Mount/Unmount SD Card Procedure

[TxDoc]

Did a search and did not find what I wanted to find.. Can someone explain the proper procedure for mounting/unmounting an SD card. And, explain when and why this is necessary.

Thanks

 

[dezymond]

you need to mount an SD so the computer can read it

you need to unmount it so the Droid can read it

edit: oh yes the procedure
1. plug in the droid to your computer
2. pull down the manager (the bar on top with the time, sorry don't know the name, can't recall right now)
3. hit "usb connected"
4. window pops up on your computer showing you the contents of the SD card
5. hit "turn off usb storage" when you're done
6. disconnect usb cable (if you want) and then your Droid can read the SD card again

 

[freeloader]

unless your talking about from the droid itself and not using your pc. in which case use sdrescan from the market. i use it when adding photos to my sdcard and wanting them to show up on the gallery without rebooting. (same goes for music)

edit: or when adding .nomedia to a directory on my sd card.

 

[iiimegamaniii]

you need to mount an SD so the computer can read it

you need to unmount it so the Droid can read it

+1 with what Dezy said.

Coming from a strict Windows-background, apparently the DROID cannot view the file structure of the phone and PC like WinMobile / Windows can at the same time or synced. One can see one while the other can't. Took me a couple minutes to figure out this behavior.

- Mega

 

[cgarnes]

Excellent comments! Well done!

 

[Backnblack]

You do not need to unmount it...It does that when un-pluged from the USB cable...

 

[fmserc]

you also need to mount if you're using a car audio cd player that has a usb connection... found that out with my kenwood deck.

 

[hookbill]

You do not need to unmount it...It does that when un-pluged from the USB cable...

You do if you're using a mac. And why not unmount on the PC? Its what you're suppose to do.

 

[dezymond]

You do not need to unmount it...It does that when un-pluged from the USB cable...

Yes, you don't necessarily NEED too, but I find it as kind of rough on the Droid. To me it's kind of like unplugging your computer without properly shutting it down, you don't know the consequences. If I know I can unmount it while it's still plugged in, and since it deals with transferring files, I feel that if I manually unmount it while it's still plugged in, I feel more assured my files won't go crazy or anything...just me i guess.

 

[fmserc]

You do not need to unmount it...It does that when un-pluged from the USB cable...

You do if you're using a mac. And why not unmount on the PC? Its what you're suppose to do.

that's kinda like saying that you have to "eject" a thumb drive before pulling it out of the usb slot. i've been using the same 512kb thumb drive on over 600 different computers to install certificates for users at my old job. i've never once ejected. it's flash memory, it doesn't require to be saved etc... mac's don't autosave or keep a cache copy of whatever you're doing with your flash drive.

mac - eject
everything else - don't worry about it, just pull the plug!

 

[Martin030908]

unless your talking about from the droid itself and not using your pc. in which case use sdrescan from the market. i use it when adding photos to my sdcard and wanting them to show up on the gallery without rebooting. (same goes for music)

edit: or when adding .nomedia to a directory on my sd card.

discovered SDrescan today... great app! beats a power cycle

 

[kcs32787]

thanks so much for SDrescan. i had been looking for something like that for a while now!

 

[TxDoc]

Thanks very much for the replies. Very helpful. I thought I had post a "thanks", but apparently, I was wrong. So.. Thanks

 

[nunka]

You do not need to unmount it...It does that when un-pluged from the USB cable...

You do if you're using a mac. And why not unmount on the PC? Its what you're suppose to do.

that's kinda like saying that you have to "eject" a thumb drive before pulling it out of the usb slot. i've been using the same 512kb thumb drive on over 600 different computers to install certificates for users at my old job. i've never once ejected. it's flash memory, it doesn't require to be saved etc... mac's don't autosave or keep a cache copy of whatever you're doing with your flash drive.

mac - eject
everything else - don't worry about it, just pull the plug!

With a flash drive that small---probably formatted as FAT16/32---you're right, mounting and unmounting doesn't matter. Many people format larger flash drives as NTFS, a filesystem that doesn't always complete its write operations as soon as you'd think it would. When you unplug an NTFS drive without unmounting, there may still be data cached in your memory that hasn't been properly written to the flash drive. You definitely risk corrupting the files on your flash drive if you don't unmount it.

Of course, most people who format flash drives to NTFS are probably already aware of that, as well as the additional hardware stress caused by NTFS... at least, that's the hope.

 

[Laurence5905]

unless your talking about from the droid itself and not using your pc. in which case use sdrescan from the market. i use it when adding photos to my sdcard and wanting them to show up on the gallery without rebooting. (same goes for music)

edit: or when adding .nomedia to a directory on my sd card.

discovered SDrescan today... great app! beats a power cycle

Hmmm.... That's weird, because I've never had any problems with needing a reboot to force the new data on the SD card to be scanned... When I transfer music or videos to the SD card, it's automatically scanned the first time I open up the Music app or the Gallery app... If I transfer a bunch of music (like the first time I put music on my Droid - 8GB's worth) it might actually take a few minutes to complete the scanning... But I've never been forced to reboot (or run a separate "scanning" app) to make it happen...