Develop Bugs

[GUIDE][9-JAN] How to partition your SD card correctly for APPS2SD+ ROMS.

It seems many people are having issues partitioning their SD card for use with Apps2SD+ ROMS using the additional EXT4 partition.
Here is a guide to the method that worked for me. I am not responsible for any loss of data on your phone or PC as a result of following this guide. Read the steps clearly and understand them BEFORE you do anything. Failure to understand the steps involved could see you wiping data from your PC's hard drive with no warning messages to tell you what you are about to do. You have been warned!
Firstly, I couldn't get Partition Wizard for Windows to work. If anyone else has been successful with it please let me know and I will update this post.
Before you start, BACK UP all your data from the SD card. It will all be erased from your SD card during this process.
Although this works on a phone which has already been flashed with an APPS2SD+ compatible ROM. I strongly suggest starting with a freshly flashed ROM with no apps installed before doing this to ensure ALL additionally downloaded and installed apps are installed on to the partition, leaving the maximum possible storage space remaining on your phone.
Here are the steps....
1. Download a copy of GPARTED-LIVE from here. Use your favourite CD burning software to burn the image to CD. The image is bootable so make sure you do not leave the CD as open session when you burn it. This is the software we will use to partition the SD card later on.
2. Start with a freshly formatted SD card with a single FAT32 partition. This can be created using whatever tool you prefer. Use the default cluster size setting. I use the Disk Management tool in Windows under Administrative Tools in Control Panel. You can perform this step by inserting the SD into your PC or mounting it on your PC via the phone.
3. Once formatted with a single partition, insert the SD Card into the phone, disconnect the phone from the PC if it is connected. You may find depending on your rom that the card is recognised as damaged. Don't worry.
4. Format the SD card again using your phone. This is done via SETTINGS - SD & PHONE STORAGE. The SD Card should now mount as normal and your phone should report "Preparing SD Card".
DO NOT COPY ANY FILES OVER TO THE SD CARD YET. Android will have copied over its standard files after formatting so do not delete these, but don't add anything else yet.
5. Once the SD card is formatted and prepared, unmount the SD card and remove it from the phone and insert it back into the PC. You may also connect it to the PC via the phone. If you are using the phone to connect it to the PC at this stage I highly recommend booting into MAGLDR and selecting the Mass Storage Mode option to connect it to the computer. This ensures Android will not try and access it while we are partitioning it.
6. With the SD card now recognised by the PC, reboot your PC from the GPARTED-LIVE CD you burned in step 1. This may take a while to load depending on your PC. Follow the on screen prompts until GPARTED loads correctly.
7. With GPARTED now loaded, select your SD card using the selection in the top right hand side of the GPARTED window. Ensure you have selected the correct storage device by ensuring the capacity is reported correctly. BE VERY CAREFUL NOT TO MES WITH YOUR COMPUTERS HAR DRIVE!! If you are not sure at this stage, please do not proceed as you risk wiping data from your PC. GPARTED will not warn you if you are about to damage system files as you might expect it to.
8. Once selected, you should see a single FAT32 partition displayed with a chart which span the top of the window. Click on "Resize/Move" and drag the slider from the RIGHT across to the LEFT to create an area of unallocated space the size you wish to use for your apps. 1GB should be enough in most cases. It is very important to make sure that the FAT32 partition appears IN FRONT of the unallocated space. Once satisfied, click OK.
9. Right click in the unallocated space you created in the chart and click "Create". A new dialog box should appear. Modify the settings so that the partition is set to "ext4". Leave the cluster size set to "default". Click OK.
10. Back in the main GPARTED screen, you should now see two partitions in the chart, the first being your original FAT32 partition and then to the right is your new EXT4 partition. Click "APPLY" and the changes will be made to the SD card. THIS IS IMPORTANT as no changes are made to your SD card until you click apply. If you miss this step, you will have to start over from step 6 again.
11. Once changes are reported as completed, shut down your PC and remove the SD card. Insert it into your phone and boot the phone. If you connected your SD to the PC via MAGLDR, press the power/hang up key to return to the main menu and choose to boot from NAND.
DONE!!!!!!!
Once the phone is booted (may take a little longer than usual) go back to SETTINGS - SD & PHONE STORAGE and you should see your phone's available storage reported as around 20-40MB less than the total storage capacity. This will vary between different ROMS. Don't expect it to read any higher than it did before you did this if you haven't installed any apps yet.
Check to see that your SD storage is reported as the correct size corresponding with the new size of your FAT32 partition.
Now go ahead and install your apps. You will notice that the phone storage capacity does decrease as you install apps, but the next time you reboot, it should jump back up again. That's what happens on my phone anyway.
Once you are satisfied that all is well, you can connect your SD to the PC again and copy across your data to the FAT32 partition.
Another thing to note is that you don't need to format the EXT4 partition when changing ROMS. As it only stores the applications, when booting for the first time with a new APPS2SD+ supported ROM, it will automatically show up with all your apps and widgets installed. Preferences and widgets will need to be reset however.
I hope this guide helps. Thanks again to all the amazing developers here at XDA who make all this possible, as well as the wonderful community of volunteers and members who keep this show running.

