Noob question abiut storage on the Bionic

[tpearson25]

I pluged my bionic into my computer via usb. I notice on the Bionic pull down screen I have different choices than my original droid. I was woundering what the difference choice do. The choices are PC mode, windows sync and usb sorage and then just charge. I also noticed I have 3 different choices pop up on my computer. #1 CD drive E motorola #2 removable disk F #3 moto G. I am un sure what the difference between this are. I am assuming one is the sd card and the otherb two are internal memory?
The other question is about astro file I have 3 different choices to open files. They have a picture of a file and then these 3 choices #1. mnt/sdcard-ext #2. /mnt #3. / Once again not sure what file is what. I was just trying to put some music on my sd card and not sure where to put it. Thanks for any and all help

 

[Bear in NM]

T,

It is a little confusing, as we have several posts where this has come up. Basically you have the 8 gigs of storage area on the phones "drive" as one area (sd), and the 16 gig card that your phone came with as another (sd-ext). If you have not started to fill these areas with applications, I would suggest using the stock file manager program or astro or other file programs to just look at these two areas on the phone. The internal SD drive should have more files and directories on it if you have installed and applications. The sd card (sd-ext) should only have the dcim folder (I think). What will happen is that when you plug in your phone to usb, each of the options (4) will give you a slightly different look at each location (sd v. sd-ext), as new drive letters pop up on your computer.

If you just want to copy music over, I would suggest putting it on the 16 gig card (sd-ext). Depending upon how you have your music organized will dictate the structure, but I have all mine in a directory I created called "Music". Under this folder I have Artist subdirectories, then Album names as a third sub-directory. Not sure this is needed, depending upon how you ripped your music, but it helps me keep things straight in all of the locations that I move my music around to. And I also do not do any syncing, so I am no help here.

In short, use the file manager on the phone to understand what the sd looks like and what sd-ext looks like, then you will know which area you are looking at when you connect to usb. I like the USB mass storage mode for file manipulation.

Craig

 

[tpearson25]

Craig
Thanks for your help. I think I am slowley figuring this out. I just did not want to waste internal memory with music. When I take a picture or video will it make and place them in a folder in sd-ext?

 

[Bear in NM]

T,

The phone comes with the storage option set to internal storage. If you pull the menu on the left (menu on left side, pull to the right) in the camera app,and select the little gear icon, you will see where you can set it to store directly to the sd card (sd-ext). You should then have /dcim/camera subdirectories on both the sd and sd-ext.

This subdirectory is where pictures and videos should be going.

Craig

 

[SSHGuru]

I have them in both also - the pictures look like they are in both directories. Maybe if I combine them into the sd-ext file and delete them in the SD I will save some space.

Also the camera settings says SD card but does it mean sd-ext or SD? If SD then you're saving them to internal which you dont want.

 

[Bear in NM]

SSH,

I think we have kinda sorted this out in the other thread. In the camera app, the selection is "Internal phone storage" or "SD Card". The internal is that, the internal and SD Card is the actual card (sd-ext). I did just confirm that the actual pictures will go to where you select, but thumbnails will get created on the internal storage, no matter the selection for the actual picture storage. I also confirmed that when you delete the photos from either location with the galley app or 3-d gallery, the thumbnail does get deleted as well.

Craig

 

[jleeusa]

I have been reading a lot of these threads about the SD card and have another question. When I got the phone home I noticed the slight speed difference in the newer card (versus my og droid) so I decided to just move pics and music to card. I was able to plug the Bionic into my computer and see all the directories of the phone. Today I was exploring and realized that I accidentally put all my pics and music on the internal storage. So I hook up to computer to move them to the SD card and I can't see a thing, just 2 empty directories on the SD card, I can't see the phone. What am I missing? I have tried all of the USB options, and when I check my computer is shows 2 drives, 1 is the SD card the other I can't explore. Puzzling. I am currently using Root Explorer to move stuff, but I have a bad habit of NEEDING to know. Thanks in advance.