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FDR and storage question

dbvirago

Member
Jul 11, 2010
70
3
Getting things together before an FDR and have a question re storage. I've never paid much attention to where the apps store the data as I don't have that much data and most of it is synced, i.e. Evernote and nook.

But I have a few apps with local data and want to check if it is on the SD card or phone. I plug in the phone for mass storage and look at it in Windows. I have an F drive, named Motorola with few files in it - I assume this is the root OS in the phone? Then I have a G drive with 16Gb and and H drive with 8GB. My SD card is 16GB, but I assume this is what is on the G drive? Browsing files and folders, almost everything is on the H drive - 8GB. I tried pulling the card and reattaching to PC, but then neither drive showed up.

I supposed easiest thing to do would be drag all of both folders to my laptop and figure it out later.
 
Getting things together before an FDR and have a question re storage. I've never paid much attention to where the apps store the data as I don't have that much data and most of it is synced, i.e. Evernote and nook.

But I have a few apps with local data and want to check if it is on the SD card or phone. I plug in the phone for mass storage and look at it in Windows. I have an F drive, named Motorola with few files in it - I assume this is the root OS in the phone? Then I have a G drive with 16Gb and and H drive with 8GB. My SD card is 16GB, but I assume this is what is on the G drive? Browsing files and folders, almost everything is on the H drive - 8GB. I tried pulling the card and reattaching to PC, but then neither drive showed up.

I supposed easiest thing to do would be drag all of both folders to my laptop and figure it out later.

No. The first drive you report as F is actually a mini install 'virtual" drive that contains the Motorola Device Manager so that you can install the necessary device drivers to connect your phone to your computer and access the storage locations without needing to go online and download them.

The G drive is going to be the physical microSD card that came with your phone. The H drive is the internal storage.

The problem with apps with local data is that they may store the data in an area that is actually inaccessible to you - that 8 GB of internal storage is matched by a 4 GB data storage that only the apps themselves have direct access to - you cannot get those without either 1) rooting, or 2) using a backup utility, or 3) using adb (Android Debug Bridge, a part of the Android SDK).

A few key places to look for data in those two storage locations (mapped to G and H on your computer):

\Android\data
\data

Other folders as well.

If you're going to drag them over, that will probably help in most cases, as you can copy it all back,. However, an FDR should not be erasing anything off of any of these locations, other than actual Apps installed to SD (usually called internal storage when you look at the app location in System settings --> apps --> downloaded), only your user settings - configuration of the apps, which is the type of data I was referring to above that I said is usually in an inaccessible location.

Another good thing to do is to research those apps extensively so you know not only where the local data is saved (Google will help you find those locations most times) but also what all you actually need to restore (if anything).

HTH
 
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