Related
In short:
Is there a thread somewhere stating the pro's and con's of running Android from different types of "media" (SD, NAND, EXT2)?
If there is, please provide a link, I can't seem to find anything that isn't an unanswered question or small comments.
If there isn't, let this be a starting point for those looking for the answer to this question.
Longer:
I've seen this question pop up once and again but it might be that the topic is totally exhausted and people have stopped commenting on it. I can't seem to find an answer though; What are the pro's and con's of using NAND, EXT2, FAT32 or any combination of it?
I see a couple of installation alternatives and some I have been able to conclude myself but others not.
* Running from SD-card using HaRET
This option is the slowest in terms of Android performance. It has the added value of easily getting back to Windows Mobile by rebooting the phone, gaining easy access to the SD card and manipulation options.
* Running the system AND data on NAND
This option has in my view the fastest Android experience. Access to files on the SD card is a bit more cumbersome (there is the SD card split widget APK available but I have yet to see it working) and access to files for manipulation I can't comment on (haven't gotten to that yet).
* Running the system from NAND and data on EXT2
The performance seems almost as fast as the system+data on NAND. I have no idea about the added value of running anything from an EXT2-partition in the SD card but I'm guessing it will be slower. I have no idea if file access for manipulation is easier or not compared to the other options.
* Running the system AND data from EXT2
I have not tried this yet and cannot comment on it. Something tells me it will be slower than NAND because of SD card overhead.
* Running the system from EXT2 and data on NAND
I have not tried this yet and cannot comment on it.
Now, I've missed out on several of the installation options but I'll edit this post as soon as I get to investigating it further.
Any comments/experience/knowledge in this is greatly appreciated, as it can make things clearer as to what options to choose.
Well these are very good question and wanted to start a thread on this matter as well. I also could not find a strait answer anywhere.
I also want to know if there is an advantage using ext2 over fat32.
So, people out there having knowledge about this matter please share it.
Ext2 and Fat32 are both types of filesystem used on various different types of media, including SD card, Hard drives etc.
EXT2 is (one) of the native linux filesystems, and is fully supported in kernel, and is usually faster and more stable in that OS
FAT32 is the 32bit version of the old MSdos filesystem, used up to Windows 98, and still supported by windows machines, but slower and less stable than the native NTFS filesystem used by XP and above.
Nand is actually the type of flash ROM used by our devices, and not a filesystem as such, and running Android in Nand refers to where the information is stored, rather than the filesystem used to store it.
It's equally valid to say that we run WM in Nand also.
I think that in the case of Android EXT2 should be faster and more stable than fat32 since it's designed for Linux, and works better in that OS.
Zenity ik would like to thank you very much as this answers mij questions.
And i think this would many others aswell.
Don't forget - if you format your MicroSD to just EXT2 then you will make it very awkward to transfer files to/from the card on a Microsoft Windows based system.
This may, or may not be a problem for you.
Ultimately, the current ideal situation (IMHO) is to run your OS from NAND, and to store your data (music / movies / documents) on a FAT32 format MicroSD - as this enables you to swap the MicroSD card without turning off the device, and provides best cross-platform usability of the MicroSD for the purposes of transferring data to/from it.
Thank you all!
Thank you all for commenting! I will add your comments to the Android-wiki I'm building as this question could come back repeatedly from newcomers (and old ones who forgot )!
boli99 said:
Don't forget - if you format your MicroSD to just EXT2 then you will make it very awkward to transfer files to/from the card on a Microsoft Windows based system.
This may, or may not be a problem for you.
Ultimately, the current ideal situation (IMHO) is to run your OS from NAND, and to store your data (music / movies / documents) on a FAT32 format MicroSD - as this enables you to swap the MicroSD card without turning off the device, and provides best cross-platform usability of the MicroSD for the purposes of transferring data to/from it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is a program for allowing the mounting of EXT2 file systems on windows, however they are not signed. This is more problematic in Windows that are 64bit. The program is called 'ext2fsd' and you can get it from source forge. EXT2 is a better file system, and does not have the 4GB file size limit, and does not fragment (although on a SD card, this should not be an issue). EXT2 also has file permissions that Linux understands. Fat32 has no Access control file permissions.
