How to turn USB-flash drive in internal memory on Xiaomi smartphones

Owners of Xiaomi’s budget and mid-budget models, such as the Redmi Note or Pocophone, often face a critical shortage of free space. Built-in storage of 64 or 128 GB may not be enough to install heavy games, store photos in high resolution and work messengers, which over time grow to giant sizes. SD-Cards – often a half-measure, as the Android system by default allows you to store only media files, but not applications on it.

There is Adoptable Storage technology that allows the system to perceive the external drive as an extension of internal memory. However, Xiaomi in the shell of MIUI (and the new HyperOS) often hides this feature or completely blocks it at the software level, this is done to ensure the stability of the device, but for the experienced user becomes a barrier.

In this article, we will discuss safe and advanced methods of activating this feature, you will learn how to prepare the drive, what risks exist for the life of the flash drive and whether this method should be used at all in the future. 2026-2026 We'll look at the work with the ADB-commands and system configuration files.

⚠️ Note: All of the steps below require formatting the drive, all data on the flash drive or memory card will be permanently deleted. Be sure to back up important documents before starting the procedure.

Adoptable Storage Technology: How it Works in MIUI

Since Android 6.0, Google has implemented a feature that allows you to encrypt and format an external drive so that it becomes part of the system partition. Unlike the usual mode, where the card serves as a "portable storage", in the Adoptable Storage mode, the system records there the cache of applications, databases and even the very same. APK-program.

MIUI shell is known for its aggressive optimization and limitations. Xiaomi engineers often disable the option to select “Use as internal storage” mode in the standard settings menu, which is because budget memory cards can run slower than an embedded eMMC or UFS chip, leading to slowdowns and long downloads of applications.

However, the hardware of most Redmi and Poco smartphones supports external drives in this mode. The restriction is purely software-based and often bypasses special debugging commands. It is important to understand that after this procedure, the flash drive will only work in this particular smartphone.

If you decide to activate this feature, the system will create a special partition with the ext4 or f2fs file system, which will be encrypted with a unique key. Without this key stored in a secure area of the smartphone processor, it will be impossible to read data from the flash drive on a computer or other phone.

Choosing the Right Drive: Speed and Protection Classes

Before you start setting up, you need to choose the right hardware. Turning a regular flash drive or a cheap microSD card into internal memory is a stress test for the drive. Constantly writing logs, cache and temporary files will quickly disable a slow device.

For a Xiaomi-based smartphone to work smoothly, you need to use high-speed drives. The minimum standards required are Class 10, UHS-I or A1/A2. The A1 (Application Performance Class) marking is especially important because it guarantees a certain number of I/O operations per second (IOPS), which is critical for application operation.

• 🚀 Write speed: Choose cards with a write speed of at least 90 MB / s, so that the interface does not “freeze” when installing applications.
• 🛡️ Water and magnet protection: Because the drive will be running all the time, physical reliability is key.
• 💾 Volume: It is recommended to use cards with a volume of 64 GB, as a smaller volume will quickly fill up with system files.

Using old memory cards that have been lying around for years is not recommended. The memory cell resource is limited to the number of rewrite cycles. If you turn a worn card into internal memory, the smartphone can start to freeze or fly out after a few weeks of active use.

💡

Buy memory cards only in official stores or from trusted dealers.The market is saturated with fakes, where the claimed volume of 128 GB is actually 8 GB, which will lead to data loss immediately after filling.

Preparation of the smartphone and the inclusion of debugging by USB

To activate hidden functions in MIUI We're going to need access to the developer menu, and that's standard for anyone who wants to get extended control of their Xiaomi device. ADB-teams are impossible.

First, you need to activate the hidden menu. Go to Settings, select About Phone, and find the MIUI Version (or OS Version) string. You need to quickly tap that line with your finger 7-10 times in a row until the pop-up notice "You've become a developer" appears.

Then we go to the advanced settings. The path may vary slightly depending on the version of the shell, but it usually looks like this: Settings → Additional → Developers. In this list, you need to find Debug on USB and activate the switch. The system will warn about the risks, agree.

