[Q] Question about SD card partitions - EVO 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi, I just replaced my stock 8GB SD card with a 32GB card. In the process I set up a 2GB partition in Amon Ra recovery (ext-3). Now my question is - when I move apps to SD card, they seem to install in the larger partition and not the 2GB partition. How do I get the system to use the partition I created?

peterpunn said:
Hi, I just replaced my stock 8GB SD card with a 32GB card. In the process I set up a 2GB partition in Amon Ra recovery (ext-3). Now my question is - when I move apps to SD card, they seem to install in the larger partition and not the 2GB partition. How do I get the system to use the partition I created?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right, using the built in app2sd feature stores apps in the android_secure folder, which is in the FAT32 partition of your SD card. To get the apps to install to the ext3 partition, you need to use Dark Tremors a2sd script. That method basically tricks your EVO into thinking that the ext3 partition is a part of the internal memory, to keep it simple. I would link you, but I'm on the xda app. A search of dark tremor a2sd should point you in the right direction. Some roms come with DT a2sd already installed, and you just need to run the terminal commands.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

Yes im having some issues with that as well have the console gave the command to put on partition but not working...
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

ricardod1 said:
Yes im having some issues with that as well have the console gave the command to put on partition but not working...
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you using dark tremors a2sd? What commands did you enter? What Rom are you on? What format is your partition?(ext2 or ext3). Thanks.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

k2buckley said:
Right, using the built in app2sd feature stores apps in the android_secure folder, which is in the FAT32 partition of your SD card. To get the apps to install to the ext3 partition, you need to use Dark Tremors a2sd script. That method basically tricks your EVO into thinking that the ext3 partition is a part of the internal memory, to keep it simple. I would link you, but I'm on the xda app. A search of dark tremor a2sd should point you in the right direction. Some roms come with DT a2sd already installed, and you just need to run the terminal commands.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great - thanks a lot. I flashed the dark tremor zip and ran the commands from Terminal and looks like it worked. Most of the internal memory is freed up now. Any way to actually view the contents of the ext partition?

Related

Help with sd ext partitioning

Ok so this all started when I switched from Cyanogen to Fresh 3.2. I used Amon Ra's Recovery to wipe and because it said to so a full wipe I figured I had to wipe evey option on Amon Ra's Recovery including sd ext. When I did That I got and error that said "Error: run "wipe ext" from abd!". I read somewhere that that wasn't going to be a problem so I continued loading the rom and it booted fine. I ran into problems later on when I tried installing Backbreakers. I got an error in the notification bar that said "installation unsuccessful". I later got the same message when trying to install Angry Birds. I've learned from other threads that those games should work fine on Fresh's roms. I now have the newest Fresh rom and still have the same problem. Just recently I found out that I shouldn't have wiped sd ext partition if I didn't have one setup. Now, I never set one up myself, but maybe one was setup automatically through one of the roms I had used. Now I want to fix the problem with my Sd ext partition (I know I'm not using The term correctly because I no nothing about it) and find out what it does. If anyone could help me understand what an sd ext partition is and how to solve my problem I would be very thankful.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
You can set it up in Ra recovery. It's very easy. Make sure you back up your sd card to your computer cuz partitioning will wipe it.
Download DarkTremor from HERE
Select Partition SD card from the recovery menu
The first option is for a swap file which we dont really need so set it to 0MB
The next is for your ext partition. 256MB should be plenty but if you've got a large SD card feel free to go higher.
After that's done, you can upgrade it from ext2 to ext3 which isnt necessary.
Boot up the phone or mount sd card from recovery and place the DarkTremor file you downloaded on your sd card and flash as you would a rom.
After the phone boots up you can open a Terminal Emulator and type:
su (then press enter)
You should see a # symbol. Now type:
a2sd cachesd
This will move dalvik cache to your sd card and free up even more memory. Just remember to wipe ext partition before flashing a new rom and I believe you'll need to flash the DarkTremor file again after you flash a new rom. Your ext partition will remain. Hope this helps. If you have any more questions most can be answered in the DarkTremor thread or feel free to PM me.
Wow thanks for the great info. I'm going to do this hopefully it will fix my problem. What is an sd partition for anyways or what does it do? I have the 6gb sd card that came with my evo goe much space should I put for my ext partition? Thanks for all of the help.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
StrummingLevi said:
Wow thanks for the great info. I'm going to do this hopefully it will fix my problem. What is an sd partition for anyways or what does it do? I have the 6gb sd card that came with my evo goe much space should I put for my ext partition? Thanks for all of the help.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The ext partition is a physical memory area in your sd card which is formated the same as the internal memory of the phone. Not like the rest of the sdcard. The limits are set on the rest of the card so the stuff in the ext with it's sequential byte order won't be over-written by the pc-like low-high byte order of the rest. Stuff can be logically assigned to the ext partition by the OS. At startup a find is issued on the partition, if it's there then automatically Fresh's / tremor's ap2sd "program" puts portions of applications on the sdcard. You can manually augment what gets put into the ext partition by issuing commands. Aps2sd was important on devices with limited internal memory.
StrummingLevi said:
Wow thanks for the great info. I'm going to do this hopefully it will fix my problem. What is an sd partition for anyways or what does it do? I have the 6gb sd card that came with my evo goe much space should I put for my ext partition? Thanks for all of the help.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Forgot to mention, its recommended you use a class 4 SD card or faster. I'm not certain what the consequences are but when I ran a2sd on my G1 with a class 2, the phone would crash.
Sent from my SUPERSONIC

