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I moved from a Samsung Mesmerize (galaxy S, Andoroid 2.2) to a Motorola Electrify (android 2.3) and the Electrify is reading my SD card differently. My old data is now stored in /mnt/sdcard-ext instead of /mnt/sdcard/. All my phone's old data (which I want to keep) is in that directory.

Why did my SD card path change and what should I do to "merge" the two?

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On the Electrify, the external SD card is mounted at /mnt/sdcard-ext/ while the internal is at /mnt/sdcard/. The two are logically separate and cannot / should not be merged.

On the Mesmerize, the external SD card is mounted at /mnt/sdcard/external-sd/ as if it were a subfolder of the internal SD storage, which is also mounted at /mnt/sdcard/ like the Electrify. The two are just as separate as on the Electrify, however, and the subfolder isn't "real". If you connect your phone to your PC you will see two separate drives for them, and the "external-sd" folder on the internal storage will show up as empty — since it is!

I think what's happening here is that you want your data — downloads, possibly pictures and music, etc. -- from your Mesmerize's internal SD, and you thought it was all on the external SD. (I don't blame you, this system of having two areas both called SD is confusing.) What I would do is:

  • Power off both phones
  • Remove any external SD cards from both phones to avoid confusion
  • Power on both phones
  • Connect both phones from your PC and mount the internal storages on both to your PC
  • Copy the content of the Mesmerise's internal storage over to the Electrify's internal storage
  • Properly dismount both phones from the PC
  • Power off both phones
  • Re-insert your external SD card(s)
  • Power on the Electrify and go happily on your way
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I was mostly concerned because my app paths were wrong, which has made a couple apps mess up/show no data, probably because I copied them over via Titanium Backup (which also had this problem) and they're looking for the /mnt/sdcard/external-sd/ directories from my last phone. – Ben Brocka Nov 25 '11 at 23:21
As a side note do you happen to know if the Electrify's internal SD card is faster than the external? I've heard WP7 has amazingly fast internal SD cards and it's why they're not removable cards. The Electrify's storage is enough for my stuff so I will use the internal storage if it's faster. – Ben Brocka Nov 25 '11 at 23:22
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@Ben That's another point of confusion -- they're not actually SD cards even though they've been called that. It's probably no different from the rest of the phone storage, though I'm not sure. I wouldn't be surprised if a Class 10 SD card was faster, but you could always do a rough speed test by seeing how long it takes to copy a large file from your PC to internal vs external. I think there are some apps to test this on-device as well but I haven't used them. – Matthew Read♦ Nov 26 '11 at 1:03
Huh, I was wondering if it was actually an sdcard or not too. rather annoying they complicate it as such. BTW, the Mesmerize doesn't have a /mnt/sdcard/external/ folder at all, the /mnt/sdcard/ is the only storage point you can actually use to store personal data, which is why I was confused. All my actual stored (and accessible) data from my Mesmerize was on the /mnt/sdcard/ dir which was why I wanted to move it, now I know what to do though. – Ben Brocka Nov 26 '11 at 4:37

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