I have just recently got polymod's eclair running with both system and data on ext2 partitions.
my question is...
I am just wondering what the boot order is...
and where(if possible) can it be changed?
system.img in the andboot folder VS system on partition.
I know it can be set in the installer. but lets say I had installed system on ext2 partition. and then later placed a system.img in the andboot folder.
can I swap between the two?
OK...
I figured it out myself,
You can use the installer to select boot options (Not just options to install)
so I have a system and data on partitons. (currently using)
and I also have a second build installed to .img files in the andboot folder. (for failsafe backup)
if I want to swap from one into the other
I enter installer and change the settings for the system and data to
their respective locations and then just QUIT.
I also still have a donut build in the android folder. as well as still running winmo.
quad boot system on my phone...LOL
Now thats a neat use of the installer, I think this find deserves it's own thread in fact, I'm certain others will find it useful
Tanks !
binlabin said:
* Running the system from NAND and data on EXT2
The performance seems almost as fast as the system+data on NAND. I have no idea about the added value of running anything from an EXT2-partition in the SD card but I'm guessing it will be slower. I have no idea if file access for manipulation is easier or not compared to the other options.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've done some tries with this doing the partitioning from within android and then formatting the FAT32 partition from Windows 7 but the FAT32 partition doesn't work very well afterward. Really slow and sometimes crashes the explorer. Propably something to do with my SD-card. May try doing the partitioning and formatting from Linux to see if it works better.
Seems to me the main advantage of this option is to increase the size of available data storage which i suspect can become a limitation sooner or later in a pure NAND install.
EDIT: Now I've done it and gone NAND-System + EXT2-Data... Partitioned the SD-card from Ubuntu with gparted. Resized the FAT32 partition and created 3 primary EXT2 partitions. only the second (partition 3) should be used though with the setup I am using. It's charging right now so I haven't tried it out much yet but I will later on. However I noticed that I now have 171Mb free phone storage instead of 30-something that I had before (same apps installed).
EDIT2: Ran gparted again and shrinked the unused partition (partition 2) and expanded the data partition (partition 3) so I now have 369Mb free "Internal phone storage". Haven't noticed any speed differences between this and when I had data on NAND.
nand
By then one question:
If im install android in the NAND is more fast ready? But this process erase WM6?
Because now android work good in my HTC TYNT II but the camera and bluetooth not work and have one or two performance problems and for this dont like delete WM6 of my phone, and for this im use Android from my SD.
But look the NAND option because have a problems with the time live of my battery only lasts 5hours with android and SD.
Thanks for your help and cooperation
excellent thread which answers some questions that I had. Thanks to everyone who contributed. The only question remaining though and I have posted this elsewhere without getting an answer:
I partitioned a 2 gb sdcard with ~1.6gb Fat32 and the rest as a single Ext2. I selected system on nand and data on ext2 in the installer. After installation, it does show alot more memory for data as compared to data on nand, BUT I also have a data.img in andboot which is in the Fat32 partition, with a size around 250mb. The question is, is the data in that file or on ext2? If I backup data from installer, it creates a databackup.img in andboot with the same size as data.img. Seems to me the ext2 partition is just taking up space and not being used. Can anyone more knowledgeable shed some light on this? Thanks.
Not quite sure what is going on there, seems very counter-intuitive, I would have assumed that system on Nand, data on EXT2 would have installed the data partition to EXT2 on SD. This would seem not to be the case in this instance.
There are a few experiments you could try, if you are brave enough, since you may cause problems by trying any of these suggestions, which could mean a reinstall, I leave it to your judgement how to proceed
Ok firstly I assume you have a card reader, since you managed to partition and format the SD card in the first place. Remove the SD card, insert in card reader, delete the andboot folder, or the contents of the folder, ( may be wise to have a spare SD with either a winmo or android install handy at this point, just in case things go horribly wrong ).
