While weā€™re still waiting for the Android 6.0 Marshmallow to finally arrive on our devices (just donā€™t hold your breath just yet), itā€™s never too early to start learning about the new things youā€™ll be able to enjoy once your smartphone and/or tablet has been updated. One of the more interesting things that will be available is the ability to treat your external SD card as the internal storage for your device.

If you have low internal storage like 8GB or 16GB, then this option would be a good one for you, especially if you have a 128GB microSD card. But if you have decent disk space on your device, like 32GB or 64GB, you might think twice about applying this option. When you insert an SD card for the first time, it will ask you whether you want to treat it as a portable storage or internal storage. If you choose the former, then youā€™ll be able to use it just like any external SD card before. You can save some app data that allows this, as well as your photos, music, videos, etc.

But if you choose to use it as internal storage, then it will be reformatted and encrypted, so make sure that you backed up whatever is in that microSD card. Once it has been reformatted, it can only be used as internal storage and will be your deviceā€™s primary storage space. The original internal storage will not be merged with your card, but it will ā€œdisappearā€ and only the external-now-internal card will be detected when you go to the Storage & USB section of your device. You will still be able to install apps on the original one, but not pictures or videos anymore.

The problem with this is of course your internal storage works faster than a microSD card ever will. So if you have big internal storage, youā€™d want to stick to that and then just use the microSD as you normally would. But if you have a device with low built-in storage, then youā€™d want to sacrifice a bit of speed over a larger storage space, given that your device allows large storage microSD cards.

VIA: Reddit

11 COMMENTS

    • Google loses common sense in resolving problems in its software, I use Google products less and less
      – Google maps are useless for offline travelling
      – Samsung/LG Android is 10 year ahead
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  1. when i try to move my files to the new internal sd the process bar is stuck after 20% and doesnt move afterwards, ive waited 30 minutes now and it didnt help a bit, should i wait longer or does is simply not work? (im trying to move around 5,5gb)

  2. almost the same issue. when i try merging data, my gs5 says it cant because insufficient space. after reboot, it looses all memory of installed sd and asks to reformat because it has found a new one.????????????????????????????? im confused. 2 different sd cards and same issue.

  3. But now I cannot see any of the pictures or music that android has “moved” to the now “internal” SD memory! Once it translated the SD as internal storage it suggested to move pictures and music there, but I cannot see it, nor any of the applications

    For instance, I cannot take a picture because the application tells me that it cannot find the SD card!

    This sucks…

  4. Definitely poor programming and planning on the part of Google (not a big surprise there). The SD card should not replace internal memory, it should work with it, to expand it. (That is, if I have 128GB internal, and a 128GB card, then my phone should have roughly 256GB available as one pool of memory.)

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