Workaround for Android security "fix"

LDJones

LDJones

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Jonesy
After a recent "upgrade" I lost the ability to move photos off the main storage area and onto my 32G SD card, which I'd been happily doing as long as I've had an Android with external storage. I thought this was just a glitch on my phone, but have learned it's a "security fix" implemented in recent versions of Android.

Anyone aware of an easy workaround for this? If I'm going to be locked out of my storage I might as well just get an iPhone with lots of memory and be done with it!
 
I think you're being misled. Setting where photos are stored is an option in the camera application. That has not gone away.
 
Pedals2Paddles said:
I think you're being misled. Setting where photos are stored is an option in the camera application. That has not gone away.
Click to expand...

I'm open to someone pointing me to this setting. I've looked for such an option on every one of my Android phones.

That still doesn't address the issue of them locking down my SD card so I can no longer move files from sdcard0 to sdcard1.
 
Screenshot of the camera settings.

What application are you trying to use to manage files?
 

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LDJones said:
After a recent "upgrade" I lost the ability to move photos off the main storage area and onto my 32G SD card, which I'd been happily doing as long as I've had an Android with external storage. I thought this was just a glitch on my phone, but have learned it's a "security fix" implemented in recent versions of Android.

Anyone aware of an easy workaround for this? If I'm going to be locked out of my storage I might as well just get an iPhone with lots of memory and be done with it!
Click to expand...
Root the device. It will give you all access. Its not that difficult just Google the name if the device followed by root. Follow the instructions and you should be good. Or try oi file manager. Available in play store
 
Pedals2Paddles said:
Screenshot of the camera settings.

What application are you trying to use to manage files?
Click to expand...

Thanks. Found it. So that's good.

I'm using Astro File Manager. Routinely moved things between sdcard0 and sdcard1 until that last upgrade. Now I get an "Unable to write file" when I try to copy something over to sdcard0.
 
If your android device is rooted there's several options:

1. An app on XDA that will do the trick:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2684188

2. You can manually edit the file permissions yourself (again, requires root):
Navigate to /system/etc/permissions; edit platform.xml and find the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission; add an additional group definition for this permission: <group gid=”media_rw” />; save the changes to the file and restart.

3. Move to a custom ROM that has the write permission issue fixed (CyanogenMod 11, AOKP, SlimKat, or CarbonROM for sure)
 
Tried IO File Manager. It's sandboxed just like Astro (which has a much better UI than IO.) I really don't want to get into messing with having to start hacking my phone to do something as simple as relocating my own data. Very frustrating. Very Apple-esque.
 
Oh. That is obnoxious. I've been an android user since ditching the blackberry 4 years ago. But I also root my devices and install a custom ROM about 30 minutes after getting home with it. So I do not experience this lockdown.
 
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