Also in the developer menu, it is recommended to find the item "Do not turn off the screen" during charging, so that the smartphone does not go into sleep mode during the setup process, although this is not critical for this operation.

Instructions: activation through ADB-team

The most reliable way to make Xiaomi see the flash drive as internal memory is to use the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) toolkit, which works on most models where the feature is simply hidden from the interface but not removed from the system kernel completely.

First, connect your smartphone to a computer with drivers and platform tools installed. Open the command line or terminal in the ADB folder and type in the connection check command: adb devices. On the phone screen, you will see a request for debugging permission — click "Always Allow" and confirm.

To force the function of external drive support, enter the following command:

adb shell pm set-install-location 2

This command tells the system that external storage is the preferred place to install applications. However, formatting the card as internal memory often requires a more complex procedure through disk: identifiers, which can vary depending on the version of Android. On some versions of HyperOS, the command can be blocked, then you will need to use third-party utilities like Activity Launcher.

⚠️ Warning: If the phone starts to behave unstable after the command is executed, immediately cancel the action. Enter the command adb shell pm set-install-location 0 to return the standard settings for the placement of applications.

In some cases, especially on global firmware versions, the sm set-force-adoptable true command may not be available without root rights. If you don't have superuser rights, this method may not work, and the system will only offer a standard Portable Storage.

Alternative methods and work with configuration files

If ADB-commands do not give results, you can try the method of editing the system file device.xml. This method requires root rights or the use of special launchers that can open hidden activities of the Xiaomi system.

The method is to change the Boolean value in the configuration file, which tells the system whether the device supports forced encryption of external drives. The file is usually located along the path /system/etc/permissions/.

• 📂 Find the file. device.xml Create a new configuration file.
• 📝 Add a line. <feature name="android.software adoptable storage" /> c-block.
• 💾 Save the changes and restart the device.

A simpler, less stable option is to use Activity Launcher, which is to search for the word "Storage" or "Storage" in the app, and then you need to find the hidden activity that's responsible for formatting and run it, and this can open up a standard system formatting window that's usually hidden.

Users also note that some Redmi models with MediaTek processors make it easier to unlock this feature than Snapdragon, due to differences in memory controller drivers.

Performance comparison: built-in memory vs. flash drive

It is important to objectively assess the impact of memory expansion. The built-in smartphone drive and the external memory card operate on different protocols and have different response rates. Below is a table showing typical differences in performance.

As you can see from the table, even the fastest memory card is significantly inferior to the built-in UFS chip. When installing heavy games on a flash drive, the loading time can increase by 2-3 times. The interface can become less responsive, especially when several background processes are working simultaneously.

In addition, the constant use of external drive as a system increases power consumption. the memory controller is forced to constantly poll the card, which leads to faster battery discharge Xiaomi in standby mode.

💡

Use the flash drive as internal memory only for storing photos, music and light applications. Heavy games and system services are better left on the built-in drive to keep the performance.

Frequent problems and ways to solve them

During the operation of the smartphone with extended memory, users may encounter a number of typical errors. Android system may periodically issue notifications that "SD-The card is slow or require re-formatting.

One of the common problems is data desynchronization. Because external memory is less reliable, if the power is suddenly turned off or the system crashes, the file table can be damaged, in which case the smartphone will suggest formatting the drive, which will lead to the loss of all data on it.

You can also reduce the overall performance of the device, and if you notice that the phone is slowing down after the memory expansion, it makes sense to move the most important applications back to the internal drive, and you can do this through the Settings → Apps menu.

⚠️ Warning: Never remove a memory card or flash drive while the phone is on if it is configured as internal memory.This is guaranteed to crash applications whose data is stored on the drive and may require a complete flashing of the smartphone.

If your smartphone stops seeing the drive, try clearing the Media Storage cache through the application management menu, sometimes helping the system re-index files and restore data access without losing information.