Develop Bugs

Unmounting SD card when Apps2SD is used

Hi all,
My Desire is rooted and running Leedroid 2.2a with an ext3 partition on my SD card for my apps and cache folders, using the default apps2sd setup with the ROM.
I recently had to re-flash my phone because lots of installed apps went missing; some of them had odd names (the com.android.x.x names) and then it got stuck in a boot loop because it couldn't read the SD card until I formatted it, well actually I had to destroy the ext3 partition. Now I wonder if its because the apps folder is on the SD card/ext3 partition and if I connect the phone to my PC to copy stuff to/from in disk mode it un-mounts the SD card, losing the apps folder and the cache folder.
So far, since flashing, I haven't installed half as much crap on my phone, or dismounted the SD card, but I am worried that it will start to cause problems with the phone if I need to connect via USB/disk drive mode.
Has anyone else had these problems, or know of a 'safe' way to unmount the card without corrupting apps?

cyberguru said:
Hi all,
My Desire is rooted and running Leedroid 2.2a with an ext3 partition on my SD card for my apps and cache folders, using the default apps2sd setup with the ROM.
I recently had to re-flash my phone because lots of installed apps went missing; some of them had odd names (the com.android.x.x names) and then it got stuck in a boot loop because it couldn't read the SD card until I formatted it, well actually I had to destroy the ext3 partition. Now I wonder if its because the apps folder is on the SD card/ext3 partition and if I connect the phone to my PC to copy stuff to/from in disk mode it un-mounts the SD card, losing the apps folder and the cache folder.
So far, since flashing, I haven't installed half as much crap on my phone, or dismounted the SD card, but I am worried that it will start to cause problems with the phone if I need to connect via USB/disk drive mode.
Has anyone else had these problems, or know of a 'safe' way to unmount the card without corrupting apps?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It shouldn't corrupt your EXT partition if you mount USB on your device.
AFAIK, if you mount USB, it will only mount the FAT32 partition, the EXT partition will still be available to Android.

Problem has occurred again. My battery went flat on Saturday so the phone turned off. Plugged it in on Saturday night, turned it on, and it stays at the "HTC" white background green text screen.
If I remove the card it boots fine. I mounted the SD card in Ubuntu and I can use the fat32 partition on the card, but the ext3 partition is empty, although if I right click on it and go to properties, it shows that there is 130mb in use on the partition. I cant do anything to the partition because Ubuntu throws some odd error about not being able to mount the partition because its in use, or some other paradoxical scenario...
Annoyed now. Anyone know of a fix? should I copy all the stuff I want off the card, repartition using gparted and try again? I used the ROM Manager app on the phone to prepare the card before. Could it have a bug?? the Ext3 partition is at the end of the drive space, after the fat32 partition. Should I make it the first partition?
Bit of a bump, but it seems I'm not the only one with this issue. Any help is appreciated...
I don't have the card with me now cos I'm at work so I cant do any more tests or try and find a solution.

Have you been able to find a resolution for this, I'm having this exact issue. While I suspect a reformat would address, I don't want to have to deal with this weekly.

No worries, you can mount them fine. but if you take out your sd card out of the phone and turn the phone on, it would turn on and go in a bootloop. but that was just for me.

This is used to happen to me. Stuck in HTC logo on white background. It turned out to be that my sd card was bad partitioned it corrupted.
I fixed it by destroyed all partitions and created only fat32. Then put it back to HTC Desire and had ROM Manager created new ext3 partition.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App

I have been facing this issue ever since I started trying a2sd+ roms. I created a 1GB ext3 and apps will start disappearing every now and then. If I shutdown the phone and boot it again, then many apps will go missing.
I tried reformatting the sd, wipe and reinstall the rom but no use. Apps will keep disappearing on every reboot. At times all the installed application will be corrupted. i.e they will be listed in application manager as com.android.xx.xx with no icon. Some apps will have the icon and if i select them it will say the application is no longer available.
I have tried different roms with a2sd+ and still have the issue
I have tried different methods of partitioning.. Using acronis disk director in windows, using rom manager, using ubuntu live cd etc.. still the issue is present.
What makes it difficult is that sometimes the ext3 partition gets corrupted.. sometimes the whole sd ext3+fat32 gets corrupted, and I could not find what's wrong.
One final thing left to check is to try with a different sd card. If even that fails, then I have to go back to non-a2sd+ rom and live with low internal memory
Anyone faced this issue and found a solution, please share... I would be grateful...

[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

[Q] Potential dead SD after partition?

Hello guys, very very sorry if this is a repost. I've had a quick search but i can't spend my entire days searching. Apologies also if this is in the wrong section.
Please read and comment on my abbreviated story
Was running telstra branded froyo
Now running Leedroid (just did it yesterday)
Used ROM manager to partition the SD card, worked fine for a while, until i got silly 'read only' errors which i'd never seen before.
Tried to reformat the SD card. Lost some apps and decided to start over hard resetting everything because i'd lost everything that had moved to the swap partition...
Cleared the partitions on the SD card and rewrote them into a 10gb fat32, 2gb ext3 and a 2gb swap
Reflashed leedriod with another smaller card - works ok.
Tried my big card again and it didn't boot, stuck at the boot screen forever.
Put small SD card back in and it works... but some apps are now mising such as rom manager, titanuim backup, and the other things which i'm not familiar with.
WTF is going on. My head is throbbing! arrrrrrrgh
have i partitioned my card correctly?

