Micro SD issue with the hudl

[Guest combat goofwing]

when i insert a micro SD card, device says preparing SD card and in storage it show up as 14.98 g(16gig) card,But the storage area is all grey and i cant access any files on the card, tried 2 different cards both work fine in my phone and my TF101 but the hudl prepares both and sees then as it shows the size of the card, but it doesn't show the files on any or allow access to them, tried accessing them via astro file manage and again no card shows in there

thanks for any help 

[Guest Hudluser]

hi on astro press sd card, once in that directory then press the mobile icon that will take you to the devices main directory, in there go to "mnt" you will find a folder for "external_sd" which will display all files on the external SD card.

 

Hope this helps.

[Guest combat goofwing]

ill try this when i get home but the files should accessable from the device itself, i wont to store my movies on the external card and have the app look for them there, but if its not accessable then i cant 

[Guest combat goofwing]

Thanks what you suggested worked,is the husk suppose to be like this where the external micro SD cars is not accessable as an extra drive in the device file manager ,and the only way to access it is via the root of the devices files 

[Guest Droibles]

Thanks what you suggested worked,is the husk suppose to be like this where the external micro SD cars is not accessable as an extra drive in the device file manager ,and the only way to access it is via the root of the devices files 

 

Firstly, apologies if you know some of this. Also, I appreciate its a long post, but there are a ton of people who, if they knew this stuff, would get more value from their tablets. I have no desire to teach anyone to suck eggs. When I first experienced the Linux file system a fair few years back (Android is based on Linux), as a Windows user I found it incredibly confusing and just wanted to run back to Windows with it's very simple (and really quite restricting) C:, D: drive setup. For this reason I've tried - it's not easy - to explain how things work in Android. Pretty much how things work in Linux.

 

So. As the Hudl is Android and Android is based on Linux, the file system Android uses is also based on the Linux file system. The layout is very different to Windows. In Android/Linux there is a single file system that any/all physical hard disk drives or even individual partitions on physical disk drives are represented under. You don't see individual drives like C:, D:, E: etc like you do in Windows.

 

The file system on Android starts at 'root' which is shown as "/" - a single forward slash. Underneath / are various directories that can contain other directories or files that can actually be located pretty much on any internal storage or external SD card that is installed in the tablet.

 

The original 16Gb of storage in the Hudl is divided up into separate partitions. Some of these are allocated for the operating system and some for the user. Those setup for the operating system are often read only and those for the user are read/write. These 'partitions' are then presented in the file system. So if you use a tool like Astro File Manager you'll see various directories all underneath "/" like /etc, /dev, /mnt etc. And under these directories you will see others e.g. /mnt/sdcard or /mnt/external_sd. Some read only, some read/write. The /etc and /dev for example directories are provided from the internal Hudl storage and you will have restricted - mostly read only - access to these. When you 'root' your Hudl you then can get elevated rights which subsequently allows you to write to these areas. This obviously then gives you a lot more control over the Hudl and its configuration which is why so many people want to 'root' their tablets and forums like this offer so many solutions for achieving this.

 

When you insert an external SD card into your Hudl, Android has to present the contents of that 'disk' to the user and makes it available via the file system. The way it does that is to 'mount it' (great term) under the /mnt directory (the mnt stands for mount).

 

To demonstrate this, if you remove your external SD card and use Astro to browse to /mnt/external_sd you will find this directory empty. If you then insert your SD card, Android will mount it at /mnt/external_sd. If you then refresh the directory listing you will see the contents of your SD card under /mnt/external_sd

 

Likewise you will see a directory called /mnt/sdcard. This is the contents of the 'user' part of the internal storage.

 

To confuse things even further storage can be mounted almost anywhere in the file system and so you can see storage areas duplicated across the file system. An example of this is the 'user' part of the internal SD card which if you browse around using Astro or similar, you can see mounted at /sdcard, /mnt/sdcard, /storage/sdcard0, /storage/emulated/0 and /storage/emulated/44. All 5 of these directories are providing access to exactly the same area of 'disk'. To your average Windows user this is massively confusing and even if you're familiar with the standard Linux file system you can tie yourself in knots.

 

Because storage can be presented in so many ways the various Android Apps - in an attempt to facilitate users who aren't aware of the Linux file system - name storage in various ways to simplify things and make more sense. For example I use the "File Manager HD" app to browse the Hudl storage and this just gives me a "Storage" shortcut which when I tap it takes me to the /mnt directory - because this is where Android mounts both the internal user storage and external SD cards. Additionally, if you've ever used a USB on the go cable to plug in a USB stick to your Android tablet via the USB port you'll see the contents of the USB stick under /mnt/usb_storage where Android mounts it.

 

Sorry for the length of the post, but hopefully this is of use to some. There's plenty of other resources explaining the Android/Linux file system online.. Google is, as they say, your friend.

 

:)

[Guest combat goofwing]

I understand all that and thanks for the post,if I insert a micro ad card in my TF101 it shows in any file manager as another drive/storage device .but that's not the case with hudl and it just seems strange 

[Guest greyrider]

It's not just the Hudl, access to the external SD card was blocked since Android 4.2 - my old Fire tablet saves out to SD with no prompting while I'm using Folder Mount and faffing with file managers otherwise (come the glorious day there'll be a modded ROM with storage sorted, fingers crossed )

Edited December 4, 2013 by greyrider

[Guest Droibles]

I understand all that and thanks for the post,if I insert a micro ad card in my TF101 it shows in any file manager as another drive/storage device .but that's not the case with hudl and it just seems strange 

Then Archos/Tesco must have changed the way things are done because from what I've seen so far the Hudl is fairly standard Android 4.2 config - (ahem)...apart from all the bugs... :blink:

 

I just hope the recent news of a possible Hudl 2 doesn't mean they drop any bug/fix dev work on the original Hudl.. in that case the only option would be custom ROMs to fix the issues.