Internal Memory / SD Card Trouble When Downloading

[JohnInNI]

Just got my hands on my new Z3 Compact last Monday. Delighted with the phone after switching from an iPhone 5 aside from a minor annoyance. After buying the Z3C, I then bought a Sony 16GB SD Card which mounted just fine.

I then went to download a playlist to the device with approximately 1,000 songs from Google Play on to the card. The songs download to the card just fine, but at the same time, the size of the Google Play app in the Deice Memory increases from around 55MB until it’s over 6GB, taking me perilously close to the internal storage limit of the device.

Within Storage Settings, the device is set up so that all photos, videos and music files are saved by default to the SD card. In the Google Play settings, I’ve checked and I’ve definitely chosen to save all downloads to the SD card and additionally have unselected caching. I’ve also double checked to ensure all software is up to date as well.

Any help would be very much appreciated, since I frequently work in remote areas where wifi and 3/4G access is very limited and I love my music!

Cheers

John

[Sam · Accepted solution]

Hi and welcome to the community! Since you're new please be sure that you have checked out our Discussion guidelines.

Unfortunately this will be due to the way the DRM works on the files which require them to be stored on the Internal memory for the DRM to remain attached the audio files.

[wpcoe]

Sam, I'll jump in on this thread to thank you for your participation here in this Z3C thread.  Even though the answers you give sometimes might not be what we want to hear (like perhaps this one for the OP...?), I greatly appreciate your explanations of "how things work."  

This is my first experience with an Android advice, and I'm learning quite a bit by lurking here.

[JohnInNI]

Hi Sam

Thank you very much for your welcome and your explanation. Not the answer I wanted, but great to know what's going on. 

Anyhow, hit it lucky and bumped into a Z3 owner today - so managed to devise a work around. I used Google Music Manager to download my music collection to my PC's hard drive. Then I transferred to the Z3C Micro SD via USB. Turned off WiFi, turned off mobile data... waited with bated breath and hey presto, Play Music is playing like it should with the app sitting at 68MB and c.6GB of music on the external drive. 

Thanks once again for your help.

Cheers

John

[jimbojack]

Fortunately for everybody Sam is incorrect on this occasion. Your music can be and is stored on your removable SD Card when selecting this option in Google Play Music.

The confusion arises because storage settings can't tell that you've stored the music to SD card, However it is actually there and taking up very little space on internal storage.

For me this has resulted in storage settings displaying:

Total space 11.57GB
Available 6.83GB
Apps 16.26GB

The bar across the top also displays my device as being full but as you can see I have more App data than is physically available.

Just for the record I am an All Access subscriber so I don't own this music, it is DRM protected.

Also I'm not rooted nor do I have anything funky going on. This is a standard feature of Google Play Music which works as intended with the Sony xperia Z3 Compact.

[JohnInNI]

Jimbo

Thanks for this. Cleared music off the card earlier today and downloaded a Play List to the card.

Got very similar results to yourself, whereby the internal storage appears to increase dramatically... but when I go and check individual files, the music seems to be saved exclusively on the card and not on the device.

Deleted the Play List and then saved everything to the card and a similar result. The storage graph shows I'm almost off the scale, but when I check the internal music folder via File Kommander, the internal storage simply states 'This folder is empty', whilst the SD storage is choc a bloc with music.

So in summary and as you point out, the storage values displayed within settings do not accurately reflect how data is actually stored on the device.

Cheers

John

[WHIZZER55]

hI,tRIED TO TRANSFER the  MUSIC FROM

An apple 4s to a z3 but an error in red said that only 12gb is available!! - but i have a 64gb microsd installed - how do i go about this - is there an option in the file commander im missing to transfer

i have about 20gb of itunes/ music to move

all pictures meesages went through A ok

Thanks

[WHIZZER55]

Hi There,

Tried again last - but still had the same error !

Any suggestions SONY?

Thanks

[M-AD]

Speculating here, as I have not tried this myself, however I do know that either Jelly Bean / KitKat brought in restrictions on app access to writing to SD Cards (hence why you can not install apps to SD card anymore). Therefore, when you are downloading music, my assumption is that the device will download the music to the phone first, then copy it internally to SD. If there is a lot in one go, this may report the space issue. Perhaps try moving smaller chunks of your library at a time?

Would also be interested to know if the space is being taken up by the cache - open Settings > Storage, and see what the Cached Data is reporting - my guess is that this will be high if transferring data from phone to SD

[HHGTTG]

Maybe I should post this as a new thread but similarly when I edit a photo and save it, it appears also to be saved to internal memory and not my 64GB SD card.:smileyconfused: