So you bought the 32GB Microsoft Surface RT with Windows RT and realized that having only 20GB of usable space or less is not enough for you, so you buy a MicroSD card to try and expand storage capacity. It’s a cheaper way to go rather than buying the 64GB version. Then you realize that you can’t add any removable drive to the Windows media libraries (music, video, pictures) and so none of the included apps display them in their libraries. Well, here’s a work-around to this issue on your tablet:
Adding a MicroSD to Your Music, Video, and Picture Library on Surface with Windows RT
- First, make sure the MicroSD card is inserted securely into your Windows RT tablet.
- Open up the file browser in desktop mode.
- Go into your MicroSD drive on the file browser and create 3 new folders (Music, Pictures, Videos). Make sure the folders are named “Music” “Pictures” and “Videos”or it may not show up in the apps.
- Navigate to your user directory (e.g. C:Users(your username) )
- Right-click on “My Music“
- Select Properties
- Then in the Properties window, select the “Location” tab
- Click “Move“
- Browser over to your SD card, and select the music folder you created
- If you have any files in your Surface or Windows RT device’s media library, it will ask you if you want to transfer it over. It’s up to you if you want to or not.
- Click “OK“
- Repeat the same steps for your Pictures and Videos libraries
Now, there you have it. Your Music, Pictures, and Video media libraries are now all on your SD card and will show up in the “My Media” portion of your apps! You can also share these folders now using my steps in my other post (How To: Enable File and Print Sharing Windows/Surface RT). You can also do the same thing from your networked/mapped SkyDrive drive.
*Note: I had music on my Surface RT already and it required me to uninstall and then reinstall the music and video apps from the Windows App Store in order to get rid of the old songs and show the ones on the MicroSD. I also could have just been impatient.