Develop Bugs

Why is my HTC Desire have 139 of ram ?

Hi to all i have buy the HTC Desire from http://www.clove.co.uk and my device have only 139 of ram ?
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It's normal, every Desire has around 140mb free for apps. I think Android takes some and Sense takes some, and some is reserved probably for whatever reason. Leaving you with 140mb. Google has announced that it will be possible to install apps on the SD Card in the near future. Don't worry about it.

Everyone has the same amount of memory as yours, The rest of the memory is used by Operating system, If you want to install more apps then go for "root" and install A2SD. you can find loads of topics here and at modaco. Go through the desire sections properly and u will find all the answers to your questions.

it's rom not ram *sigh*

oh thanks for all

i always use this very simple explanation
Let's say you have some land and would like to build a parking on it.
The size of your land is 100 square meters
Each car needs 10 square meters....but in the end you can't park ten cars on the your land , because you have to deducted the white lines etc....this is the same thing with Hard drives etc .......some KBytes are needed for the root system etc.....

crypta said:
it's rom not ram *sigh*
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wrong, it's RAM.

ToxicWasted said:
Wrong, it's RAM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wrong to all that are saying to install app2sd. OS and applications are installed in the ROM, but launched in the RAM.

ROM = Read Only Memory
RAM = Random Access Memory
All of the application memory in the phone is non-volatile RAM.
Traditionally a ROM can only be written by flashing it offline. This is to say that runtime read/write access is atypical.
Proceeding from this premise, the only real ROM(s) in the phone are the radio and boot images. The rest of the memory holds a normal rw file system.
In theory, all of the "ROM's" here are not really ROM's at all, they're operating systems... much like Windows is an OS, not a ROM.

so I am interested in your suggestion fpr normal forum talk, to sort these things out.
in the technical explanation you are mostly right.
so how you would call the storage and the working memory in one simple term?

crypta said:
so I am interested in your suggestion fpr normal forum talk, to sort these things out.
in the technical explanation you are mostly right.
so how you would call the storage and the working memory in one simple term?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
v-ram (volatile ram = working space)
nv-ram (non-volatile ram = storage space)
- In pure engineering terms this isn't true but the paradigm is to treat memory allocation as volatile.
But then, it does become semantic very quickly. It used to be that the only thing many people ever flashed were roms... this was because traditionally the only type of nv solid state storage that the average person had access to was a rom - never needed to flash ram because it was (mostly) volatile (yes, there are exceptions). The point being that people associated "flashing" with "roms" when "flashing" should really be associated with "solid state memory" (of any description).
So, the correct term is "flashing" yes, but we've incorrectly incorporated/encompassed the term "rom" in the extended definition.
If you flash a boot image you're doing a rom flash
If you flash a radio image you're doing a rom flash
If you "flash" a CyanogenMod "ROM" (for example) you're actually just copying an archive to a file system, expending it and executing it.
And all rather pointless because we all know what everyone means when they say "I flashed my phone"

funny to see this threads next to each other:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=675703
and clearly, theres no ROM like in commodore time (c64 / amiga), but it is called so, even in the specs of many devices.

crypta said:
so I am interested in your suggestion fpr normal forum talk, to sort these things out.
in the technical explanation you are mostly right.
so how you would call the storage and the working memory in one simple term?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
HDD hard disk drive - where user files such as images, videos, music are stored
ROM read only memory - where the system lies (normally can not be written to)
RAM random access memory - memory in which applications are launched and remain until ended (for example anti-virus software will stay in the RAM)

[Q] How does APPS2SD *actually* work?