Now with the cleaned SD, put it in the phone and boot, it should boot fine, IF the data is truly on the EXT2 partition.
That at least will answer one question, namely, where the heck is my data?
If this works fine, then I'd just put it down to some inner weirdness of android on non-native devices, if it fails then I'm wondering if your EXT2 partition may have problems, forcing the phone to dump it on the first available good partition, namely the FAT32 one.
Oh and if it does fail, you will have to reinstall, since your data will be toast.
Finally, good luck, I await with interest
As I recall, the install has the FAT32/Ext2 options incorrectly swapped. It has been this way for a while.
zenity said:
Not quite sure what is going on there, seems very counter-intuitive, I would have assumed that system on Nand, data on EXT2 would have installed the data partition to EXT2 on SD. This would seem not to be the case in this instance.
There are a few experiments you could try, if you are brave enough, since you may cause problems by trying any of these suggestions, which could mean a reinstall, I leave it to your judgement how to proceed
Ok firstly I assume you have a card reader, since you managed to partition and format the SD card in the first place. Remove the SD card, insert in card reader, delete the andboot folder, or the contents of the folder, ( may be wise to have a spare SD with either a winmo or android install handy at this point, just in case things go horribly wrong ).
Now with the cleaned SD, put it in the phone and boot, it should boot fine, IF the data is truly on the EXT2 partition.
That at least will answer one question, namely, where the heck is my data?
If this works fine, then I'd just put it down to some inner weirdness of android on non-native devices, if it fails then I'm wondering if your EXT2 partition may have problems, forcing the phone to dump it on the first available good partition, namely the FAT32 one.
Oh and if it does fail, you will have to reinstall, since your data will be toast.
Finally, good luck, I await with interest
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great idea, I'll try this on the weekend. I wont delete data though, I'll just rename andboot and backup data for good measure, because I want to be able to go back to the data by renaming it back if it doesn't work. I was also thinking if there is any way to get to the ext2 partition and read it... I'm on xp so I cant do it on my pc, and on the phone, I've looked around in astro n other file managers but cant see anything. But if the case is as golfnz34me points out, then I should just backup the data, and change the option to Fat32 in install and restore data. That should do the trick.
golfnz34me said:
As I recall, the install has the FAT32/Ext2 options incorrectly swapped. It has been this way for a while.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, will check this out. If its true, then great, more speed for my /data! I wonder how I missed this, been going through these forums regularly...
Ok I checked it out, and golfnz34me is correct it seems.
But now I found a new problem. I backed up data, and in the installer, set the data to SDCard, and tried to restore data. It gives various errors like
Code:
cannot determine filesystem size
failed
failed to format
...some other lines...
losetup: /dev/block/loop2: no such device or address
I created the partition with Paragon partition manager, and after getting this error I rechecked in PPM. I reformated the partition, but still get the error. In PPM the partition drive letter isnt assigned. Or, the partition isnt the active partition. Can one of those be the problem? The volume name is Ext2. Im not very experienced in partitioning etc, apart from normal ntfs partition for new hds in windows, so I didnt play with any options. I dont have a linux system either. Any got any ideas? Any help would be appreciated alot!
Not sure about using partition managers other than gparted, afaik most people are using the Gparted live cd if they don't have a linux install handy.
The errors all point to some sort of problem with the EXT2 partition, or it's formatting.
Also EXT2 partitions do not have drive letters, nor do they have to be active partitions.
Apps and data on SD card.
I cant seem to figure out how to make all the apps and other stuff install to the SD card. Do I have to partition the card into two partitions? or is there a way to install the system to Nand and make all the apps and data go to the SD card? Ive tried setting it to System on nand and data on SD partition but it says no partitions to install to or something.
