XiaomiDevices – MicroSD is still one of the main accessories that complement the use of smartphones today.
Currently, there are still smartphones that offer a fairly small internal storage capacity, be it 8GB or 16GB. Not to mention the growing size of the application and the use of social media data will make smartphone storage full very quickly.
So therefore presence of microSD can solve the problem. Unfortunately, microSD has several weaknesses, one of which is the ability to transfer data which is slower than internal storage, especially on cheap microSD.
This can cause various conflicts such as application compatibility issues or performance degradation. Therefore, some vendors are now removing the option to move installed applications to external storage so that users can only save personal data such as photos or videos to the microSD.
Even so, not a few users still want to use a microSD as the main storage place because there is too much to store. Fortunately there is a trick that can be used to change your microSD card to internal in MIUI by using adoptable storage features as one user described XDA Developers forum.
There are several conditions that must be met to be able to activate this feature, namely a smartphone running Android 6.0 and above, a computer or laptop, and a microSD at least UHS class 1. Also make sure you back up all data on your smartphone and microSD because there is a formatting process.
If all of that is met, then you can follow the steps below for how to change the microSD to internal for Xiaomi MIUI device users.
How to Turn MicroSD into Internal Storage
- Activate Developer Options by pressing OS version in Settings > About Phone 7 times.
- Activate features USB Debugging and Stay Awake to keep the smartphone on.
- Install ADB and Fastboot on your computer.
- Connect the smartphone to the computer using a USB cable.
- Run Command Prompt in Windows with “run as administrator”.
- Enter command adb shell then sm set-force-adoptable true.
- Next enter sm list-disks and you will see a number like this disk:179,64.
- Format microSD via command sm partition disk:xxx,xx private with the value of xxx.xx according to the results of the numbers in step No.7.
- Then type the command sm list-volumes and you will get a result with a series of numbers like this private:179,67 mounted fb705131-c6a0-4e3a-959b-605a65334c8c.
- Finally enter the command pm move-primary-storage xxxxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxxxxxxx according to the previous row of numbers.
- Wait for it to finish and reboot your smartphone.
- If it doesn’t work, repeat this step 2-3 times. I myself had to repeat once to be successful.
I have successfully practiced this method on my Xiaomi Redmi 5A smartphone which now has 64GB of storage. Even so, there are some drawbacks that must be understood after making microSD into internal storage.
First, the total storage read in the settings will remain the same and not change at all so you have to view it using the File Manager app. In addition, every icon on the Home screen will change again every time it reboots, so use the launcher to keep it tidy.
Finally, you have to manually update MIUI by downloading files from the Xiaomi site directly, which of course not all users want. But overall converting microSD into internal storage feels more important than having to run out of space to install new apps.
Therefore, it is best to have a large smartphone internal storage for application needs plus a microSD for personal data needs such as photos and videos for more comfortable use.
