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file system

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Paragon's Total Commander plugin brings exFAT, NTFS, and HFS+ support to Android

Corbin Davenport

Android has supported external drives connected via USB for years, but the file system support hasn't been great. Paragon Software has been developing disk and file management software for years, and back in 2012 even released a root-only app for mounting exFAT and NTFS drives on Android. Now the company has released "exFAT/NTFS for Total Commander," finally allowing access to more file systems without root.

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Android 5.0 Makes SD Cards Great Again, Extends API To Allow Full Directory Access, Automatic MediaStore, And Improves Security

Cody Toombs

Over the last few years, few topics have been more hotly contested by Android users and developers than how SD cards are handled by the OS. Back in February, I discussed some of Google's changes during the transition from Android 2.3 to 4.0, and then how more recent policy changes ultimately led to 3rd-party applications losing most of their access to removable storage. By the time I/O came around, Google acknowledged that KitKat's newly added Storage Access Framework still didn't offer enough range for apps to get their work done. With the release of the L Developer Preview, new APIs were added to allow apps to request access to directories owned by other providers.

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Android "L" Feature Spotlight: Storage Access Framework Enables Batch Operations With Full Directory Access

Cody Toombs

Android 4.4 contained a number of interesting and very powerful features for developers, many of which went unused or misunderstood for quite a long time. Since it was introduced in KitKat, The Storage Access Framework (SAF) may be one of the best examples of an API that has been underutilized, despite offering a great method to provide cleaner and more informative interfaces. I even theorized that it may ultimately take the place of file system access. A big limiting factor of the SAF has been its very granular interaction with files. With the L release, that hinderance is going away as the Storage Access Framework has been expanded to allow providers to grant full read and write access to entire subdirectories.

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External Blues Redux: Apps Still Have A Loophole For Writing To The SD Card On KitKat, But For How Long?

Cody Toombs

"Because the history of computing has taught us is that data will not be contained. Data breaks free. It expands to new media, crashes through barriers; painfully, maybe even dangerously. But, uh, there it is… Data finds a way." - Jeff Goldblum as Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Gift Shop)

When we last left our favorite removable storage device, OEMs had begun adopting Google’s policy for restricting write access to SD cards. Given the nature of the Android community, it was probably safe to assume the story wouldn’t simply end with some people rooting to re-enable classic file system access and the rest passively accepting that the SD slot was just for decoration.

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Easily Restore Full Access To The SD Card On Android 4.4 KitKat With SDFix (Root Required)

Cody Toombs

Last month we posted an article examining some very significant changes to the way SD cards could be accessed and how Google's partner OEMs had begun enforcing these restrictions with Android 4.4. There can be no doubt, a lot of people were displeased to see their expandable storage crippled. While some have vowed to never update to KitKat, and others have turned to custom ROMs that don't enforce the same rules, there are still many people that still want to have the best of both worlds. Thanks to SDFix by developer Tod Liebeck, it's possible to restore the SD card to its former glory on a rooted stock ROM in just a few seconds.

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External Blues: Google Has Brought Big Changes To SD Cards In KitKat, And Even Samsung Is Implementing Them

Cody Toombs

In recent years, Google hasn’t exactly been known as particularly hospitable toward SD cards with regard to its Android operating system. This theme is most often associated with the Nexus line of devices - the Nexus One was the only such handset to ever offer expandable storage. But despite arguments from Dan Morrill and Matias Duarte suggesting this stance is about keeping the Android interface simple and file picker-free, people still want more space. Google is apparently firming up its position on expandable storage even further, though, and in a way that limits flexibility and changes how we can use it.

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Samsung Creates F2FS, A New Open Source File System For Flash Storage, Contributes It To Linux

Ryan Whitwam

Most of the file systems in use today were designed in an era when rotating discs ruled the world. Well, as things have shifted more toward NAND flash-based storage in mobile devices the problems with older file systems have been more visible. Samsung has just tackled the problem by designing a new file system called F2FS that's geared toward flash storage specifically. What's better, it is open source and has been submitted to the Linux kernel. This makes it perfect for implementation in Android.

Matrix

This isn't the first time Samsung tried to deploy a new file system. RFS was used on the original Galaxy S phones with catastrophic results.

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