Micro SD card and where it is found....

[RoyR]

I just installed a Micro SD card in my MID7127 and was puzzled why it didn't seem to appear in the tablet's file explorer. Then, after I opened every folder, I finally found the folder containing the data I had added to the card on my PC, to serve as a marker.

The Android operating system apparently treats the external micro SD card as just another folder, and calls it "tflash." Puzzled, I looked up tflash and found that it is the original name for the micro SD card. So, mystery solved. I know where my external data resides.

I wish Coby would mention this in the manual. Nowhere does it mention the directory named tflash, or say that tflash = external micro SD card. Further confusing is that "SD Card" is shown in the main window of the file explorer even though there there is no external card installed. I guess the tablet has an internal SD card so that is why it shows up there, but I would wish they called it something else. To their credit, the tools menus refer to the internal flash memory of the tablet as "NAND", but this term doesn't show up in the file explorer.

Perhaps Coby just wants to keep their customers on their toes!

Roy

 

[RoyR]

Roy:

This is why I keep saying Android tablets are not for young kids. Some people buy them for kids as game machines which in my opinion they are not. True, they will play games but there is far more to them than that. Steve Job's original vision for the Macintosh was that of an appliance. Pretty much that is what happened to Apple products as for the most part they are locked down. Android on the other hand is wide open and leads to exploring, tinkering, and experimenting. To get the most out of Android you really need to explore and experiment. The iPod touch and iPad won't even let you install a micro SD card so you don't really need to know the file system on either one of those. Both Apple and Android have there places but people do need to understand the difference in the the mission statement between them. I do own some of both but bought them and use them for different purposes.

You're right. It's interesting how some consumer products rely on high user-friendliness (like Apple stuff), and cost premium prices. Others, like Coby, skimp on some of that, but their products are more affordable and still very nice IF you work a bit on using them. I like my Coby tablet a lot more now than when I first got it!

I have a $26 Archos MP3 player that came with "instructions" in eight languages on a single piece of paper...4 sets of instructions in tiny print packed on each side! Talk about minimal info! I basically had to figure out how to use it on my own. It's a fantastic little player, though. Its features totally beat out Apple MP3 players at several times the price, but you better have patience in learning to use it. Just today, I figured out again how to get the FM transmitter to work...something not even touched in the instructions other than that the feature was mentioned.

Roy

 

[lfom]

It's how it works on Telechips versions of Android. On other systems, the external microSD can be "extsd" (same as /mnt/extsd) or "external_sd" (same as /mnt/external_sd), it will depend on who built the Android system (first one works for Urbetter while the second one is used by Acer). Welcome to open source, where only a few things have standards...