External SD card

acjohnson55 · Aug 15, 2012

When I bought my S3, I immediately inserted the same phone SD card I've been using for the past two years, but I notice that the S3 seems designed to prefer music to be on its internal SD card. I know I could simply copy it over, but I prefer keeping my music on external SD so that I can swap the card to my next phone (whatever that might be). Are there any solutions for this?

Better yet, is it possible to simply have the phone prefer external SD over internal in all situations?

SUroot · Aug 15, 2012

To the latter question, no not really. Camera default location can be changed.

With root, you can link folders from int to ext sd but that may be a big step...

In rgds to music, what do you mean "prefers"? All my music is on ext with no issues

acjohnson55 · Aug 15, 2012

SUroot said:
To the latter question, no not really. Camera default location can be changed.

With root, you can link folders from int to ext sd but that may be a big step...

Yeah, symlink might be the answer. I'm rooted, so that's simple enough to do.

In rgds to music, what do you mean "prefers"? All my music is on ext with no issues

Hmm, my phone won't find my external music. It's right in the Music folder, as usual.

acjohnson55 · Aug 15, 2012

Problem not yet solved. Can't figure out why music apps won't read my SD card, and I can't symlink. I guess the internal storage must be FAT or something

sleedeane · Aug 15, 2012

Download something like power amp. It has folder options (on where to look for music, including external sd card) and see if power amp recognizes your music.

boomerbubba · Aug 15, 2012

acjohnson55 said:
Problem not yet solved. Can't figure out why music apps won't read my SD card, and I can't symlink. I guess the internal storage must be FAT or something

If this is a generalized problem with your card and you suspect formatting is an issue, try this:

Copy the whole folder structure to a PC temporarily.
Use the phone to reformat the card.
Copy everything back.

acjohnson55 · Aug 15, 2012

boomerbubba said:
If this is a generalized problem with your card and you suspect formatting is an issue, try this:

Copy the whole folder structure to a PC temporarily.

Use the phone to reformat the card.

Copy everything back.

I don't suspect that anything is wrong with the FS, I think the problem is that FAT simply doesn't support symlinks

boomerbubba · Aug 15, 2012

acjohnson55 said:
I don't suspect that anything is wrong with the FS, I think the problem is that FAT simply doesn't support symlinks

I guess I don't understand why you need that complexity.

All I did with my external SD card was to format it on the phone, create a root folder named Music, and drag my music folders under it. The stock Music Player app finds the music files just fine by default.

acjohnson55 · Aug 15, 2012

It only worked after reformatting? If that changed it for you, it may be worth it for me to go through the trouble

boomerbubba · Aug 15, 2012

acjohnson55 said:
It only worked after reformatting? If that changed it for you, it may be worth it for me to go through the trouble

I didn't try music before reformatting. I first inserted a new card and formatted it onboard with the native utility, then created the Music folder and copied the files over.

Dread Polack · Aug 16, 2012

I had the same problem. After struggling a bit with Kies, I realized that if I put my music specifically in a folder named "Music", it finally recognized the files. Also, I had to put my podcasts in a folder called "Podcast".

GoldenDiamond · Aug 16, 2012

doubleTwist...

problem solved.

acjohnson55 · Aug 16, 2012

I decided to bust out logcat and I found out what the problem was. I had attempted to migrate system settings from an old phone to my S3 using Titanium Backup Pro, and that caused this whole disaster. What seems to have happened is that the database for com.android.providers.media was incompatible with the database for com.android.providers.downloads, causing the occasional force close, but mostly just mysterious problems. I solved the problem by deleting the folders /data/data/com.android.providers.downloads/databases/ and /data/data/com.android.providers.media/databases/ and rebooted immediately, on the hopes that the system would just regenerate them, since neither database exists upon a factory reset. This turned out to be true. And now everything works fine. Moral of the story: don't attempt to migrate system apps data between phones, it's a disaster waiting to happen. Thanks everyone for the help!

SUroot · Aug 16, 2012

forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=20668905

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