After a while, most smartphones and tablets begin to clog up, and a good cleaning of the memory becomes necessary. Aside from our list of tips and tricks resolve low memory issues, a typical solution over time has been to move and save your apps and files to your SDcard. For users running Android 2.0+, moving apps to the SD card is a challenge: you need to have root access and a second partition on your SD card. Today we will explain how to do the latter, and how to free up memory by moving data from your internal storage to your SDcard.
Requirements
- a rooted Android device
- a backup all of your data completed beforehand, which you can do with an app, or transferring all of your files to your computer.
- MiniTool Partition Wizard
- Link2SD, an app which can be installed for free from the Google Play Store via the install link below.
MiniTool Partition Wizard
This next step involves getting a second partition on your SD Card. Ensure that you have downloaded the program above on your computer, install it, open it and then follow this procedure:
1. Connect your Android device to your computer using a USB chord.
2. Choose MiniTool Partition from the menu.
3. Identify your SD card in the bottom section. This varies depending on the USB port that you are using or the size of your card. In my case it showed up as Disk 2. Select it.
4. From the left column, under Operations, select Split Partition. Allocate 1 GB (1024 MB) in the ‘’New Partition Size’’ and then press OK.
5. This will then create a new partition of 1 GB. Select this again from the Operations section, and select Format Partition, and choose EXT4 from the drop down box for File System. Then choose OK.
6. As a final step, select the option ‘’Set as Primary Partition’’, from the Operations’’ and select Apply which can be found on the top left corner. Confirm this and wait for the end of the process.
7. If for some reason, you’ve lost your files, you can simply copy them from your PC onto the FAT32 partition (the larger one).
Now, if you already have Link2SD installed on your device, uninstall it and reinstall again (or simply delete the cache in the settings of your device under Application manager, then scroll down until you see Link2SD). Place your SD card in the device and open the Link2SD app.
- Grant root permissions.
- Select the ext4 partition that you have just created
- Your device will restart.
If you are having problems using Link2SD to locate the second partition, change the file system of your SD card’s second partition to ext2, which is a less evolved option, but it is usually compatible. As a last resort, try FAT32, however this may pose some security problems with some of the private files of the app.
Once the steps above are complete, select all of the apps that you would like to move to the SD card, but to do this you use the option of ‘Create shortcut’ instead of ‘’move to SD’’. If it is a system app, you will first need to convert it to a user app under the ‘’actions’’ menu option.
Link2SD got this name because it tricks the system to think that the apps are really stored on the internal memory, when in fact these apps are stored on the SD card.
In the settings of Link2SD, you can also activate the ‘’auto connect’’ portion which ensures that new apps are directly installed on the SD card.
Congrats! You can now breath new life into your device, and install many new applications without any memory problems.
If you want more information about Link2SD, you can check out the Link2SD FAQ page on their website.
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