Maybe try and partition the card in another way. rom manager did
work for me but ive also had similar problems before. Try the g-parted
method if you can get youre head around it, just try and format/partition
the card while its out of the phone because for me, thats what gave me the
exact same problems you mentioned.
If you ever want to back up the apps from sd-ext (apps2sd) you can
use titanium backup. I was in this same boat recently and found that the
easyest way. Also i dont see the need for any swap partition but i could be
wrong.
i use: 1gb ext3, 0 swap and the rest fat32 (16gb card)
good luck

So you flashed Leedroid A2SD+ with your "smaller card" in the phone?
And you just swapped the card to the "bigger one"?
In that way, the only way to make it work is creating a NANDROID backup with your "smaller" functioning card and copy that to the "bigger" one (must be in the same folder!).
Then put the card (bigger one) and do a full wipe & restore the NANDROID backup you've made previously.
Also, ROM manager is a piece of cr*p in partitioning, i had issues until i used GParted to create the partitions and no problems since.

It's funny you should mention this. I've had the exact same problem.
Small SD card works, big SD card doesn't work after being partitioned using ROM Manager. It gets stuck at the bootscreen for ever, and ever.
I will do some more testing when I get the chance.

Hey champs, i put the big sd back in the computer, turned it all back into fat32 and it works just fine.
Then i used rom manager to partition - 512 ext and 256 swap.. not enough imo, (crappy fkin desire fault). Might leave it for now... unless that read only disk thiing happens again
Cheers for the reply guys

[Q] big trouble, cannot mount Ext_MicroSD (M8)

Dear friends:
I don't know what happend, but I cant mount my EXT_MICROSD Card... I flashed the phone, I format the MicroSD Card, I read a lot of threads from here, but nothing, without solution...
well... the first thing was when I flashed TWRP latest recovery (2.8.1, any else) then, microSD card stop to work. I read this treathd (the problem it's the same, but with other smartphone) http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=691639 I tried to make all steps, but doesn't work
I set my microSD Card into my card reader on PC and I can use it.
When I get into recovery I can't "read or mount" storage microSD or USB storage"
I'm desesperated right now... :s I don't know what it's the problem!! please help me, give me a chance to repair my error... ;__;
PD. I flash full stock ROM and I tried flashing custom ROM, well... I hace this problem 1 week ago.
NEWS: I flash GPE ROM, I changed MID at least USB Storage WORKED!... but isn't MicroSDCard and the "yellow/white" flash in bootanimation it's gone

Its not clear how you re-formatted the SD. But folks have had differing results whether they use the phone's format function, or otherwise. 3rd party formatting apps on a computer seem to work better. So give that a try.
Did you try another SD (borrow from a friend if you don't have one)? Its possible the card has just gone bad.

redpoint73 said:
Its not clear how you re-formatted the SD. But folks have had differing results whether they use the phone's format function, or otherwise. 3rd party formatting apps on a computer seem to work better. So give that a try.
Did you try another SD (borrow from a friend if you don't have one)? Its possible the card has just gone bad.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, thanks for answer. I tried using other SD Card (in the mobile), but doen't work. I put the SD Card into a SD Card reader (in the computer) and work correctly. In that moment I formatted into Fat32, NTFS, ExFat and work fine in the PC, but doesn't work in the phone.

kodaizo said:
Hi, thanks for answer. I tried using other SD Card (in the mobile), but doen't work. I put the SD Card into a SD Card reader (in the computer) and work correctly. In that moment I formatted into Fat32, NTFS, ExFat and work fine in the PC, but doesn't work in the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I recently had similar issue.. either the rom could read the sd card, but not recovery or vice versa (I use Philz).
I reformatted in Philz with default settings and now it works in both rom and recovery...
Think it has to do with allocation unit size. I can't help you with "correct" setting, but I know if you have too big or too small, it can slow down read/write speeds.
What happend when u plug in sdcard in your unit? Does it say it needs to be formatted?
I found some good read about formatting sd card here
http://www.surfaceforums.net/threads/micro-sd-card-exfat-or-ntfs-and-allocation-size.8088/
Hope it helps

L1nuz said:
I recently had similar issue.. either the rom could read the sd card, but not recovery or vice versa (I use Philz).
I reformatted in Philz with default settings and now it works in both rom and recovery...
Think it has to do with allocation unit size. I can't help you with "correct" setting, but I know if you have too big or too small, it can slow down read/write speeds.
What happend when u plug in sdcard in your unit? Does it say it needs to be formatted?
I found some good read about formatting sd card here
http://www.surfaceforums.net/threads/micro-sd-card-exfat-or-ntfs-and-allocation-size.8088/
Hope it helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I plug into the phone doesn't work. (now I have TWRP recovery, do you think that Phil it's better than TWRP? maybe I could try flashing that) and... the first time doen't say to make a format. but, yesterday, when I install GPE, say that. when I push format... doesn't happen.

