how to emulate an SD card with the Android emulator

Here are the required step to use an SDCard :

1) Create the emulated SDCard on your real computer :

Google provides a tool just for that, in their SDK/tools directory called mksdcard.
just give it the size of the SdCard you want to create ( in kilobytes or megabytes ) , the name of the resulting file, and you're done :
Open a command prompt, go to your SDK/tool directory, and type :
mksdcard 64M MyNewSdCard
and that's it !


2) Using the emulated SDCard with the emulator

To use the emulated SDCard in the emulator, simply launch the emulator with the '-sdcardEmulatedCard_File_Path' parameter :

So, from the command prompt in the SDK/Tool directory, type :

emulator -sdcard MyNewSdCard

3) Using the emulated SDCard with the emulator from Eclipse :

From eclipse, open the menu entry :

Run / RunConfigurations...

Then on the right panel, choose 'target'

And in the Additionnal Emulator Command Line Options, add

'-sdcard fullPath_to_your_SdCard_File'

And that'all !

4) How to explore the emulated SdCard content and push / pull files from your computer :

Within Eclipse :

Open the DDMS perspective :

Window / Open Perspective / Other... / DDMS

Now select the file explorer tab ( in the right panel ), and you have acces to a classic explorer of your emulated phone, including the sdcard !

Now to push a file from your computer, or pull a file from the emulated device, you have two discrete icons in the upper right corner :

Just use them to to browse and select on your computer the file to pull or push !

Without Eclipse :

Just launch DDMS from the command prompt in the SDK / tools directory.

The file explorer is in the device menu...