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I have 2GB Micro SD card in my Android and want to upgrade to 4GB.

How can I achieve it without losing anything from my 2GB card? I mostly use this card to store images/music and most of the apps.

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  • This can depend largely on what's on your SD card at the moment (i.e. if it's just music/pictures/files or if you have apps on your SD card). Related questions: android.stackexchange.com/questions/13638/… and android.stackexchange.com/questions/12555/…
    – eldarerathis
    Oct 27, 2011 at 13:26
  • What should be filesystem of the new SD card ?
    – hsinxh
    Oct 27, 2011 at 13:31
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    Again, this depends somewhat on how you're currently using it and how it's currently partitioned. Very broadly speaking, I'd assume you'd want it to be the same as your current one, which is most probably FAT32 for simple file storage (if that's all you're using your card for).
    – eldarerathis
    Oct 27, 2011 at 13:33

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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First, turn off your phone's radio by entering Airplane Mode - usually this'll be by long-pressing the power button and selecting Airplane Mode.

Next on your homescreen, press MENU and click SETTINGS (or navigate in your preferred way). In SETTINGS, choose SD CARD & PHONE STORAGE. Press UNMOUNT to dismount your SD Card.

Now remove your SD card from the phone and insert it into your card reader on your PC.

Copy ALL the files to a folder of choice.

Insert your new 4 GB card into your cell phone and choose to FORMAT it from within the device. This is the safest course of action. Remove the new SD Card and use your PC to move/overwrite all data from the copy of the old card to the new one.

Re-insert your new card into the phone and reboot so that the scanning of the card takes place.

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    Is there a particular reason for the airplane mode advice? In the past I've followed your basic procedure but powered off, swapped (and copied) and powered back up to the new card.
    – Saiboogu
    Oct 27, 2011 at 13:36
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    @Saiboogu I would assume Airplane Mode is to remove a source of (attempted) writes to the SD card. But personally I would and have done the same as you. I've heard some people/phones have problems with PC-formatted cards, though.
    – Matthew Read
    Oct 27, 2011 at 14:46
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    @Saiboogu - Just in case, some app tries to write to the card like Picasa syncing some photos or something similar. It'll save a reboot when a user needs to format the new card from within the phone. That's all. Power down works just as well.
    – Sparx
    Oct 27, 2011 at 16:38
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    @Sparx Formatting in the phone makes sense, I missed that. I haven't had trouble with PC formatted cards myself, but heard enough stories to believe it. Simpler than explaining formatting on the PC too, probably.
    – Saiboogu
    Oct 27, 2011 at 17:28
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    This still works... in 2019
    – StayOnTarget
    Feb 27, 2019 at 0:12
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When I followed the instructions of the accepted answer with my Samsung Galaxy S5, the phone would always tell me that the new SD card needed checking.

There seems to be a bug when you're trying to replace an encrypted SD card. Here is what I did to work around it:

  1. Decrypt your old card (before you remove it from your phone).
  2. Switch off the phone
  3. Remove the old card
  4. Insert the new card
  5. Switch on your phone
  6. Phone will detect the card and then complain about problems.
  7. Decrypt the new card. This sounds like a mistake but it solves the problem. Apparently, the phone remembers that the card is supposed to be encrypted and tries to access it with the old key. Since the card isn't encrypted at all, this will fail.
  8. The card should work now.
  9. Encrypt the new card. If you skip this last step, you need to decrypt the card every time you switch on your phone.
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