reserved for possible updates and additional methods.

First, thank you for ur tutorial.
But there's a point that make me confused:
"Click on "Resize/Move" and drag the slider from the LEFT across to the right to create an area of unallocated space the size you wish to use for your apps."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
"Back in the main GPARTED screen, you should now see two partitions in the chart, the first being your original FAT32 partition and then to the right is your new EXT4 partition"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It'll be easier if you post a screenshot or just a simple pic drawed by MsPaint to see the partition after format.
Thank you anyway.

yes, some screenshots would be very nice. and maybe this thread should be stickie, very useful! thank you for the guide, i will use this as soon as i have a rom with this support.

You have a little misstyped error in step 11..
You insert the card back into phone, not PC

Great guide, gparted is also part of Ubuntu which is what i used!
Cheers

Thanks for the corrections guys. I have amended the original post.
As for screenshots. It's difficult when I am using a separate boot disk. Most things should be pretty self explanatory once you are actually looking at what I'm describing

Thanks for the guide!
However, if I try to create a new partition, the only choices I have is to make it primary or extended. No logical partition as it is greyed out. Does App2SD+ work with a primary ext4?

great guide! wished this was available before i partitioned mine. did a lot of googling before i found an easier alternative.
for those using Clockwork Recovery you can use the Partition SD within Recovery itself. No need to fiddle around with booting gpart and risk wiping your system hdd. the only thing is recovery will create it as ext3 which i don't think matters much because ext4 is backward compatible.
sorry don't mean to rain on your parade because i also use gpart when i'm around a pc. just thought that some ppl might prefer the alternative.

S-Bazz said:
Thanks for the guide!
However, if I try to create a new partition, the only choices I have is to make it primary or extended. No logical partition as it is greyed out. Does App2SD+ work with a primary ext4?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's my error. it should be fine with the default setting.

how can i do all that if i don't have a working CD-ROM?
stoped using it ages ago

Thanks for this.

Voffchik said:
how can i do all that if i don't have a working CD-ROM?
stoped using it ages ago
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 i have a netbook without cd-rom and windows 7...which program i can use to do that?

how to do it on Ubuntu 10.10?

Im guessing that we can use Partition Magic or Paragon.
I will try with paragon partition manager and let you know. It shouldnt be that hard.

I know a screenshot is hard to capture when u're not in Windows, but I offer a picture drawed by MsPaint or Office Word. Just 2 rectangle with the size and the filesystem.
Thank you.

Voffchik said:
how can i do all that if i don't have a working CD-ROM?
stoped using it ages ago
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
H-KaN said:
+1 i have a netbook without cd-rom and windows 7...which program i can use to do that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if you're using clockwork recovery boot into recovery -> advance option -> partition sd and follow the steps.