Hey guys,
Been searching on this for a whle and haven't found the info I'm looking for.
How does the custom APPS2D actually work? By that I mean, what is it really doing? I know it's copying the app(s) to the partitioned ext2/3/4 area of the sdcard, but how does it know *what* part of the app to move as it seems something is always left on the phone.
I'm currently running AdamG's OpenDesire 3.0.5 (nice) and thanks to the script provided by msdl28712 in this thread here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=748529, I can see that APPS2SD is saving me "188MB". Pretty nice.
But my internal memory is still going down. I started out at about 148MB I think. I'm currently at about 115MB free. Of course, that's fantastic - but it sort of suggests that, even though I've downloaded loads of apps to the sd card, they will always leave some footprint/config/data on the internal memory of various sizes (as I can see it on my info page).
So really, I am still quite limited in the number of apps I can store. Even though I gave myself a nice big 4gb ext4 partition, I'll still hit a limit because of the footprint data left behind on the phone's int memory even after "copying to SD".
Is this right or am I way off?

Although I have no Actual knowledge of what you ask I will say this. The phone needs to be able to function if there is a SD card installed or not and therefore it must have info about the apps installed in the phone memory. I would imagine its very similar to windows and the windows registry. The registry will always be stored on the windows (Phone) storage and the program resources can be anywhere. Therefore when you install an app there will always be a small amount of phone storage required to link to and handle the operations of that program.
All in my opinion.

Some apps, not all, I've found in multiple places on my Eris.
I found it strange that the market wasn't consistently placing them in both places ( actually, that's a good thing, cause it would eat double the space ), but that led me to believe that the developer who wrote whichever particular app that was being stored in 2 location, wrote it to store to additional "backup" location ...
For example, say you download an item from the Android market, and it puts it in the "data\app" folder location. Well, I'd also find another copy in the root of the "cache\" folder ....
The way I found this, was I wondering where the heck all my memory was going, especially since I'd recently installed/uninstalled some various music player apps, but the space wasn't being freed up. I went digging through various folders looking for items, and low and behold, started finding the duplicately stored APK files. I started removing them, and I've monitored that files contents on a regular basis since, which has helped.
- JB

What A2SD? A2SD+, A2SD Froyo?
Found a nice explanation on CM Wiki... can't find it now though...
but there's always short explanation by MIUI Au..if you wanna give it a tryy
http://www.miui-au.com/faq/a2sd/

johnrbrown1968 said:
Some apps, not all, I've found in multiple places on my Eris.
I found it strange that the market wasn't consistently placing them in both places ( actually, that's a good thing, cause it would eat double the space ), but that led me to believe that the developer who wrote whichever particular app that was being stored in 2 location, wrote it to store to additional "backup" location ...
For example, say you download an item from the Android market, and it puts it in the "data\app" folder location. Well, I'd also find another copy in the root of the "cache\" folder ....
The way I found this, was I wondering where the heck all my memory was going, especially since I'd recently installed/uninstalled some various music player apps, but the space wasn't being freed up. I went digging through various folders looking for items, and low and behold, started finding the duplicately stored APK files. I started removing them, and I've monitored that files contents on a regular basis since, which has helped.
- JB
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all you are answering a quite old thread(hint: 8th august)
Second to clarify no, the app is not installed to several locations.. The apk file in the cache is just the one, that the market downloads in order to install it(hint: cache) upon installation the file is placed in the /data/app folder or in case you are using a2sd/a2sd+ it will be placed in /sd-ext/app(the phone still think it is in /data/app, but it wont take up space on the /data partition)
After the installation the downloaded .apk file is sometimes left behind, but as the /cache partition have a fixed size, this won't take up any space for app installs(/data) when the space is needed on the cache partition for another download or something else, the file is eventually deleted.
edit: for people, who want to know the answer to OP, please search I and many others have wrote it over and over again in this very forum.

Removing stock apps...benefits?

Hi all, hopefully some of the more knowledgeable Android tweakers venture out of the Dev forums for a peek here and render some help. I know they get rather pissy if you post questions in there.
I figured I could free up some space if I removed stock apps I didn't use. I have a full licence for Docs To-Go so having QuickOffice pre-installed is a pain.
I followed a guide to move the .apk and .odex from /system/app to a spare SD card and looking at the files in total they combine to be about 6MB in size.
The funny thing is after a restart of my phone I'm no better off in terms of storage space...in fact I lost a couple of MBs!
So, for those in the know...what really IS the deal with the internal storage space?

