From Newsgroup: comp.mobile.android

PSA: Advice for organizing an external & internal sdcard on Android

Below is advice learned after over a decade of experience organizing
and backing up Android devices with internal and external sdcards.

The very first thing most people do, and in fact, most camera apps do, is
set the external sdcard as the location to put camera images and videos.

The problem is that Android *pollutes* the top level of both sdcards
/internal-sdcard/{pollution}
/internal-sdcard/{pollution}

Unfortunately, most camera apps force you to place that at the top level.
/external-sdcard/DCIM/Camera/{dated_images.jpg}
So there's not much you can do about some of the pollution.

And, some APK archives force you to place the APKs at the top level such as
/internal-sdcard/AppManager/sdks/{package1.sdk,package2.sdks,etc.}

But a lot of our data is actually under our control.
a. This is important for when we backup/restore our data
b. And it's important when we *look* for our data
c. Especially when we're looking at our data "mounted" from a desktop

What I do is the following (which I consider brilliant due to its
simplicity couple with the immense power that this simplicity adds).
1. I back up my one and only data directory on both sdcards
2. I can tell which sd card I'm on just by looking at the 1st folder
3. I know the full path to my external sd card (in most instances)

What I suggest people do to is format the external sd card to an easily remembered character set such as the following (but anything will do).
0000-0001

The *reason* I suggest that, is many apps (not all, but many) will
reference the sdcard as /0000-0001 (using the volume name you gave it).

If you don't format the volume name, then you end up with random characters such as /AF2D-C4EB which is *much harder* to remember when you need it.

The third thing I would suggest people do is to put on the two sdcards a top-level directory whose name is designed to unambiguously show up first.
For the internal sdcard, I might use a top-level folder name of "0000"
For the external sdcard, I might use a top-level folder name of "0001"
The name doesn't matter as much as
a. Naming it so that it unambiguously shows up first in a listing
b. Naming it so that you can easily remember it, over the decades

Then, the fourth, and most important organizational task I suggest is
people put everything they actually care about *only* in those folders!

Why?

Because the nature of Android, much like the nature of Windows, is to
pollute the user folders that it knows about so badly they become a swamp.

These "000" and "0001" folders that we've just created will *never* be
polluted because they're non-standard. They only contain *our stuff*.

Which is the point.

So, for example, we put your map databases in /0000-0001/0001/maps/.
And, for example, we put your PDF files in /0000-0001/0001/docs/pdfs/.
etc.

We back up that one "0001" folder, and we've backed up what we care about. Everything else (for the most part) is merely typical Android pollution.

If it's something we need even when the sd card is removed, then we put it
in the internal storage, but always in the "0000" folder at the top level.

For example, our encrypted passwords might go into internal storage under
/0000/passwords/keepassdx.dbx
And our saved contact databases might go into internal storage under
/0000/backup/contacts.vcf
We might save our homescreen setup into internal storage for recovery
/0000/backup/homescreen.nbs

The astounding beauty of this philosophy is we can tell, instantly which sd card we're looking at (which isn't as easy as we might think, especially
when using adb non-graphical interfaces) and more importantly, to back up
our *important data*, we only need (mostly) to back up two directories.
1. Back up the 0000 folder on the internal sdcard
2. Back up the 0001 folder on the external sdcard

Once we back up those two folders, our backup is (nearly) complete!
Restoring is trivial, as is swapping out the sdcard for a new sdcard.

Just format the new sdcard to "0000-0001" and copy back the 0001 folder!
--
Once we understand the complexities, the whole thing becomes very simple.

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