Thanks, I am looking for this kind of instructions from the last 2 days.

I've been using haret since the HD, but I've never owned a native Android phone, and such a fundamental step as partitioning was played lightly over, so thanks for a step for the people like me who do google everything but still couldn't do it correctly. Boot CDs are the only way to do it, it seems.

H-KaN said:
+1 i have a netbook without cd-rom and windows 7...which program i can use to do that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can use some virtual driver, power iso or daemon tools to mount iso file without cd-rom.

[Q] How Do I Remove An Ext3 Partition From My Sd Card?

I was using my 4gb sd card for apps to sd for my previously-rooted android phone, and had about a 500mb of it partitioned to ext3. I have since unrooted my android phone and put it back to stock, but in doing so, I lost the recovery console that would allow me to unpartition my sd card. Is there a safe program that will recognize the ext3 partition and remove it?

Gparted. You can use a live cd or a VM.

Hi there. I downloaded a free program call minitool partition wizard. Do a google search for it (I can't post links)
It has worked well for me with my SD card partitioning.
Make sure you back up the contents of your SD card before removing the ext 3 partition as it will delete all the contents on it.

could you please elaborate a little as i am a noob. like whats gparted? whats a vm? whats the process of doing what i asked? thanks for the help.

I don't know if Windows recognises it at all but worth a try really. Gparted is a live cd tool that allows you make partitons on a storage device. I think that VM refers to a Virtual Machine, using something like VMWare or VirtualBox.

guys please help. i used these softwares but none of these is showing my ext3 partition in the program window. just a 3.22gb of one partition on phone. the 512mb of ext3 partion is still missing and i dont know where to find it.

Well, since you really don't need the ext3 partition anymore, you could format the whole SD card from windows (do a back-up of the content on the hdd before, though). Then in Windows (I'm guessing you're using windows ), with the phone connected in mass storage mode, right click on My Computer / Manage / click on Disk Management and you should see in the list of the drives your SD card (pay attention to the size). Right click on the 512 MB partition - Delete volume... After that you should create a new partiotion, format it as FAT32... Or you could delete all the partitions of the card and create a new volume.

Icysoul said:
Well, since you really don't need the ext3 partition anymore, you could format the whole SD card from windows (do a back-up of the content on the hdd before, though). Then in Windows (I'm guessing you're using windows ), with the phone connected in mass storage mode, right click on My Computer / Manage / click on Disk Management and you should see in the list of the drives your SD card (pay attention to the size). Right click on the 512 MB partition - Delete volume... After that you should create a new partiotion, format it as FAT32... Or you could delete all the partitions of the card and create a new volume.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i did that. in disk management i only see a 3.22gb partition. (i have a 4gb card, so i 512mb is still missing). i cannot find the 512mb ext3 partition anywhere. please can someone help me to find a software or any other method which will be able to detect the ext3 partition as well ?

The partition may be corrupted. You can still try to use Gparted live cd - google for gparted-live-0.7.1-5.zip . It can also be installed on USB flash, check their site for instructions. Restart your PC and boot from the CD or USB flash then check your sd card. If it still doesn't recognize the 512 partition, you might be out of luck.

Icysoul said:
The partition may be corrupted. You can still try to use Gparted live cd - google for gparted-live-0.7.1-5.zip . It can also be installed on USB flash, check their site for instructions. Restart your PC and boot from the CD or USB flash then check your sd card. If it still doesn't recognize the 512 partition, you might be out of luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
how could the partition be corrupted because i was using the ext3 partition to install apps when i had root. it was only recently that i have to sell out my htc desire and i unrooted my htc desire. unroot procedure was done successfully but the card is only showing 3.22gb, i-e, 512mb is missing. this may become an issue if the buyer does not want to pay for a 4gb card with only 3.22gb of storage. it should be around 3.5-3.6gb

A partition may become corrupted if you remove the battery from the phone while the system is still running (i.e. writing data on the partition), it is not unheard of. Do try the gparted solution mentioned before, though.