Aitese said:
Hi all, hopefully some of the more knowledgeable Android tweakers venture out of the Dev forums for a peek here and render some help. I know they get rather pissy if you post questions in there.
I figured I could free up some space if I removed stock apps I didn't use. I have a full licence for Docs To-Go so having QuickOffice pre-installed is a pain.
I followed a guide to move the .apk and .odex from /system/app to a spare SD card and looking at the files in total they combine to be about 6MB in size.
The funny thing is after a restart of my phone I'm no better off in terms of storage space...in fact I lost a couple of MBs!
So, for those in the know...what really IS the deal with the internal storage space?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
there is few benefits to removing stock apps, stock apps are stored on the /system/ partition as you know, the device dosent use this for anything except the os, stock app and other system related items like, .lib files and the kernel, the portion we have as useable data is on the /data/ partiton, so removing apps from /system/ just free's up space on that partiton.
now here are two possible benifits, i removed most of the stock apps, and media files from system to free up enough space, i then did a nandroid backup, and flashed the alpharev sence hboot, giving my device there new partiton tables, it reduce the size of the system partiton, giving me a much bigger /cache/ and a bit more space on /data/ or if you dont want to remove as menny stock apps as me, you can just remove a few, see how much space is in /system/ then using the tut in development, modify you own partition table, removing the free space from /system/ and adding it to /data/, you need s-off to do all this

^ Is it just me or is that very complicated

Thanks AndroHero, that's cleared it up quite a bit.

[Q] System maintainance, SD card decluttering.

From what I've read Android pretty much looks after itself but just wondering if there's any system maintainance that should be done from time to time? (i.e is defraging the SD card OK? Any other things worth doing?)
I've stuck with the stock 2.21 ROM but after installing JIT/Deodexed, debloating, overclocking, and scaleing the phone is running along sweetly. Thing is, about 2 1/2gigs of my 16G card is taken up with various System Recovery backups and I've got .apk files in various places. Can the .apks all be put into the same directory and if so where? I've backed the goaprev folder up to my PC and was going to delete all but the last backup from the phone. Basically, I don't want to do anything stupid now the phones nicely sorted out! Thanks in advance.

Since the seeking time on flash memory is so close to instant that fragmentation does not cause any noticable delays, I see no reason to defragment internal memory or my microSD card.
Furthermore, defragmenting a flash disk/drive, a device with a limited amount of writes, may actually shorten its life-span. In that sense, it may actually be a bad idea.
Backing up is always a good recommendation, when working with any electronic system

Thanks. Any idea if it's ok to move the .apk files? (Could be my OCD but I like things tidy!!) Also, wondering what the situation with ota system updates now I've hacked the phone?...leave well alone or okay? Cheers.

Move apk files - from where to where? Out of /system/app? You could move apks you are certain of you will never need, but the only thing you will gain is - at most - a few megabytes of free space. There's no real performance gain to be had, that I've experienced, just the possibility of losing hair if you remove/rename something you need.
As for OTA updates, you can rename FOTA.apk - that's the package that takes care of those updates.

Got several .apks in the root of my sd card- quite happy to leave them there, I guess and I should avoid ota updates...also is it worth clearing out caches once in a while? Just looking to keep my phone as streamlined and snappy as pos without screwing anything up! I'm new to android so still learning the ropes ! Thanks again

Ah yes, apk files are just installation files. You can move them where-ever you wish, though I would not move them to internal storage.
I do not clear out cache, as I prefer features I use regularly, to be cached already, instead of having to load them from scratch. I have not noticed any performance degradation because of it.
And since I do not share my phone with others, there is no privacy issue to speak of. I do not mind sharing my browsing/twitter/market/auto-complete behaviour with myself.

