Can't figure out why I can't put files of any kind on my SD card, please help!?

[Kidputer84]

Since I bought my Rezound a few years ago, the phone has never wanted to put anything on the SD card, everything has always gone on the phone storage. Say I'm downloading a movie, the file path will say mnt/sdcard/downloads/blahblahblah, but I can go into storage under settings after the download is complete and the SD card will still be completely empty, my card is encrypted and I've exhausted my phone skills trying to figure this out, so now I'm here, any help is much appreciated. Thanks!
Also, what is the difference between internal storage, phone storage and the SD card anyway?

 

[MrSmith317]

There are two SD cards. Internal and external. External is /mnt/sdcard/sd_ext or /mnt/sdcard2. Your internal SD card will be /mnt/sdcard/

 

[acejavelin]

The phone has 16GB of internal space, partitioned for the operating system and essential things, and a ~2.5GB Phone storage area for programs, and ~11GB of virtual "SD Card" storage. It also has a an external 16GB card (by default, other sizes are supported) and is for storing stuff like music, videos, and other files.

The phone and most programs see SD Card storage and Internal Storage as the same thing, /mnt/sdcard and /sdcard are the same, to access the external 16GB SD Card the program would need to be set to "External Storage" or /extsd or /mnt/extsd (sometimes /mnt/sdcard0 and /mnt/sdcard1 depending on the OS).

Most programs do not use the external storage by default, the internal camera can be set to use that to save pictures and videos, but most 3rd party apps will not. You can copy your own files or manually move files to the external SD Card.