Icysoul said:
A partition may become corrupted if you remove the battery from the phone while the system is still running (i.e. writing data on the partition), it is not unheard of. Do try the gparted solution mentioned before, though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes buddy i have tried the gparted solution you suggested before. even that is showing only 3.22gb of my sdcard and no mention of the 512mb ext3 partition. i dont know whether i am doing something wrong or what.... ???
Anyway, is there anyway i could recover that corrupt partition? Like can i ROOT my htc desire again and then try to format the ext3 partition from the recovery? i read somewhere there is a way to do that in recovery by giving some commands. and once i have recovered the ext3 partition space then i can UNROOT my htc desire again. DO YOU THINK IF I DO THIS ITS GONNA BE OF ANY USE? Please help me.

This might work since it worked for me. 4GB mysteriously disappeared from my 16GB card and neither Windows or gparted picked it up. The only way I was able to get it back was putting it in my phone and the Android picked it up. I did have to format my whole SD card but nontheless, I got all my space back. Hope this helps and if you have tried this then I can only guess that your SD card is buggered.

GoogleJelly said:
This might work since it worked for me. 4GB mysteriously disappeared from my 16GB card and neither Windows or gparted picked it up. The only way I was able to get it back was putting it in my phone and the Android picked it up. I did have to format my whole SD card but nontheless, I got all my space back. Hope this helps and if you have tried this then I can only guess that your SD card is buggered.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
um actually, my sdcard IS in the phone this whole time as i dont have any card reader. i am connecting my phone with my pc in hard drive mode.
from within the phone, i have tried to format the sd card many times but the space does not go beyond 3.22gb..

Something seems to have messed the partition up. Have a look around on the web
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App

ok tell me if i root my cellphone again, will it help?
because there is a way to delete the ext3 partition from the recovery.

finally recovered my ext3 partition.
this is what i did.
1) rooted my phone.
2) enter into clockworkmod recovery
3) mount sd-ext (i guess it wasnt mounted that's why no app was recognizing it)
4) now windows was able to recognize the ext3 partition.
5) problem solved.

jamy_hallian said:
finally recovered my ext3 partition.
this is what i did.
1) rooted my phone.
2) enter into clockworkmod recovery
3) mount sd-ext (i guess it wasnt mounted that's why no app was recognizing it)
4) now windows was able to recognize the ext3 partition.
5) problem solved.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh man, I had EXACTLY the same problem and was driving me nuts. I searched high and low everywhere and couldn't find the answer. Thank you!

shaboobla said:
Hi there. I downloaded a free program call minitool partition wizard. Do a google search for it (I can't post links)
It has worked well for me with my SD card partitioning.
Make sure you back up the contents of your SD card before removing the ext 3 partition as it will delete all the contents on it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this worked.. thanks a lot
i had the same issue as the OP

Use a card reader and MiniTool Partition Wizard.
Delete all partitions on the SD card and create a new one that fills the entire SD

Another GParted Issue with the Desire

I stuck the phone in usb debug mode and ran gparted live. It said no partitions though the stock fat32 is there, fair enough, so I created two, fat32 about 15gb and ext3 512mb, mib aligned.
I rebooted into Linux and when mounting the drives on the phone they come up and I copy files across as normal.
When I unplug the phone Android doesn't see them, the stats say double the data I copied over has been used up but none of these files are shown/available. Instead all I see is the "lost and android" folders. These folders are also not shown when mounting the drive.
It would appear android is not seeing the drives correctly. Any ideas?

Always better to format the card away from the phone using a card reader and an adapter

Agreed. You should NOT be trying to partition your SD card by simply plugging in your phone and enabling disk drive mode...

