• mountPoint: filesystem path of this mount.
• storageDescription: string resource that describes this mount.
• primary: true if this mount is the primary external storage.
• removable: true if this mount has removable media, such as a physical SD card.
• emulated: true if this mount is emulated and is backed by internal storage, possibly using a FUSE daemon.
• mtp-reserve: number of MB of storage that MTP should reserve for free storage. Only used when mount is marked as emulated.
• allowMassStorage: true if this mount can be shared via USB mass storage.
• maxFileSize: maximum file size in MB.

Devices may provide external storage by emulating a case-insensitive, permissionless filesystem backed by internal storage. One possible implementation is provided by the FUSE daemon insystem/core/sdcard, which can be added as a device-specificinit.rcservice:

# virtual sdcard daemon running as media_rw (1023)
service sdcard /system/bin/sdcard   1023 1023
  class late_start

Wheresource_pathis the backing internal storage anddest_pathis the target mount point.

When configuring a device-specificinit.rcscript, theEXTERNAL_STORAGEenvironment variable must be defined as the path to the primary external storage. The/sdcardpath must also resolve to the same location, possibly through a symlink. If a device adjusts the location of external storage between platform updates, symlinks should be created so that old paths continue working.

Android 6.0

Configuration of the storage subsystem is now concentrated in the device-specificfstabfile, and several historical static configuration files/variables have been removed to support more dynamic behavior:

• Thestorage_list.xmlresource overlay has been removed and is no longer used by the framework. Storage devices are now configured dynamically when detected byvold.
• TheEMULATED_STORAGE_SOURCE/TARGETenvironment variables have been removed and are no longer used by Zygote to configure user-specific mount points. Instead, user separation is now enforced with user-specific GIDs, and primary shared storage is mounted into place byvoldat runtime.
• Developers may continue to build paths dynamically or statically depending on their use case. Including the UUID in the path identifies each card to make location clearer for developers. (For example,/storage/ABCD-1234/report.txtis clearly a different file than/storage/DCBA-4321/report.txt.)
• The hard-coded FUSE services have been removed from device-specificinit.rcfiles and are instead forked dynamically fromvoldwhen needed.

In addition to these configuration changes, Android 6.0 includes the notion of adoptable storage. For Android 6.0 devices, any physical media that is not adopted is viewed as portable.

Adoptable storage

To indicate an adoptable storage device in thefstab, use theencryptable=userdataattribute in thefs_mgr_flagsfield. Here’s a typical definition:

/devices/platform/mtk-msdc.1/mmc_host*      auto   auto   defaults
voldmanaged=sdcard1:auto,encryptable=userdata

When a storage device is adopted, the platform erases the contents and writes a GUID partition table that defines two partitions:

• a small emptyandroid_metapartition that is reserved for future use. The partition type GUID is 19A710A2-B3CA-11E4-B026-10604B889DCF.
• a largeandroid_extpartition that is encrypted using dm-crypt and formatted using eitherext4orf2fsdepending on the kernel capabilities. The partition type GUID is 193D1EA4-B3CA-11E4-B075-10604B889DCF.

Portable storage

In thefstab, storage devices with thevoldmanagedattribute are considered to be portable by default unless another attribute likeencryptable=userdatais defined. For example, here’s a typical definition for USB OTG devices:

/devices/*/xhci-hcd.0.auto/usb*       auto      auto  defaults
                          voldmanaged=usb:auto

The platform usesblkidto detect filesystem types before mounting, and users can choose to format the media when the filesystem is unsupported.