Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. Androis 8.

It ran out of internal space to I added an SD card.
I was prompted to move files to the SD card but not given any way to do it.

I worked my way down all the installed Apps and where there was an option
to move the SD card I took it.

However there were not that many options.

WhatsApp, Signal, Gallery all have quite a bit of data, but no option to
move from Internal to External.

Is there a clever way of moving data onto the SD card and still having the
App know where it is?

Oh, and Firefox seems to have over 1GB of data stashed away.
Any idea what this might be?
I can't think of anything that big which needs saving.

Cheers

Dave R

--
AMD FX-6300 in GA-990X-Gaming SLI-CF running Windows 10 x64

On 2023-07-24 20:50, David wrote:
> Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. Androis 8.
>
> It ran out of internal space to I added an SD card.
> I was prompted to move files to the SD card but not given any way to do it.
>
> I worked my way down all the installed Apps and where there was an option
> to move the SD card I took it.
>
> However there were not that many options.
>
> WhatsApp, Signal, Gallery all have quite a bit of data, but no option to
> move from Internal to External.
>
> Is there a clever way of moving data onto the SD card and still having the
> App know where it is?
>
> Oh, and Firefox seems to have over 1GB of data stashed away.
> Any idea what this might be?
> I can't think of anything that big which needs saving.

You can move "easily" photos and downloaded files, that's about it.

Wasap, forget it.

You first go to your camera app, and find the option to save photos in
the card instead. Then find a tool you like to move the photos yourself.
The gallery tool might do it, depends. If not, get another one. The
google "files" app might do it, I' don't know (my phone doesn't have a
card).

--
Cheers, Carlos.

David <wibble@btinternet.com> wrote:

> Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. Androis 8.
>
> It ran out of internal space to I added an SD card. I was prompted to
> move files to the SD card but not given any way to do it.
>
> I worked my way down all the installed Apps and where there was an
> option to move the SD card I took it. However there were not that many options.
>
> WhatsApp, Signal, Gallery all have quite a bit of data, but no option
> to move from Internal to External.
>
> Is there a clever way of moving data onto the SD card and still having
> the App know where it is?

Apps decide if they can be split across storage media. Usually all the
program's files reside on internal storage, and it's the config or
cached data that gets moved to the external storage. If the app doesn't
identify itself as split-able, you won't see the option to move the app
to the SD card. Some apps consider running a part of themself from an
SD card to be negative to the performance or responsiveness of the app.
They don't want user reviews noting their app is super slow when it was
the fault of the user for splitting the app to have part of it run on
the slower SD storage media. Plus there may be coding considerations of
accessing code on a different volume, and there isn't enough config data
(and no user data) to be concerned about moving to the SD card.

The app decides if it can be split across volumes, and it decides what
can be moved, if anything, to another volume. That's why there are no
options other to split or not, if even given that option by the app.

You can also use Adoptable Storage which merges the SD card with
internal storage. That is, the volume then consists of two storage
media: internal and external. However, the SD card gets encrypted using
a hash unique to a particular phone, so you cannot remove the SD card to
use elsewhere. Also, external storage is slower than internal storage,
so for the part of the volume that is on the SD card the apps there will
run slower (but you might not notice the slowdown). Before you merge
the SD card with internal memory, go back into all those apps you split
across internal and SD storage to put them all back on internal storage.
The adoption (merging) may afford the option to move all app content to
the merged volume, but doing it beforehand is probably safer. The
process of merging and encrypting the SD card with internal storage
wipes the SD card. With, say, 64 GB internal storage and a 256 GB SD
card adopted (merged) into the same volume, you'd have a volume with a
size of 320 GB total, but a mix of fast and slow storage sources for the
volume.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/move-android-apps-sd-card/

According to https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s7_edge-7945.php,
and depending on which model you have of the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, you
could have up to 128 GB of internal storage. You'd have to read its
manual to see how much storage it will support on an SD card. My 7-year
old phone can use up to a 2 TB SD card. I only have a 128 GB installed
now, and have never come close to using more than half of it even when
storing offline maps on the SD card. However, I don't store much on my
phone, like photos, videos, audio, or other large files. If I get more
than a few data files, I move them to my PC or to online storage.

Even the smallest storage available for your phone starts at 32 GB, so
you might want to review that plethora of apps you installed to see
which you really need versus those you wanted to tryout once or rarely
use, and all those data files you are storing on your phone versus
moving them to elsewhere more stable (phones get broken, lost, stolen).

> Oh, and Firefox seems to have over 1GB of data stashed away.
> Any idea what this might be?

No idea how you configured all the settings for Firefox Mobile. If you
want all that locally cached data to disappear when you exit Firefox,
configure Firefox to purge on exit. Then make sure to use Firefox's
Quit menu to really exit the app instead of just closing the window to
leave Firefox running in the background (Android does not unload apps
when you close the window, as does Windows and Linux where Exit really
means to exit, not just hide the window and leave in background until
that memory is needed later).

Firefox Mobile settings -> Delete browsing data on quit
Select what you want purged on exit.

You must use Quit in Firefox's menu to actually unload it which, with
the above option, will also purge the locally cached data you selected.
I selected all types to purge on exit. Firefox Mobile is one of the few
(the only one I've used) that lets you actually *exit* the app instead
of have it linger in the background.

On Mon, 24 Jul 2023 16:06:46 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

> David <wibble@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>> Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. Androis 8.
>>
>> It ran out of internal space to I added an SD card. I was prompted to
>> move files to the SD card but not given any way to do it.
>>
<snip>

Thanks for the comprehensive explanation!

Cheers

Dave R

--
AMD FX-6300 in GA-990X-Gaming SLI-CF running Windows 10 x64

On 7/24/2023 2:50 PM, David wrote:
> Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. Androis 8.
snip...
>
> Oh, and Firefox seems to have over 1GB of data stashed away.
> Any idea what this might be?
> I can't think of anything that big which needs saving.
snip...

With Firefox it is probably the cache that is consuming the storage. Look
for the option to "Delete Browsing Data" buried under the settings.