Yup that worked. I was following a dumb guide on youtube for the Desire that doesn't work.
Cheers, Andrew

snoopy20 said:
I was following a dumb guide on youtube for the Desire that doesn't work.
Cheers, Andrew
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Me to and I fixed my problem as said in my topic

Formatted SD to NTFS, any way to get it back?

Hi everybody,
I have a huge problem (for me anyway) and I can't find a solutions (i've searched for 2 hours now!). I hope somebody can help me.
I have a Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S rooted. Basicly I wanted to transfer a big file on my SD Card. Without thinking i converted my Fat32 SD Card to NTFS with the command prompt in Windows XP. After converting I could still see all my files etc on my laptop.
When I disconnected the phone from my laptop, the phone couldn't recognize my SD card anymore and offers me to format it! So I figured I'd change it back, but I'm not able to connect the phone to my laptop trough USB, it just doesn't offer me the option.
When I insert the SD Card trough a MicroSD adaptor in my laptop, Windows won't recognize the disk either, and offers me to format it to a 512 byte disk - the SD Card is 16 GB.
I'm really freaking out now since there is alot of important documents and photos on the SD Card. Is there any way to force connect the SD Card trough the phone with the USB Cable? Since the files were available before disconnecting, i'm sure they're still there.
I tried 2 partition recovery programs (testdisk and File Scavenger) but they either recognize the Card as empty 512 or 1024 byte.
Is there any way I can format the SD Card back to Fat32 trough USB, or just even recover the files on it?
I hope my stupidity can be solved painless
Thanks in advance...

Didn't you make a back up of your files when you converted it to ntfs? Doesn't Windows normally format the card when you change its file system?
Sent from my Galaxy Ace using Tapatalk

I have a feeling the SD card might've gotten partitioned... ie. you have two partitions on there now instead of just one. Open a command line with the with SD card connected to the computer, do this:
diskpart
list disk
select disk #(get the disk # from "list disk")
clean
That should get you back to a single-partition sd card.

Does windows give you any clues in the disk management section?
Right click > My computer > Manage > Disk Management

Download minitool partition wizard and then plug in your sd card and open the program. Then delete every single partition you see (ON THE SD AND NOT YOUR HARD DRIVES) and then click create a new partition and then format it to FAT32 and you are good to go !

Had the same problem with a flash drive
right click on drive > properties > readyboost > uncheck the box. Try to format the drive again.

Oh boy... The convert Fat32 to NTFS cannot be undone.
The tool was included with Windows XP for those Upgrading from Windows 98, who would still be runing FAT32 on their hard drives. It allowed them to upgrade to NTFS without loosing any data...
Unfortunately, the only way to get the card back is to Reformat it. I'd recommend the Command Prompt, and the Command would look like this...
Code:
Format /FS:FAT32 /X (drive letter):
The /FS switch tells Format.exe to format the specified drive in a specific file system. In this case, we're forcing it to setup a FAT32 partition on the disk.
The /X switch tells it to dismount the drive before formatting. This makes sure that nothing else is currently using the drive, so that nothing else can mess with the drive while Format is working with it.
After the drive is formatted, go download some decent data recovery software (I've always had good luck with iolo Search and Recover, but your mileage may vary) and have it scan the drive to recover your media.
Also... DO NOT MODIFY THE DRIVE IN ANY OTHER WAY! IF YOU WRITE ANYTHING TO THE DRIVE, COPY FILES TO IT, CREATE FILES ON IT, SAVE THINGS TO IT, YOU WILL LOOSE ANY DATA YOU PREVIOUSLY HAD ON THE DRIVE! Naturally, formatting the drive has a chance of doing this anyway, however, the automatically detected sector size should match the original sector size, so the chances of loosing everything are slim to nil. All hell breaks loose when you start adding and removing things from the drive...