Making a bigger /data partition for apps

I've been wanting to make a larger /data partition on a Droid Incredible. I mean, after all, it comes with a lot of storage. But there is not nearly enough for apps. Sure. I can use my SD card. But unless there is something I'm not aware of, you can only install some apps to the SD and even when you do, pieces of that app still exist in /data. But what's even worse is the fact that I already use my SD card for movies and videos and such and I just don't really use the unclaimed space of which there is plenty, in the phone, for that sort of thing and yet I can't use it to install apps. I haven't found too much on this topic outside of using App2SD. I did find a lot of talk of using parted and even gparted. But this talk is generally about partitioning your SD card. If I were to use parted or gparted to resize the /data partition at the expense of another partition's space and I did it properly, would the Android system not boot because of it? And if this is doable, is there a better, easier way to do it than using parted and adb or gparted? Also, is there a guide for resizing your /data partition? I could probably survive without one if I had to but it would really be helpful just in case there are some big DO NOT DO's that should be avoided that aren't obvious. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

enigmatl said:
I've been wanting to make a larger /data partition on a Droid Incredible. I mean, after all, it comes with a lot of storage. But there is not nearly enough for apps. Sure. I can use my SD card. But unless there is something I'm not aware of, you can only install some apps to the SD and even when you do, pieces of that app still exist in /data. But what's even worse is the fact that I already use my SD card for movies and videos and such and I just don't really use the unclaimed space of which there is plenty, in the phone, for that sort of thing and yet I can't use it to install apps. I haven't found too much on this topic outside of using App2SD. I did find a lot of talk of using parted and even gparted. But this talk is generally about partitioning your SD card. If I were to use parted or gparted to resize the /data partition at the expense of another partition's space and I did it properly, would the Android system not boot because of it? And if this is doable, is there a better, easier way to do it than using parted and adb or gparted? Also, is there a guide for resizing your /data partition? I could probably survive without one if I had to but it would really be helpful just in case there are some big DO NOT DO's that should be avoided that aren't obvious. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
theres around 780mb in there thats not enough?

JoelZ9614 said:
theres around 780mb in there thats not enough?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He's talking about /data/data/ which is like 150mb, I use the NotEnoughSpace app it lets you store data on cache, emmc, sd card, you should check it out.

Well, I messed with notenoughspace too which was my eason for posting. This was the app that made me say enough is enough, can I just resize /data/data?.
-1- So much space on the incredible is going to waste while programs such as these would have me put apps on the SD where I really do want space for my other stuff like music and movies.
-2- Unless I missed a button or option, NotEnoughSpace came off as annoying to me. I would go into apps and wait for a minute for it to scan every time I do it and then I pick an app, for example Beejive. It makes me move it ONE FILE AT A TIME. And even then, there is stuff you can't move. Can I not just move the app, all of it in one click?
But most importantly, I just want more space on /data/data. I want to resize the partition. The phone has what, 8 gigs on it and allows 150 mb for apps in there which is just crazy.
Can I resize the partition where apps are stored (/data/data) by way of parted or gparted? to avoid the annoyance of using my external storage which I want to use for movies and music? There's probably 6 or so gigs on my phone I'll never use for media that should be meant for apps.
Has anybody resized the data partition? Are there consequences to doing it if it's done properly? Is there a guide? What is the easiest way to do this? Any help would be appreciated.

enigmatl said:
Well, I messed with notenoughspace too which was my eason for posting. This was the app that made me say enough is enough, can I just resize /data/data?.
-1- So much space on the incredible is going to waste while programs such as these would have me put apps on the SD where I really do want space for my other stuff like music and movies.
-2- Unless I missed a button or option, NotEnoughSpace came off as annoying to me. I would go into apps and wait for a minute for it to scan every time I do it and then I pick an app, for example Beejive. It makes me move it ONE FILE AT A TIME. And even then, there is stuff you can't move. Can I not just move the app, all of it in one click?
But most importantly, I just want more space on /data/data. I want to resize the partition. The phone has what, 8 gigs on it and allows 150 mb for apps in there which is just crazy.
Can I resize the partition where apps are stored (/data/data) by way of parted or gparted? to avoid the annoyance of using my external storage which I want to use for movies and music? There's probably 6 or so gigs on my phone I'll never use for media that should be meant for apps.
Has anybody resized the data partition? Are there consequences to doing it if it's done properly? Is there a guide? What is the easiest way to do this? Any help would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ask conap hes good with this type of thing