[Q] How to get widgets to run from SD card

i got my last question solved but I read somewhere that usin darktremors script would allow me to run widgets from sd card because the system thinks they are still in the correct place.
running GV1.5 partitions fat32/ext3/linux-swap.
I installed the script after mounting /data and /system from the recovery. After that I rebooted and ran the script commands. Moved a widget to sd card and it vanished from screen just like froyo.
what am I doing wrong?
I know you need to move the dalvik-cache for this to work. but recovery can't find sd-ext.
Huh? From what i know widgets will not work if u put them in the micro sd.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App
lainvalenajr said:
Huh? From what i know widgets will not work if u put them in the micro sd.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Using stock froyo a2sd (apps2fat) will not allow you to run widgets. If you partition your sdcard (ext partition) and use the old style a2sd (apps2ext) using darktremors a2sd package you can run widgets from the sdcard. Along with putting the entire app, not just 1/2 or 1/4 of it, on the sdcard plus all of it's data (optional).
If it's easy for you to understand it as the phone thinking the ext partition is part of the internal memory, that's good enough since it's basically what's going on.
Spastic909 said:
I installed the script after mounting /data and /system from the recovery. After that I rebooted and ran the script commands. Moved a widget to sd card and it vanished from screen just like froyo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What you did wrong is moving the app to the sdcard. The commands you run in terminal move the apps to the sd ext partition. Specifically this one:
Code:
#su
#cd /system/bin
#a2sd cachesd
It will still show it as installed to the internal memory because it thinks it is. Even in a file explorer under data/app it shows the apps but that's part of the *trick*.
If you go into applications and move it to the sdcard it puts it on the fat32 partition which is where the froyo version puts them - don't do that. That's what you did wrong.
KCRic... huh i didnt know that. Ill try that. Spastic u should try that lol
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App
i installed the busybox 1.18.0.git
wiped everything in recovery and from recovery ran the script. After I rebooted I ran the commands in terminal.
then my phone rebooted...does that mean it worked?
Spastic909 said:
i installed the busybox 1.18.0.git
wiped everything in recovery and from recovery ran the script. After I rebooted I ran the commands in terminal.
then my phone rebooted...does that mean it worked?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah. You can use titanium backup to make sure. Just open it and you should see a bar at the bottom showing sdext available/free. Also you can use a file explorer - got to /sdext and you should see an app, app-private, dalvikcache, data, and one or two other folders listed. If you do then it worked.
You can also use terminal to have a2sd check and make sure it's working but I don't want to load the thread with commands I'll post them if you want to learn a bit though
Sorry to resurrect this thread, I thought it better than making my own.
I'm running CM 6.1.3 and have an 8GB SD card inside.
1) How do I check how the SD card is formatted? And if it doesn't have an EXT3 partition, how do I partition it property?
and 2) Is there an easy, non-terminal way to send apps to the EXT3 partition, akin to hitting "move to SD card" in android settings. And since, as you said, it moves all the data to the EXT3 partition, not just some, is it best to keep most of my apps there, to free up internal memory as best as possible?
And PS, when I'm partitioning my SD card, will I need to create a SWAP partition? 1GB for an 8GB stick?
Thanks so much.
EDIT: I'm on an X10 if that helps..

