Find Location of a Removable Sd Card

Find location of a removable SD card

Environment.getExternalStorageState() returns path to internal SD mount point like "/mnt/sdcard"

No, Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory() refers to whatever the device manufacturer considered to be "external storage". On some devices, this is removable media, like an SD card. On some devices, this is a portion of on-device flash. Here, "external storage" means "the stuff accessible via USB Mass Storage mode when mounted on a host machine", at least for Android 1.x and 2.x.

But the question is about external SD. How to get a path like "/mnt/sdcard/external_sd" (it may differ from device to device)?

Android has no concept of "external SD", aside from external storage, as described above.

If a device manufacturer has elected to have external storage be on-board flash and also has an SD card, you will need to contact that manufacturer to determine whether or not you can use the SD card (not guaranteed) and what the rules are for using it, such as what path to use for it.

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UPDATE

Two recent things of note:

First, on Android 4.4+, you do not have write access to removable media (e.g., "external SD"), except for any locations on that media that might be returned by getExternalFilesDirs() and getExternalCacheDirs(). See Dave Smith's excellent analysis of this, particularly if you want the low-level details.

Second, lest anyone quibble on whether or not removable media access is otherwise part of the Android SDK, here is Dianne Hackborn's assessment:

...keep in mind: until Android 4.4, the official Android platform has not supported SD cards at all except for two special cases: the old school storage layout where external storage is an SD card (which is still supported by the platform today), and a small feature added to Android 3.0 where it would scan additional SD cards and add them to the media provider and give apps read-only access to their files (which is also still supported in the platform today).

Android 4.4 is the first release of the platform that has actually allowed applications to use SD cards for storage. Any access to them prior to that was through private, unsupported APIs. We now have a quite rich API in the platform that allows applications to make use of SD cards in a supported way, in better ways than they have been able to before: they can make free use of their app-specific storage area without requiring any permissions in the app, and can access any other files on the SD card as long as they go through the file picker, again without needing any special permissions.

Getting the path to SD card

The only way I found is to semi-hardcode it:

File[] folders = myappcontext.getExternalCacheDirs();

gives you the path to the "cache" folders your app has access to (but that are deleted when you uninstall your app).

If the phone uses a removable SD card (that is currently mounted), the length of the array should be "2":

1. The path to the "cache" folder in the external (not removable) storage
2. The path to the "cache" folder on your SD card

They look something like this:

/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.mycompany.myapp/cache
/storage/xxxx-xxxx/Android/data/com.mycompany.myapp/cache

... where "x" is the number (id?) of your sd card. I've only been able to test it with 2 different SD cards and both had their own number.

Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory();

should also give you

/storage/emulated/0/

which is the non-hardcoding way of getting access to the external storage. ;)

If you create a new folder on the very first level of your SD card on your PC, its path will be:

/storage/xxxx-xxxx/myfolder

I also have to warn you: While you can read the "myfolder" folder, you can't write in it (will just throw an "Access Denied" exception with Android 7) because of the changes to the whole system that came with Kitkat. But that's a different problem I'm going to address in a new question.

How can I get the external SD card path for Android 4.0+?

I have a variation on a solution I found here

public static HashSet<String> getExternalMounts() {
    final HashSet<String> out = new HashSet<String>();
    String reg = "(?i).*vold.*(vfat|ntfs|exfat|fat32|ext3|ext4).*rw.*";
    String s = "";
    try {
        final Process process = new ProcessBuilder().command("mount")
                .redirectErrorStream(true).start();
        process.waitFor();
        final InputStream is = process.getInputStream();
        final byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
        while (is.read(buffer) != -1) {
            s = s + new String(buffer);
        }
        is.close();
    } catch (final Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    // parse output
    final String[] lines = s.split("\n");
    for (String line : lines) {
        if (!line.toLowerCase(Locale.US).contains("asec")) {
            if (line.matches(reg)) {
                String[] parts = line.split(" ");
                for (String part : parts) {
                    if (part.startsWith("/"))
                        if (!part.toLowerCase(Locale.US).contains("vold"))
                            out.add(part);
                }
            }
        }
    }
    return out;
}

The original method was tested and worked with

• Huawei X3 (stock)
• Galaxy S2 (stock)
• Galaxy S3 (stock)

I'm not certain which android version these were on when they were tested.

I've tested my modified version with

• Moto Xoom 4.1.2 (stock)
• Galaxy Nexus (cyanogenmod 10) using an otg cable
• HTC Incredible (cyanogenmod 7.2) this returned both the internal and external. This device is kinda an oddball in that its internal largely goes unused as getExternalStorage() returns a path to the sdcard instead.

and some single storage devices that use an sdcard as their main storage

• HTC G1 (cyanogenmod 6.1)
• HTC G1 (stock)
• HTC Vision/G2 (stock)

Excepting the Incredible all these devices only returned their removable storage. There are probably some extra checks I should be doing, but this is at least a bit better than any solution I've found thus far.

how to get file path from sd card in android

You can get the path of sdcard from this code:

File extStore = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory();

Then specify the foldername and file name

for e.g:

"/LazyList/"+serialno.get(position).trim()+".jpg"

get removable sd card path in android

Starting from KitKat, you have access to a method to get that directory :

Context.getExternalFilesDirs()

Note that it may return null if the SD card is not mounted or moved during the access. Also, you might need to add these permissions to your manifest file :

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" />

Apparently some users had trouble with this method, not returning the SD card path. I found some useful informations on how it can works and how it can not depending on the device on this post.

How to programmatically find the path of a removable/mountable external memory in Android?

Is there anyway we can find out the path of a removable memory device?

Not generally. Those are outside the bounds of the Android SDK at this time. The Android SDK only supports standard external storage, not anything else.

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