Migrated data to SD card, space not freed up

[dontknowme]

After some time without an SD card, today I put one (Sandisk 32GB Ultra Plus I think) in the phone, formatted it as internal storage and opted to move data to the card.

The card got filled up to 17 GB; it seems the system has copied all the images and my files but no apps or other internal things.

Copied, not moved - because the internal storage remains to be filled up. The data however is inaccessible. I.e. when I eject or remove the card, there are no files visible on the phone, in fact it's as if there's no storage. E.g. the download folder doesn't exist, file managers can't see anything etc. So the files remain on the phone, but I can't access them.

Of course I can't move the data back from the card to the phone because... There's no space, so that process errors out.

Another problem this causes is when I update apps. The app gets moved to the card and all the app data gets reset/wiped.

What can I do about this? The phone isn't rooted or anything of the sort, it's all stock. However I also don't use Google's services, so I'm not exactly eager to do a factory reset and set everything from scratch. I have my files backed up, but I'd lose the app data, which would be a major hassle.

Thanks for any tips.

 

[blackhawk]

Try clearing the system cache.

 

[dontknowme]

You mean from the boot recovery menu? I did, it didn't help.

More notes:
- The "Free up space" button in storage doesn't work.
- Now I'm thinking, I have a lot of Google and Moto apps disabled, so maybe that's the problem (it's really been ages since I've messed with this, so I've forgotten about it). Any clue which app controls these things?
- I also just realized that every single file on the card has its date/time set to the time when I did the migration, and not when the files were originally created. Is this normal? (Cause it's pretty effed up.)

Anyway I'm not liking this. What can happen when I tell the system to "forget" the SD card? Any guesses?

 

[blackhawk]

The time stamp is normal.
There's hidden files, something...

 

[dontknowme]

Problem is, I can't get into the file system of the internal storage at all.

E.g. in Total Commander I can navigate the root folder and certain subfollders, but in terms of my files I can only get to the ones on the card; which is easy to distinguish due to the timestamp. And when the card us ejected or not present, there's nothing at all.

 

[blackhawk]

Factory reset if you get tired of playing with it... could be malware.

 

[dontknowme]

Any ideas, anyone? :/

 

[blackhawk]

What dis you mean be "formatted as internal storage"?

 

[dontknowme]

Well when you insert a new memory card, you can format is either as internal storage or external. Internal will act as just more phone storage, i.e. apps can be installed to it, and it's encrypted. Downside is there's no way to distinguish where anything gets saved.

External is just for files and in case of G6, it's not encrypted.

 

[blackhawk]

I think you better start from the beginning...

You always should use the SD card as a data drive.
Running apps should never go on it!
You never encrypt a data drive... unless you enjoy losing data!!!

Get the data off the SD card into the PC via data transfer from the phone.
Then factory reset the phone and reload.
Then add the SD card data drive, do not encrypt it! All critical data and backups go here.
Internal memory is for apps, the temporary download folder and the DCIM folder*.


*create a folder on the data drive to transfer photos from the DCIM folder on a regular basis.
Do Not name this folder DCIM! Name it Photo Master or such.

 

[dontknowme]

Excuse me, but you don't know what formatting as internal storage means, but you gonna give me a complete rundown how to use my phone in a completely different manner than I want to. I didn't ask any of this.

If I can't encrypt the SD card, then it might as well not be there at all. Motorola ****ed up by not supporting this.

Anyway, I sorta fixed it. Uninstalled some apps to clear up about 2.5GB of space, deleted all my files, "migrated" everything from card to phone, which was about 700 megs of nothing. Yep all my files were still there in the phone. And those 700 megs stayed on the card too. Whatever process is controlling this, is apparently unable to delete data.

Whatevs. Guess it's extra motivation to mess around with custom ROMs and stuff, I'm tired of OEM nonsense.

 

[blackhawk]

If you OS crashes/burns which is rare in Androids but certainly happens, your encrypted SD card data will not be accessible after a factory reset.
Lost forever... end of story.

That's why you never encrypt data drives; sooner or latter you will lose critical data, maybe your whole data base.
People are constantly posting here asking how to break 256 bit encryption. It's sadly halarious because it's not happening in their lifetime.
Meh, do what you will...

 

[tohotom]

Same sheet here. I did the following and it worked:
1, while still in the phone, I backed up the content of the SD card. (Turned out I didn't need it, but better be safe)
2, switched off the phone
3, removed the SD card
4, Turned on the phone. Some apps, which didn't rely much on internal storage just worked without any issue. Others were missing the SD card.
5, From the drop-down menu I selected the SD-card related item and clicked on "Forget". This gave me some warnings, but I didn't have much to loose.
6, Magic happened: My phone recovered the previously hidden files and it worked just before I started the migration to SD card!

 

[blackhawk]

Same sheet here. I did the following and it worked:
1, while still in the phone, I backed up the content of the SD card. (Turned out I didn't need it, but better be safe)
2, switched off the phone
3, removed the SD card
4, Turned on the phone. Some apps, which didn't rely much on internal storage just worked without any issue. Others were missing the SD card.
5, From the drop-down menu I selected the SD-card related item and clicked on "Forget". This gave me some warnings, but I didn't have much to loose.
6, Magic happened: My phone recovered the previously hidden files and it worked just before I started the migration to SD card!

Welcome to XDA

Apps, DCIM and download folders go on internal memory.
All critical data including regular backups for the dcim folder go on the SD card ie data drive.
Any apps that allow backups can be backed up on the data drive but never running from it.
Once you add a SD card leave it in the device and access it through the device only to avoid issues.

If you're dealing with under 128gb internal memory... life will be hard*. That's what I consider a bare bones minimum, 256gb or larger is better.


*Adjust the amount of apps loaded accordingly and leave a couple gb of headroom. If you only got 16gb of memory it's going to be a light load.