Making progress but still need help.
There's some talk on the net that you can modify the size of the .img files that nandroid makes and simply flash them back to your phone.
Problem is, I can't find a windows way to do it on the net. The closest that I've come is a program called toporesize. This program will let you open files such as data.img from your nandroid backup. But you can't resize them because you get an error box that says this appears to not be an ext* filesystem. Check size file only to resize the file or use other tools. I'm assuming that means it wants you to check a button that says resize file only no resize2fs. In the one guide I found that talks about this app, it says do not check this box. So I'm assuming if you did, it would work and then when you flashed the file back to your phone, it would either not boot or the size would not be changed properly.
I also noted that there's a thread or two that has posted some custom sized data.img files for download. I would do this as a last resort but would prefer to resize my own data.img for a more precise choice of how large I want it.
The error mentions other tools. Are there other tools or programs for Windows users?
Does anybody have any insight on resizing the /data/data partition either by this method, by using parted/gparted, or any other method that works effectively?

I would avoid trying to alter the size of the partitions on your phone. That is how you end up with a brick. There are other ways including finding out which apps are taking up all of your space. 150 MB does not sound like a lot, but it is considering what is stored there.
Go into Manage Applications and click on the All tab. Then press the menu key and sort by size. Click on the apps near the top with anything higher than 3 or 4 MB. Look at the details in the storage section for each app. You will see a Data line item. If it is really high in proportion of the size of the Application, you should clear it. That will save you a lot of space.
In the case of the Mail app or other social networking apps like Facebook or Twitter, you can go into the settings and restrict how much data is stored on the phone. They can really eat up space by downloading a month of emails, etc ...

ihtfp69 said:
I would avoid trying to alter the size of the partitions on your phone. That is how you end up with a brick. There are other ways including finding out which apps are taking up all of your space. 150 MB does not sound like a lot, but it is considering what is stored there.
Go into Manage Applications and click on the All tab. Then press the menu key and sort by size. Click on the apps near the top with anything higher than 3 or 4 MB. Look at the details in the storage section for each app. You will see a Data line item. If it is really high in proportion of the size of the Application, you should clear it. That will save you a lot of space.
In the case of the Mail app or other social networking apps like Facebook or Twitter, you can go into the settings and restrict how much data is stored on the phone. They can really eat up space by downloading a month of emails, etc ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This request is meant with respect and NOT as a flame but I have to make this request so others don't follow and potentially change the thread into a debate on whether to resize or not resize the partition.
Please let's not start talking about whether this is a good idea or not nor if doing this can make our phone into a brick. Now that it's been said, those lurking and considering this for themselves can make up their own minds. But there are a lot of things talked about throughout XDA that can make your phone into a brick yet things are done in the name of making our devices better.
And yes. We can take action to reduce the amount of data that apps are taking up. To tell you the truth, I would do that even if I had a 1GB partition. I think always saving space when space can be saved is a good idea.
But just in principle, I and probably others want to reclaim that space on our phones that will never be used by anything. Maybe HTC allocated the space as it's allocated because some users won't use an SD card and will then use that space for their media and other miscellaneous stuff.
But once you have an SD card that's way bigger than the extra space on your phone, it becomes pointless to use that space on your phone for media. So I want it available for data.
So both sides of whether to do this or not have now been posed. I ask can we please get back to the topic of how to though I do thank you for your input.
That said, again, does anybody know how to resize your data partition whether by doing it live with parted or gparted or by editing the data.img file that nandroid via clockwork mod puts out? I would really appreciate it.
I tried making a nandroid backup of the phone through clockworkmod, sending the data.img file to my computer, using toporesize to resize it. And by the way, I was forced to check the resize file only no resize2fs button as not doing this generated an error. I then used md5sum to get an md5sum for the new data.img. I then inserted the md5sum in clockwork/nandroid's nandroid.md5 file (with a linux file compatable text editor). I then sent the entire backup back to the phone in a different clockworkmod/backup folder, used rom manager to restore, selected the new resized backup.
After the flashing was complete, I went into my phone only to find that the data partition still had the same amount free (give or take a few K). I wondered if that's because I had to shrink the system file? I was thinking before I started that it's probable that I would have to shrink another partition that had free space so I chose system. I attempted to repeat the above steps from the beginning this time with the plan of shrinking system.img.
No go. toporesize will not shrink it properly. Errors are reported in the process though when I reload it into toporesize, it looks like it has the size I want. Knowing it would probably fail, I tried to continue anyway. Even with the correct md5sum, nandroid won't even start the recovery of that set. You get a status bar for a second and then, the phone just reboots.
So for now, I'm at a loss but I know this can be done.
Whether using this method or another, does anybody know how to properly change the size of the data partition using WINDOWS?