Ok lets start this discussion
Some reports:
- Fresh install, Wiped Data. Startup Manager throws a dozen of NOT RESPONDING errors before having my finger tip read
- Ok after a pain taking process of going to home, I see everything quick (entering/exiting from Drawer, switching homes, widgets etc)
- The native web browser hangs up after every GO to entered web address. (same is the case with xScope and Opera Mini
- Frequent incomplete downloads and failures
- tTorrent randomly PAUSES and goes to SCHEDULE when phone goes to sleep.
- Download speed is like 12KB/sec (my wifi router broadcasts an 8Mbps connection)
When I installed on NAND (SYS + DATA)
- Speed is just a dream, Menu transitions, Settings APIs etc open really fast (competing my friend's experia x10i )
- Browser seldom stalls on webpage " GO "s
- Download never fails and speed is decent (from 50KB/s to 120KB/s)
- tTorrent doesnt crash the download
- All application I install dont show black screen for too long.
So whats the remedy?
Obviously no one would want a space of only 90MB for a heap of software. Are there any suggestions?
My SD Card is partitioned as:
1.1GB FAT32 Primary
180MB Ext2 Primary (dont know whats that for)
Remaining space to Ext 2 Primary (for Data since Android installs DATA on LAST ext2 Partition)
Please propose some working solutions. My phone has like 2MB of system memory left (shown in settings) and I have to clear cache and end all tasks after like every 20 minutes of web browsing.
As a start, you'll have to realise that probably ANY sdcard, is slower that your NAND drive. To make matters WORSE, the sdcard drive on the kaiser, is kind of slow.
So, your apps not responding are a direct cause of this whole slowness. What can you do ?
Use another SD. Class 4 or 6 should do the trick.
If you can't, try formating your SD card with those special tools to fix FAT32 errors. I remember a HP tool...
Also, are you using DATA on SD Card Partition, or data on SD card imagefile ??
daedric said:
As a start, you'll have to realise that probably ANY sdcard, is slower that your NAND drive. To make matters WORSE, the sdcard drive on the kaiser, is kind of slow.
So, your apps not responding are a direct cause of this whole slowness. What can you do ?
Use another SD. Class 4 or 6 should do the trick.
If you can't, try formating your SD card with those special tools to fix FAT32 errors. I remember a HP tool...
Also, are you using DATA on SD Card Partition, or data on SD card imagefile ??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The img file is made on FAT32 and the Data on Partition uses the last Ext2 Partition available.
I'm still figuring out which one's better of the two file systems. I suspect that the .img loop file doesnt get fatter with more income :| (Tried with the regular Slackware Live distros which make a specific sized .img file and store data in there and its un-expandable)
dark_prince said:
The img file is made on FAT32 and the Data on Partition uses the last Ext2 Partition available.
I'm still figuring out which one's better of the two file systems. I suspect that the .img loop file doesnt get fatter with more income :| (Tried with the regular Slackware Live distros which make a specific sized .img file and store data in there and its un-expandable)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ext 2 for running off an sd card is better for 1 or 2 reasons
1. since its on a separate partition from your user data the system doesnt have to sort through your user data when trying to run the system
2. ext2 and 3 are both native linux formats, so its just a little more efficient at reading them. like somebody who's native language is english but knows how to speak spanish, its always going to be easier to speak english
Actually, i belive even linux reads/writes FAT32 faster than EXT2/3.
It simply doesn't have to write/read as much, there's no ACL, no owner for the files, you simply get a creation date, last modification date, and 3 or 4 attributes (read only, system, hidden, archive)
Either way, i don't belive its possible to expand a filesystem mounted through loop. you probably would need LVM (i thin its LVM) for this, which would be overkill for this matter.
As for... data on imagefile or on partition, i belive a partition is always better. First, although as of yet impossible, you can not mount the sd card via USB if the DATA is on a imagefile in it. Android cannot access /sdcard if its mounted.
Second, FAT32 is subject for fragmentation. A SD card does not suffer as much as a normal harddrive from it, but due to the major slowness of our sdreader, it would be noticable. Worse, you risk more data lost, as even if you don't get errors on the EXT2 filesystem, you might get them on the FAT32 filesystem.