Is sd-ext partition needed?

I apologize if I am asking a question that may have been asked before, but I haven't seen it and was wondering.
When I originally started playing with rooting my Epic, if you wanted to use apps2sd, you needed to create a sd-ext partition on the sdcard. And you could also create a partition for the cache.
Now it appears that with the more recent ROMs that id you use app2sd the files are actually stored on the main sd partition in a hidden directory like .android_secure and can be seen via /mnt/asc
Is this in fact the case?
If it is, do we need/use the sd-ext partition any longer?
And this may seem dumb, but what's the easiest way to get a full reformat of the card as it seems that the partition functions in CW 3.0 no longer work?
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
PokrTom said:
I apologize if I am asking a question that may have been asked before, but I haven't seen it and was wondering.
When I originally started playing with rooting my Epic, if you wanted to use apps2sd, you needed to create a sd-ext partition on the sdcard. And you could also create a partition for the cache.
Now it appears that with the more recent ROMs that id you use app2sd the files are actually stored on the main sd partition in a hidden directory like .android_secure and can be seen via /mnt/asc
Is this in fact the case?
If it is, do we need/use the sd-ext partition any longer?
And this may seem dumb, but what's the easiest way to get a full reformat of the card as it seems that the partition functions in CW 3.0 no longer work?
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't need the partition in 2.2+, to remove it, use sdformat (Google it).
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
I'm using LauncherPro and running Bonsai 4.0.1 (2.2 ROM) and LP automatically tells me when an app I've installed can be moved to SD. I've never understood the sd-ext thing, so I've been curious as to if I'm just missing something as well. For some reason that whole thing has escaped me.
The sd partition was for eclair and earlier versions of android. There wasn't an apps2sd function so u made a partition on the sd card for it and you could manually move them.
Sent From My Evo Killer!
When I do a CWM 2.5 backup it tells me that it hasn't backed up my sd card because it can't find an sd-ext partition. How do I change this short of partitioning my sd card as ext?
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA Premium App
You can use cwm to partition you sd card. I have mine partitioned for swap
Sent From My Evo Killer!!

A2SD questions

If I do not have a partition for A2SD installed, and I run an a2sd script to enable it on a ROM, and move an app to the SD, does it still get fully moved to the SD? And can someone shed a little more light on this situation, with no partition space, but moving apps 2 sd/
Also, if I move an app to an sd, but do not wipe the sd:ext partition or sd card, but wipe all data partitions, will the app + its data be there if i flash a new rom?
i never wipe sd ext and all my apps are there for recovery once my new rom is up and running. As far as A2SD, i think you have to be partitioned for it to work. And the partition sdext2 must be upgraded to ext3. here is a walkthrough on how to partition your sd card... very easy this is how i did it.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1158993&highlight=partition+sd+card
Also if you are not using aomn_ra recovery id suggest using that instead of clockwork. some roms or kernels recommend flashing only with amon_ra
Here's the Amon-RA recovery which you can still flash CWM recoveries if you choose to http://www.mediafire.com/?6eo9jo7fdazp2 you may also want to read the thread on partitioning your SD card mentioned above
dbenney said:
i never wipe sd ext and all my apps are there for recovery once my new rom is up and running. As far as A2SD, i think you have to be partitioned for it to work. And the partition sdext2 must be upgraded to ext3. here is a walkthrough on how to partition your sd card... very easy this is how i did it.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1158993&highlight=partition+sd+card
Also if you are not using aomn_ra recovery id suggest using that instead of clockwork. some roms or kernels recommend flashing only with amon_ra
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some say ext 3 deteriorates the life of your sd card because it's constantly writing. I use ext 2 and it works perfectly.
Aside from that you must have a ROM and kernel that supports a2sd as well as swap if you choose to use it. Simply flashing the a2sd script won't work if neither conditions are met
Sent from my PC36100 using xda premium
Naturesretard said:
Aside from that you must have a ROM and kernel that supports a2sd as well as swap if you choose to use it. Simply flashing the a2sd script won't work if neither conditions are met
Sent from my PC36100 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OOPS forgot to mention that part. Aren't most non stock roms set up for a2sd? I haven't run into one yet that wasnt. I was under the impression that it had to be upgraded to ext3.
Ok so if I move my SMS app to ext-2 or ext-3, then if I wipe it all but that, and flash a new rom, they should be there on the new rom?
It does not have to be ext 3 to use a2sd. And some roms don't support it or they just don't have it installed
It would still be there, but the symlink won't I believe
Sent from my PC36100 using xda premium
symlink? What is that?
When you move apps to the partition, which is automatic, it creates a symlink in the drawer telling the down where the app is
Sent from my PC36100 using xda premium
And how does that have to do with its data?
Basically DT a2sd just sets up sym links from the normal place the apps folder would be to a location on your ext2/3 partition on your SD card. From the perspective of Android it just thinks the folder is in the normal location it is supposed to be then (even though under the covers the underlying Linux OS is actually reading/writing the SD card). This applies to both the apps plus there data if they store it in the normal location (some apps write their data to the normal part of the SD card in which case the data would still go there).
So, if you switch ROMs and that ROM has A2SD support, it should detect the SD-Ext partition and re-setup this sym link for you when you install the ROM and you will then have all your apps back (plus any uninstallable apps the ROM includes should go there). If your ROM doesn't support A2SD out of the box, as long as the kernel supports ext2/3 (whichever you formatted your SD card with) you should be able to flash DT a2sd after you flash the ROM and then run the a2sd script as root to set up the link to put the apps on the SD-ext partition again (I think this will preserve the apps that are there, but honestly haven't done it myself so you should make a nandroid of the SD-ext partition before doing this if you want to make sure you won't have to re-install your apps).
Hope this helps some.

