mksdcard

Use the mksdcard tool to create a FAT32 disk image that you can load into emulators running different Android Virtual Devices (AVDs) to simulate the presence of the same SD card in multiple devices.

The mksdcard tool provided in the Android SDK Tools package is located in android-sdk/emulator/mksdcard.

If you don't need a disk image that can be shared among multiple virtual devices, you don't need to use the mksdcard command. By default, the emulator uses the default image that is generated by and stored with the active AVD instead.

Usage

To use the mksdcard tool, use the following command:

mksdcard -l label size file

Options

The following table describes the command-line options of mksdcard:

Option	Description
-l label	A volume label for the disk image to create
size	An integer that specifies the size of the disk image to create. If size is a simple integer, it specifies the size in bytes. You can also specify the size in kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes by appending K, M, or G to size. For example, 1048576K or 1024M. The minimum size is 9M. The Android emulator cannot use smaller images. The maximum size is 1099511627264 bytes, which equates to 1023 GB.
file	The path/filename of the disk image to create relative to the current working directory.

Example

Create the mySdCardFile.img disk image:

mksdcard -l mySdCard 1024M mySdCardFile.img

Start two emulators with different AVDs. Use the -sdcard flag to specify the name and path of the disk image you created:

emulator -avd Pixel_API_25 -sdcard mySdCardFile.img
emulator -avd NEXUS_6_API_25 -sdcard mySdCardFile.img

For more information about the emulator command and its options, see Start the emulator from the command line.