Don't come crying when you brick it.

ihtfp69 said:
Don't come crying when you brick it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have no intentions of such. -1- I will quite likely never brick it as nandroid pretty much has me covered. But if I do, -2- I don't plan on having this phone forever. It's not new any more. There are already several models that are better than the droid incredible that I'm looking at. If I were to brick this phone, yay. Good excuse to buy a new phone. But, odds are, i'll never brick it and come November or December, I'll buy something else anyhow.
So please, this isn't about the risks, of course you can brick your phone trying this or many other things on XDA.
Does anyone know how to resize the data partition using any method that can be done with the help of a Windows machine?

This is a fundamental change to a very sensitive area you have
276 mb for the system rom and 748mb for user apps.Many rom devs seem to be straining to keep the rom below 200mb and it is amazingly easy to fill up 748 mb with little apps.
I would think if it were possible to do this it would have been done by the rom devs first thing. I would love to see a rom dev bump this to 500mb and 1024mb.
Chances are to re partition the partitions on the phones memory is not possible with out a hboot flash or something of a custom bootloader...
I find removing these help... Also i use handcent and gmail.app instead of the stock apps...
friendstream
peep
twitter
flicker
stocks app
facebook

748 mb? I only have 150 available in /data/data. How do you get 748?

enigmatl said:
748 mb? I only have 150 available in /data/data. How do you get 748?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
748mb is the size of the entire /data partition what us devs are doing with the new roms is symlinking things to the /system from /data i've managed to do it without symlinking but it bring the /system to its limits and thats usually not good to do

enigmatl said:
748 mb? I only have 150 available in /data/data. How do you get 748?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my /data/data i have 95.96 MB free
rom 35MB free
app space 212 MB free
internal 6.44GB free

Also /data/data is a different partition than /data so the 150 is not included as part of the 748.

Resize /data/data partition - Update?
Did you ever find a solution to resizing the HTC Incredible's partitions?
I too am fed up with having to constantly clear caches and uninstalled apps, just because the tiny 150MB partition fills up. It's been a problem since my wife and I bought our phones.
I expect it would have to be done by a custom bootloader, but thought I would check and see if you had any success.
If nandroid recreates the partition tables based on the sizes of the .img partition backups, then they could probably be resized by mounting the .IMG files directly under Linux and using Linux tools to resize each one - or - creating a new .img partition of the new size(s), mount the backups and copy everything over to the new one, unmount it and go from there?
Steve

Have you used the Ext4 mod created by Tiny and Jermaine151?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1623038
...and the following is the original thread which has the details of what exactly the mod does:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1315372
If I'm reading this (outdated) thread correctly, this mod is what you're looking for in regards to partitioning /data/data. The second link is provided in the OP of my first link.

SlimSnoopOS said:
Have you used the Ext4 mod created by Tiny and Jermaine151?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1623038
...and the following is the original thread which has the details of what exactly the mod does:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1315372
If I'm reading this (outdated) thread correctly, this mod is what you're looking for in regards to partitioning /data/data. The second link is provided in the OP of my first link.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What he said ^^^^
Just do it.