Working with external storage in the Android emulator could be a little tricky and the documentation is not easy to find. I'll try to give a brief walk through of the steps needed to create a SD card image, mount the image in Linux, put content on it and use it in the emulator.
Creating a SD card image
In both the 1.1 and 1.5 version of the SDK there is a tool called mksdcard located in the SDK Install Dir/tools folder. Simply run
./mksdcard 128M my128MbCard
to create a 128Mb SD card with the name my128MbCard.
Mounting a SD card image in Linux
To be able to put content on to the card you can mount the card in Linux. It will then simply appear as a folder in the filesystem.
First make a directory in the /media folder:
sudo mkdir /media/mycard
Then mount the card as a loopback device:
sudo mount -o loop my128MbCard /media/mycard
Adding content to the card
With content we usually mean media content like images and videos. Images and videos are located in a folder called /dcim/Camera. You could of course add any content to the card. When you are done copying your files be sure to umount the card otherwise it will not be usable from the emulator.
sudo umount /media/mycard/
Using the card in the emulator
Google added something called Android Virtual Device (AVD) to the SDK 1.5. To create a new AVD using our newly created SDcard image run the following:
./android create avd --name myAVD --target 2 --sdcard my128MbCard
Target 2 means that we want to use the 1.5 API features in the device. Now we simply fire up the emulator and start using our content:
./emulator -avd myAVD
More information about the new SDK can be found here: SDK
Mårten Österberg
Consultant at Jayway
32 comments ↓
Thanks for this tutorial!!
It was very helpful.
[...] 14, 2009 First of all, you may wish to have a look here, and setup a memory card in your project directory called my128MbCard if you want to use any of the [...]
What do you do if you don’t have linux?
Hi Elad,
I don’t have much experience with the Android SDK on windows but I suppose you could still mount the iso file using a mount tool. This might be a good start: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/mount-an-iso-image-in-windows-vista/
When I try to mount, it says
mount: -o loop: option not supported
what should i do
Hi. It was an useful article. Thanks
Thanks budy!
I figured this out on Windows, in case anyone needs that info. Go to \http://www.androidref.com\ and look for \How to create an SD card, store a contact photo, and display the photo on the handset.\.
Hey,
For the last steps of creating AVD, Can we use the -sdcard option for the emulator?
./emulator -sdcard my128MbCard .
Regards,
Channa
Hay, Thanks buddy steps are working as it is…
Thanks a lot man….it helped me to access the sdcard in linux……i am using the 2.1 version of the SDK……though the last two steps for emulator are not needed if you are using eclipse for developing apps…..in eclipse go to
Run->Debug Configurations->Target->Addtional Emulator command line options, type the following
-sdcard /the path where we have created the my128MbCard/my128MbCard
once again thanks a lot
[...] http://blog.jayway.com/2009/04/22/working-with-sd-cards-in-the-android-emulator/ http://wiki.frandroid.com/wiki/DevGuide/tutorials/hello-world.html http://www.android.encke.net/ [...]
Great way to transfer files in an emulator!! I’m using Android 2.1, waiting for the Google I/O conference news! This is wonderful!
[...] an sd card and connect that sd card image with the an android emulator. The post by Jayway team (http://blog.jayway.com/2009/04/22/working-with-sd-cards-in-the-android-emulator/) helped me to get started but those instructions are linux specific and didn’t work for me on [...]
@ #5 Andy, I understand you are using a Mac like myself. See this:
http://2cupsoftech.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/working-with-android-sd-cards-image-on-mac/
thanks. that was helpful
hi
this is very useful and working well.thank you
very useful paper.. Thank you..
A question…
The sdcard format is FAT. Is possible to change this format to ext2 or ext3 format ?
Thanks in advance!!
Thanks a lot for sharing.
But i want to make one small application which will check status of my External storage,Add files or pictures into External storge ,and read that data from Gallery folder of my emulator.
Can u help me to accomplish my app.
Thanks
[...] can use the DDMS perspective on Eclipse (blog.jayway.com/2009/04/22/working-with-sd-cards-in-the-android-emulator/) to view the sd card on the running emulator, and can copy files to the root folder, but I [...]
I am using Android SDK by Eclipse on windows 7 environment. How can i create folder in somelocation of SD card?
Crisp Info!
can you explain for windows
Helpful explanation. I made a Bash script for testing my Android app that does the things above: https://github.com/vermasque/song-alarm/blob/master/tests/make_sdcard.sh
Hi
Do you know how to make a sdcard with partition in the sdcard?
Thanks
while creating itself select sd card .its simple.then using file explorer from window->view you can store and retrive data on sdcard!!!!
[...] http://blog.jayway.com/2009/04/22/working-with-sd-cards-in-the-android-emulator/ [...]
In OSX, just name the image .iso and type ‘open mycard.iso’ and it will be mounted and available in Finder
Thanks !!!
I will try it and i wil tell you about the results.
Hi
If you are using Eclipse it is very easy to create SD card at the time of creating a new virtual device.
Here is the link used for me:
http://androiddevelopement.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-to-emulate-sd-card-with-android.html
Thanks Buddy ! It is working. By the way what is the idea behind mount and unmount ? If anyways we are going to unmount then why mount ?
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