Monday 6 February 2012

My Droid - Installing a new microSD card


An upgrade of sorts
So, I got upthis morning and thought; I have a 16GB microSD card in mydefunct Windows Mobile 6.5 HTC Touch Diamond 2 phonewhich I took out of service at the end of September 2011.
My Droidwhich is an HTCSensation came with an 8GB microSD card, not that I have used half thatstorage yet, but the idea that I could double the space was appealing enough.
First, I dida search for the easiest way to transfer all the data and applications from thecurrent microSD card to the bigger microSD card and everything that came up inmy search was some convoluted and complicated method of copying the data, Ineeded to think of a better way.
Preparations
So first, Igot the card out of my Windows mobile phone and remembered I had a microSD adapterI had acquired years ago in one of my cupboards. Inserting the microSD card inthe adapter I inserted it into the slot on my netbook and copied all the datato a folder on my netbook.
Then Iformatted the microSD card to FAT-32 filesystem and it was ready for usage. As I was doing this, it occurred to me thatI could mount the SD card in my Droid as a drive through the USB connection tomy netbook.
I mounted themicroSD card storage on my Droid, unsure of the best way to copy the data andretain all the security and format of data with the applications on the SD cardI decided to use the Robocopy command.
The first copy
Robocopywhich comes with the most recent copies of Microsoft Windows is a robust filecopy utility that is quite versatile for copy and backup routines.
I used themirror option which should be used with caution because it wipes the targetdrive or target folder before copying data. I needed to be sure I noted thesource and target drives.
Using Robocopy < Source Drive > < Target Drive  /MIR
Once thefiles were copied, I replaced the microSD card and restarted my Droid; twoerrors were displayed, one to do with MSNMessenger and the EconomistApps both of which I had to forcibly close. I could not find them anywhere onmy phone so I started up the file manager and found the .android_secure folderwas unreadable however with the Astrofile manager app I could read the folder.
Using the AndroidAssistant app, I checked to see if there were any apps on my SD card usingthe Tools | App 2 SD widget and that revealed there were no apps on my microSDcard when I was expecting at least 15 or so apps.
It becameevident that the .android_secure folder contained all the apps that I had movedto the SD card and there were no clear solutions to resolve this somewhatannoying quirk much as I did not want to accept the fact that changing microSDcards needed some rocket science tool.
The better copy
So putting myoriginal microSD card in the adapter I loaded it on my netbook then mounted theSD card on my Droid, once again making a good note of the source drive whichwas now on the adapter I selected all the folders and copied them to the targetdrive which was now on my Droid overwriting everything. This being a standardWindows copy and paste procedure.
After thecopy was completed, I restarted my Droid and all my apps were restored,especially those on the microSD card with no errors.
Now, I haveover 10GB of space free on my Droid, looks like there is much more I can put onmy Droid, my complete classical music collect and even the complete audio biblethat adds up to just over 1 GB.

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