Partition

Can anyone help me in partitioning a 16gb class 10 micro SD card for the stock rom on this lovely optimus v?
What are you having trouble with?
Sent from my LG-VM670 using Tapatalk 2
I have no Idea what I'm doing I go to recovery and press partition card and pick 1 or 2gb and it doesn't affect the phone. I need more memory so I can have more apps and also in low memory I can't get texts so its kind of a necessity. I'd like if possible a walkthrough in simplest terms and if possible avoiding adb cause it confuses me
Sent from my VM670 using xda premium
The easiest thing is to put the card in a computer, copy anything off of it onto a folder on the computer, then use a partition editor program on your computer.
If you can get to that point try a program such as gparted to partition the sd card. 1-2 gb in ext2 or ext4 format and the 2nd partition will be the remaining space in fat32 format.
If you Google something like "partition sdext android"someone may have a tutorial with pictures. I'd just find instructions that are the easiest to understand.
You are on the right track though. As you've found out partition creator in clockwork recovery doesn't work well.
Sent from my LG-VM670 using Tapatalk 2
sneakysnake16 said:
I have no Idea what I'm doing I go to recovery and press partition card and pick 1 or 2gb and it doesn't affect the phone. I need more memory so I can have more apps and also in low memory I can't get texts so its kind of a necessity. I'd like if possible a walkthrough in simplest terms and if possible avoiding adb cause it confuses me
Sent from my VM670 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
use cannibal recovery... i know it works...
http://forums.androidcentral.com/op...-touch-v2-0-2-latest-update-08-13-2012-a.html
clodfelterac said:
use cannibal recovery... i know it works...
http://forums.androidcentral.com/op...-touch-v2-0-2-latest-update-08-13-2012-a.html
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
just curious- what filesystem does it format to?
Uh, no recovery will fix "it does not do anything" "problem". You need to actually install/flash some sort of a2sd script so that the partition is used (unless the ROM already includes that functionality). Like, S2E, Link2SD, data2sd, move to sd-ext or whatever.
If you are planning to use Link2SD then go here: http://androidforums.com/optimus-v-all-things-root/364833-link2sd-you-tutorial.html
This will explain how to partition your uSD card with "Mini Tool Partitioning Wizard" and how to use Link2SD.
I have over 120 apps downloaded and installed and still have over 80MB of space on the system thanks to Link2SD.
I partitioned the uSD card with the Xionia recovery (2GB), then just reformatted it to FAT32 with Mini Tool Partitioning Wizard. This is the easiest way to partition the uSD card, it's fool proof. If you already tried to partition you might want to check it out with Mini Tool .. first to see what your uSD card looks like now.
All recovery's format the partition to ext.3 which is not usable on every ROM. FAT32 can be used with every ROM except ICS
Keep in mind not every app should be moved and linked. Widget apps, Titanium Backup, ROM Manager, etc.
If an app doesn't work properly while it's linked, just remove the link and move it back to the system.
Mini Tool Partitioning Wizard can be found over at Cnet

Categories

Resources