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I've installed an Android ROM on my HTC HD2, and it's working smoothly and responsively. I've gotten calling, SMS, MMS and internet to work flawlessly. I do however have one small problem. With only Android installed, my phone only has a few hundred kilobytes of space left in it's internal memory. I have an SD card inserted with 16GB available that's not being used.

After 6 hours of use I'm already getting error messages about SMS message memory being full, and I can't download apps due to the lack of space.

Any way I can get my Android phone to treat the SD card as "default" location for saving files, including images from the camera, images recieved from MMS, apps, text messages, mails and application data?

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    Photos and downloads should be there by default. We have lots of questions/answers on moving apps to the SD card. As for SMS, though, I think you're out of luck. Android's databases on the phone memory aren't really movable, even if you have root. It would take significant modification of the OS to change that.
    – Matthew Read
    Jun 9, 2011 at 18:09
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    Moving apps isn't enough since I don't have the space to install them in the first place :( Is it possible to install the OS on the SD card?
    – Hubro
    Jun 9, 2011 at 18:21
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    I believe I had read it can be run from the SD card, yes. A quick search showed a recent guide: addictivetips.com/mobile/…
    – Matthew Read
    Jun 9, 2011 at 18:24
  • @Matthew Read: I've heard rumors that running the OS from an SD card will render it horribly slow to the level of unusable. Know anything about that?
    – Hubro
    Jun 10, 2011 at 15:16
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    Sounds like a reason to complain about the quality of the ROM? If it takes up almost all of the internal space and doesn't do anything to default where data is stored surely that's a reason to log bugs with the team that put it together?
    – GAThrawn
    Jun 23, 2011 at 9:03

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
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The sad but inevitable answer is that you can't. There is as of yet no way to tell Android to use the spacious SD card instead of the precious internal memory when installing new applications or saving messages.

One workaround that I've taken advantage of is installing an Android ROM and running it from the SD card using magldr. My SD card isn't of particularly fine quality so the OS runs quite sluggish, but it beats deleting all my SMS every day

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You can go into your settings and go into Applications. When you select Manage Applications, it will allow you to go through all of your apps. Select an app, you should then go to a screen that has an option to move your application over to your card. Not all apps can be moved, but if you can get the majority of the moved, it should save you some space.

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  • There are a few apps in the Market that will allow you to move such moveable apps en masse, rather than one at a time. (I happen to have used one called "SDMove".)
    – ale
    Jun 23, 2011 at 12:53
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The camera should already use the sdcard by default and the apps have to allow themselves to be installed on the sdcard, some are there by default, others are not. I couldn't find a way to move any of the other stuff you asked about and there is no way to tell Android to use the sdcard for all memory.

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  • What can you do if your camera is not using the sdcard by default?
    – Jason Axelson
    Jan 31, 2013 at 23:50
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It should be known that the memory on an android is called sd storage which is different than sd_external which is the sd device that the end user installed.

To change the cameras default save location. Launch the camera app, click on settings (cog), click on wrench tab, scroll down then select Memory card. Change to Memory card (versus Internal memory).

That's it, Good Luck

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There are some ROMs on Internet that I am using for months. Those ROMs are running with data to SD method. This way you have ~1GB internal memory after installing Android. :) I think this is your problem. (it was my problem too)

I do not know is it allowed to give other websites links here but in android.hd2roms.com search for BoyPPC's ROM when you open the thread go down to the 3rd post: Desire HD This ROM is Data2sd ROM and you will not ever live insufficient memory problem anymore.

This is the link of the thread.

And this is the download link of the ROM,

But I recommend you to read the thread before installing.

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