With the ever-growing quality of content, photo, videos, applications, and increasing data size, no amount of storage seems adequate. To address this issue, phones provide expandable storage slots.
You can insert SD cards within the slots to extend your device’s storage. But just inserting the card won’t make it ready for transferring system data.
Your phone won’t share system/app data with the SD card unless you format it as internal storage.
Format SD Card as Internal Storage
Formatting an SD card as internal storage is easy if your Android OS supports it and you have a decent working SD card. But not all devices would support this feature as data exchange is relatively slow with the SD card in comparison to the internal storage.
Keep in mind that it will remove/delete all the existing data on your SD card to protect your phone from potential threats. Also, note that this process will make the card inaccessible to other devices until you reformat it.
Note: The steps mentioned here are specific to the latest version of Android, i.e. Android 13. The steps can slightly differ as per the manufacturer and their ROMs. Specific guidelines can be sought on their support sites.
- Go to the Settings App on your Mobile phone.
- Tap the Storage menu.
- Pick the disk option from the dropdown menu.
- Tap on the Kebab menu (three vertical dots) on the top-right corner and select Format as internal.
If the option isn’t listed, check whether it’s disabled by default on your device from online tech forums. - Hit the Format SD card option.
- You can confirm any suitable appearing prompt.
- After it formats, you can either choose to Move data Right now or Later. Then, hit Next.
- Tap on the Done button to complete.
Reformat the SD Card
After formatting your SD as internal storage, you won’t be able to see it in File explorer as it would incorporate the card as a unified space of internal storage. And as already mentioned, this format would make the SD card and its content inaccessible if used on other devices.
And again, these steps will also delete all the data that was stored on the sd card.
- Go to Settings > Storage as above.
- Pick a disk from the dropdown.
- Tap on the three-dot menu and choose the Format option.
- Then, hit the Format SD card button to confirm.
It may take a while to format your SD card if it consists of massive amount of data.