Problems with the SD card

Hi everybody. Not sure where to post this question, so please move if this is not the most suitable place.
Yesterday I bought a new 32GB microSDHC card casas 10. I then proceeded to partition it, creating one FAT32 partition and one EXT2 partition using the Minitool Partition Wizard on Windows XP. I then copied a few flashable zips with ROMs on them to try out.
This morning, as I set out to flash a new ROM, I noticed on the instructions that I needed a third SWAP partition. So I went back to the drawing board and created one. So far so good.
Except that then a few strange things happened:
* Partition wizard, after giving me the thumbs up, did not recognize the 2 partitions it had supposedly created (I restarted the program, unplugged and re-plugged the card, etc.). So I "un-partitioned" (sic) and re-partitioned. I hope this didn't screw anything up. Only later did I read that this was normal because XP does not recognize EXT2 or SWAP, which is why the wizard was showing it all as an "unallocated" lump.
* Although windows saw the files on the SD card, it did not allow me to transfer new any new ones. The system told me the device was not ready and asked me whether I wanted to format. After trying a few times, I ended up accepting, but the formatting process failed. ...or maybe it was at first and then no more, can't remember. Thing is, there are no more files on the card (which is fine, no need to recover them)
These things didn't happen in this particular order, rather, it was a going back and forth with both issues, including a request from partition manager to re-start, only to get a message saying partitioning was not possible because the file system had changed (???). It did go through upon retrying though (no re-start required)
Now:
1. partition wizard sees the sd card, but windows explorer doesn't.
2. partition wizard sees it as fully used up (no free memory left), even though there is nothing on it
3. partition wizard found the whole card to have errors in every sector but won't give me options to correct them.
4. windows is still unable to either format or explore the sd card
Wiping did not help. Formatting and resizing are not an option. I could delete the partition, but at this point I'm afraid of what that would do. No need to recover anything, but I would hate to have to go out again and get a new card.
Can you please help me?
Thanks!

ok, spent some more time scouring the web, and something occured to me... could it be that by doing a DoD wipe with Minitool partition wizard I re-wrote the partition (which is why it is full) and also protected it (which is can't re-format)?
of course, that doesn't answer the question of why windows XP (and windows 7 on my other machine) won't recognize the card....
PS. apologies for the double post , but seeing as there were 36 views and no replies, i thought I'd let people see that there was additional information here... hope that's alright

Your problem could be windows since when it sees a USB or HDD with ext2 it thinks its corrupted and asks to format and fails...
from what i know ext2 is used for linux so i would try your program on a linux distro. i could be wrong though
it might not help using windows xp
good luck

After reading both of your posts I have no idea what type of device you have. That is the first step, check out your devices General or Q&A forums.
Look at the top of the browser window, see where it says Find Your Device... type in the first few letters of the name and see if it doesn't come up there. The first and best source of information like you are asking for is in there, or if you can't find it by searching, it is the best place to ask.
Also, since you are new to XDA, I would suggest giving this guide a read as it may answer some of your questions and help you find out where to look for the answers.
[GUIDE] How to be a New User (and not a noob)

Thx. The device is an htc wildfire s, but I don't see how that is relevant.
What I have is a microsdhc card that has no data on it yet is full.
Although the card has been used, it suddenly requires formatting. However, neither win xp, nor win 7, nor partition wizaed, nor my camera nor Recovery on my phone are able to successfully format.
Now when I plug it into either PC (win xp and windows 7) the system no longer recognizes it when I go into My PC, whereas partition wizard (running on both those systems) can.
And now I wonder whether the DoD wipe of the partition could be to blame...
Isn't it fair to sy that the issue s device-neutral?

I think your problem may be Windows, because when it sees a USB or hard drive with ext2 that damage to the required format and failure Check your equipment in general

shuiguo said:
I think your problem may be Windows, because when it sees a USB or hard drive with ext2 that damage to the required format and failure Check your equipment in general
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for this. In the end, I gave up and bought a new card, formatted it properly from the start, and am a happy camper
...except of course for the fact that the total for the 2 sd cards adds up to half the cost fo my phone...

maximum sd card??

^^ wat do u mean maxium sd card??