transfer as mass storage device over USB2 then 1 photo takes 3 seconds plus you can copy/move a large quatity in one mouse click.

There is nothing wrong with the USB2 port, all other devices run at max speed, even the Atrix does with unmounted SD, but via Moto's software then it is dire.

This is not the real problem it is how to stop the notification settings being lost in various apps just because the SD card id unmounted then remounted.

I have even test going inot Atrix settings and unmount and then remount immediately (no copying of files etc) and this still mucks up the notification settings and make them revert to a random mp3 file.

 

[WolfmanRobby]

Move the MP3's to the internal MEDIA area and off the SD card.

Here's why. Android is based off Linux. When you link to a file, it does not link to the file name, it links to the indexed file location. Every time you modify and re-mount the SD card, it re-indexes the files. When the files are re-indexed, the pointer to the file changes, and breaks the links to that file. What worse, sometimes it causes a link to a different file if that file gets that index.

In other words, the link is not to the file: FunnyRingtone1.mp3. It's to the index pointer of Mnt\sdcard-ext\file58135 (I'm not really sure what the index uses, I just pulled that out of my rear for the sake of making an example).

Anyway, when you unmount the card, and make changes through USB, the system has to re-index it when you remount it. That file may become Mnt\sdcard-ext\file58444 breaking the link.

Also, you won't have this if you use the phone portal because it does not unmount/remount the card leading to a re-indexing. (Re-indexing is different than rescanning it, just FYI)

I recommend using PushDoc (Free in the market). It works over WiFi and you just launch the Java based tool on your computer and point it to the IP that the app displays on the phone (Both have to be on the same wireless network). It's still a bit slower than using the USB cable, but much faster than the phone portal.

But, to make it easier, move all the ringtones to the internal media area, and off the SD card. This way, all of your ringtones won't break when you do use the USB cable to move photos back and forth.

 

[SniffTheGlove]

Thank you for posting that, it really makes sense.

One question if I may, where would be the best place to move the media to on the internal drive. I am bit clueless here.

Thanks

 

[WolfmanRobby]

Grab a decent File manager from the market. I prefer File Expert or Astro (In that order, and both are free). T

There is acutally a PREFERRED order of where to put them that works best.

Again, you have to think like Linux. The Internal storage will be identified as "SDcard" and the SD card you put in will be "SDcard-Ext" -
Here's a Screen shot as seen from "File Expert"

You want to make a Folder in the SDCARD share (Remember what I said above, that's the internal storage) called "media" - with a sub folder called "audio" - the, 3 more sub folders in audio called alarms, notifications and ringtones.

Here's another Screenshot for you...

With this setup, the stock notification/ringtone/alarm pickers will be able to find them and apply them in just about any app.

 

[SniffTheGlove]

Thanks again.

Think like Linux, it has been a few many year since I last looked at Linux

I did notice the file structure last week had SDCard and also SDCard-ext and wondered why?

Thanks again for your help, most appreciated.

 

[SniffTheGlove]

Do it and it works fine now. Thanks


PS, is it possible for someone to tell me the best place to store my music MP3 on the internal storage, would I just need to create an additional folder in the media folder (as per above posts) and what folder name should it have.

Thanks

 

[WolfmanRobby]

Well, the logic says to keep them in the Audio folder like the ringtones.

However, I keep all of mine on the actual SD card with no problems. But, I don't deal with playlists. I keep my media player (I use Power AMP and love it) set for shuffle. I'm sure if I used playlists, it would freak out with the re-indexing.