Im not qualified to tell if TWRP is better or not, but Philz is the one I use and it fixed my SD card issue. Just give it a try... you can always flash back to TWRP after if you want

Hi have exactly the same problem? i bought my at&t htc one m8 unlocked but couldn t ever even mount external sd card, they work well outside the phone but don t function inside it, not even recognize an ext sd card.....please someone could give some help to me?

If you try formatting an SDCard on a PC, set the block size to 512 bytes.
Are the SDCard's branded or cheaper end of market?
There was (maybe still is) a problem with SDCard's of a certain version (v10 I think) and this could be a similar thing.
Sent from my HTC One_M8 using XDA Free mobile app

Well, my final score: the SD Card was loose and disconnected inside, a cell technician repair it.

Link2SD - Not Mounting 2nd Partition after over a month of it working fine

Have been using Link2SD now for over a month without any problem.
I have a 64 GB micro-SD card formatted with 2 partitions. One is the fat32 partition for storing my own stuff (accessible through file explorer), and the other is an ext2 partition that is meant for Link2SD to "link" apps to. Both partitions are roughly of equal size (though in hindsight I would have like to make the ext2 partition smaller). I formatted + partitioned the SD card using MiniTool partition wizard in Windows.
As of yesterday the 2nd partition is not being mounted any more. I get the error as in attached screenshot. This error comes after Link2SD asks me to select what the file format of the 2nd partition is.
Because of this, all of the apps that are linked to the SD card in some way are now showing as not installed on my device (most are games, but one is a magazine-reading app). An attempt at reinstalling 1 or 2 of these apps through google play results in an error saying something like "there was an error installing this app".
I tried to search the forums on this error but most people have similar issues only when they are ~starting~ with Link2SD. I haven't found anyone who has the issue like this after using Link2SD for a bit of time...
I am wondering if there is a workaround to this. It would be nice to get those apps back onto the device at the very least (I have 4 GB of space to spare...), and at the very best get everything back to working condition again.
(note: I started to notice that certain apps started naming the SD card as a bunch of symbols instead of "SD card" as they usually do.....not sure if this is related or not)

*bump*
Should mention that I"m running a rooted device with stock ROM (took out many of the built-in apps).
I am debating whether to unmount the SD (physically take it out), and reformat the 2nd partition to ext4 or FAT32 and try again with Link2SD
What I'm afraid of is losing all those apps and not being able to reinstall them again....(as I am already getting errors with this in Google Play)

bsquared938 said:
*bump*
Should mention that I"m running a rooted device with stock ROM (took out many of the built-in apps).
I am debating whether to unmount the SD (physically take it out), and reformat the 2nd partition to ext4 or FAT32 and try again with Link2SD
What I'm afraid of is losing all those apps and not being able to reinstall them again....(as I am already getting errors with this in Google Play)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been having issues with it for a while myself. Sometimes after a reboot, a whole lot of apps disappear. I give it another reboot and they come back, but it's a pain in the arse because then I need to manually go place them back onto my home screen.

mightbme said:
I've been having issues with it for a while myself. Sometimes after a reboot, a whole lot of apps disappear. I give it another reboot and they come back, but it's a pain in the arse because then I need to manually go place them back onto my home screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have tried multiple reboots....no such luck.
I'm reading elsewhere that the culprit may be Link2SD itself. Have emailed the developer (hopefully they respond).
The ext2 partition on the card is officially or unofficially fried. I really can't see anything on it (tried several linux file system viewers). I guess I'll keep the card mounted (with half the space technically gone) until there happens to be some way to deal with this issue....

bsquared938 said:
I have tried multiple reboots....no such luck.
I'm reading elsewhere that the culprit may be Link2SD itself. Have emailed the developer (hopefully they respond).
The ext2 partition on the card is officially or unofficially fried. I really can't see anything on it (tried several linux file system viewers). I guess I'll keep the card mounted (with half the space technically gone) until there happens to be some way to deal with this issue....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I ended up using a new card and the problem disappeared.... I'm guessing that the problem is with your card. Good luck

mightbme said:
I ended up using a new card and the problem disappeared.... I'm guessing that the problem is with your card. Good luck
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried Link2SD with 3 different SD cards.
One was a test (4 GB card or less, can't remember now), to make sure the program worked.
The other was an 8GB card. Which I eventually swapped out for...
...a 64 GB card.
I had manually partitioned the 8 and 64 GB cards prior to using them in Link2SD
I also re-partitioned the 64 GB card a 2nd time when Link2SD (and therefore my tablet itself) stopped seeing the 2nd partition on the 64 GB card.
This "breaking" problem came up on both the 8 GB and 64 GB cards.
So one of the following at fault: my tablet, 2 different SD cards, or the app itself.
I am inclined to believe it's Link2SD as the reviews on the app store say similar things to what my problem is.