Am just setting up a Hudl 2 with one main account (me) and two restricted profiles (for kiddies alice and bob). I want to put some videos on the external SD card, ideally I would have some segregated areas for the restricted profiles as well as some shared space, but at the moment I cannot make any sense of what is happening.

The SD card has no folders set up like the internal storage, and putting videos on root did not work (they would not play). So, using a laptop connected to the Hudl logged in to Alice, I made a "Movies" folder to mimic the internal storage, and put stuff there. It worked, so far so good.

I then logged in to Bob, and I could not see the Movies folder. But nor could I create a Movies folder - I had to choose a different name.

So I went with "Movies - Alice" and "Movies - Bob", and I thought it worked (Alice could only see Alice's videos, Bob could only see Bob's), but at some point Alice became able to see videos that were stored under Bob's profile (but *not* vice versa). Strange.

So my questions are
- Is there a "correct" folder structure to use on the external memory? What is it? (for music/video/other stuff)
- What read rights should restricted profile accounts have over other users' storage?

I am quite surprised that googling hasn't turned up much helpful information, am grateful for any advice.

TIA
GetFrodo

Which version of Android is the Hudl running? SD card handling ranges from "bodge job" to "mediocre" depending on the version. It may be that it simply isn't possible - Android's internal storage uses ext4 to the best of my knowledge, which handles users and permission like a boss; SD cards are generally formatted in FAT, which is inherently permissionless.

There may be a way to format the SD card as ext4 and have Android naturally use this, though (a) this is a faff if you don't have a Linux PC nearby and (B) it may be that Android just 'expects' the SD card to be FAT and doesn't bother trying to apply permissions and owners. I doubt Android supports NTFS, which would be the other option.

As a quick check, it might be worth creating the folders on device rather than via a laptop, using a file manager (File Expert HD for example). It may be that Android uses some internal voodoo to keep track of SD card permissions in spite of a file system that doesn't support them, if it 'knows' who created them. It's a long shot but it's a quick one...

Thanks r^2. It's running 4.4.2. I can't create folders on the device itself - according to the Astro file manager, apps cannot write to external storage (since kitkat).

I might try reformatting the card as ext4 but won't be able to do that for a couple of weeks. All users are now seeing all media files, so maybe the earlier inconsistency was just a glitch.

So is the internal storage treated differently wrt permissions? I bit academic actually as space is very limited, but am curious none the less...