# Android adopted internal storage question: backing up ext card data? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 18, 2016, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/android-adopted-internal-storage-question-backing-up-ext-card-data/760204 "2016-07-18T13:03:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Moe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moe/32/2972_2.png) [@Moe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moe)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2016, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/android-adopted-internal-storage-question-backing-up-ext-card-data/760204/1 "2016-07-18T13:03:42Z")
From googling I saw any number of sites that talk about adopting an SD card for internal storage in the latest Android version (which is wonderful because I’ve been walking a tight rope with my remaining internal storage for months now) but nothing really on dealing with the data already on the external storage card (though I’m sure I’m just misgoogling). Phone is Moto E (2nd gen) with 4G LTE, currently has a 32 GB SD card used as external storage. I have a new 64GB high speed UHS-1 card which I want to adopt as internal storage, but the external card has about 10 GBs of data and apps I want to save. The phone doesn’t have nearly enough space for me to just move everything over. So how do I go about this? Can I just plug it into my PC via USB and simply save everything to my hard drive, and then copy it back over to the phone after I adopt the new card? ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2016, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/android-adopted-internal-storage-question-backing-up-ext-card-data/760204/2 "2016-07-18T16:56:43Z")
Yes … except … You need to double check some things here. The terminology of Android partitions got messed up. Most data is stored in something like /sdcard or /sdcard0, etc. Which on most systems is _internal_ storage. It’s _not_ on a removable card. To make things worse, recent versions of Android prevent apps from writing to the real card. (Read only.) I don’t know where you get the idea about it sort of going the other way in the OP. What I’d do is pull the card, put it in a card reader on a PC or some such and see what’s there. If it’s your big pile of data, then copy it to a HD, take it out, put in the new card, copy back to it. Save the copy for later emergencies. (You can go thru the phone and a USB connection, but the chance of problems increase.) If the data isn’t on the removable card, then there’s a problem. There’s some basic tricks that moves a little bit of the data to the card. But to really move big stuff requires root access, knowledge of partitions, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Moe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moe/32/2972_2.png) [@Moe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moe)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2016, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/android-adopted-internal-storage-question-backing-up-ext-card-data/760204/3 "2016-07-18T20:01:18Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > To make things worse, recent versions of Android prevent apps from writing to the real card. (Read only.) I don’t know where you get the idea about it sort of going the other way in the OP. I had some apps already on the card before the Android new version upgrade. Apparently apps that were already installed would continue to work but you couldn’t move any newly installed apps to the external card. Anyway, I basically did just that - just copied all the data from the old card onto my pc. (It was actually a real PITA because I think 2 or 3 files were corrupted which caused my computer to crash. I had to keep dragging over small groups of folders and even files at a time to find the bad files after like 10 crashes). Gonna use the old card for additional storage on my laptop (also walking a tightrope with hard drive space there). But this leads me to a new question: could those corrupted files indicate a problem with the card itself? Would formatting it repair it if this is the case? ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2016, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/android-adopted-internal-storage-question-backing-up-ext-card-data/760204/4 "2016-07-19T13:46:17Z")
Copying stuff from a memory card should never crash a PC. You have something _seriously_ wrong going on. Malware, as usual, is the first thing to check. It might be trying to write to the card and failing, causing a crash. A lot of malware ain’t the best written stuff. Then check drivers, etc. On MS-Windows, you can use the System File Checker to make sure your core OS files aren’t corrupted or missing. I’d be hesitant to re-use a card that’s had file corruption problems. While software can cause a bad file system, it’s rare on Android. So the chances of the card itself being bad are higher. Due to the way stuff is managed on a memory card (wear leveling), even a complete read/write test might not catch the problem. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2016, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/android-adopted-internal-storage-question-backing-up-ext-card-data/760204/5 "2016-07-19T22:48:44Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Copying stuff from a memory card should never crash a PC. You have something _seriously_ wrong going on. > > Malware, as usual, is the first thing to check. It might be trying to write to the card and failing, causing a crash. A lot of malware ain’t the best written stuff. > > Then check drivers, etc. On MS-Windows, you can use the System File Checker to make sure your core OS files aren’t corrupted or missing. > > I’d be hesitant to re-use a card that’s had file corruption problems. While software can cause a bad file system, it’s rare on Android. So the chances of the card itself being bad are higher. > > Due to the way stuff is managed on a memory card (wear leveling), even a complete read/write test might not catch the problem. The very latest version of Android again allows you to write to an installed SDmicro card or other attached drive. The last few versions before the most recent one killed this feature for security reasons. However, not all Play Store memory managers allow you to do this. The somewhat clunky onboard file manager (updated when the OS was updated) will do this, but some older 3rd party file managers (with better feature sets than the onboard file manager) will not.