IMHO of course
daedric said:
Actually, i belive even linux reads/writes FAT32 faster than EXT2/3.
It simply doesn't have to write/read as much, there's no ACL, no owner for the files, you simply get a creation date, last modification date, and 3 or 4 attributes (read only, system, hidden, archive)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats what I believe
Either way, i don't belive its possible to expand a filesystem mounted through loop. you probably would need LVM (i thin its LVM) for this, which would be overkill for this matter.
As for... data on imagefile or on partition, i belive a partition is always better. First, although as of yet impossible, you can not mount the sd card via USB if the DATA is on a imagefile in it. Android cannot access /sdcard if its mounted.
Second, FAT32 is subject for fragmentation. A SD card does not suffer as much as a normal harddrive from it, but due to the major slowness of our sdreader, it would be noticable. Worse, you risk more data lost, as even if you don't get errors on the EXT2 filesystem, you might get them on the FAT32 filesystem.
IMHO of course
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed. I wish Kaiser had slightly bigger native storage tsk tsk
Hi,
Tonight I installed some updates for apps on my phone running Leedroid 2.2d A2SD+. Some of them stubbornly decided to stay on the SD card so I went to move them (I haven't managed to get pm setInstallLocation 1 to work, though I have yet to try it from ADB and that was the way I got setInstallLocation 2 to work before I rooted). I moved several at once and suddenly had the applications manager restart itself and found one of my games that was being moved (Cordy) was no longer working and couldn't be moved either to or from the phone (said move failed). So I tried restarting the phone incase that would fix it.
The phone wouldn't get past the HTC logo so I thought it might be a corrupt A2SD partition, but since it was ext3 that I could probably just get fsck on the computer to replay the journal. Upon putting the card in the computer (using an SD adapter) and booting into Ubuntu 10.10 I tried running disk utility with 'check filesystem' and it reported an error and that the filesystem was not clean and changed the partition to unknown. The same thing happend for the FAT32 partition and I couldn't mount that either. I tried running fsck from a terminal and it said something along the lines of 'Bad superblock or possible short write' and was unable to check the partitions and exited immediately (sorry I have since rebooted and assumed the same error would occur next time so didn't write it down specifically).
I restarted into Windows 7 to see if it could fix the FAT32 partition so I could get my Nandroid backup I made yesterday and it worked fine and said the partition was fine! Usefully Nandroid makes an md5 checksum of the backup so I was able to confirm at least that was intact and make a copy (I didn't really have anything else not backed up on the card as I only rooted a week ago).
I then rebooted back into Ubuntu and it now reports the FAT32 partition as clean, and actually makes some attempt at repairing the EXT3 partition but reports huge quantities of nasty errors like multiply allocated blocks and allocated blocks marked as free and an error with the journal when I run from terminal using 'fsck -t ext3 /dev/sdb2'. I don't really have any experience with fsck as I mostly use windows but there were a lot of errors that sounded pretty unresolvable (from memories of my couple of lectures on ext at university).
Yesterday I flashed an UOT theme using (ClockworkMod 2.5.0.7 as installed by Unrevoked3) install from zip for battery percentage and some icon changes, I chose Leedroid 2.3d from the file list. I had also installed DSPManager using the flashable zip on the Leedroid site.
My card was partitioned using GParted with FAT32 first followed by a 512MB EXT3 partition as recommended on the Leedroid site. I was sure to create the EXT3 partition second as I noticed adding it first at the end made it the first partition in the table. The card had been made a goldcard (though this might be gone as I erased the card with disk utilities Format drive button which may have deleted the MBR, I'm not really sure).
I'm guessing somehow Android tried to do multiple writes at once but I was under the impression these kinds of issues were solved by putting the partitions in the correct order, besides, shouldn't Andorid work correctly with its built-in support for ext anyway like any other version of linux? If this is a known, common problem with A2SD+ why doesn't every ROM have a big warning about this like Data2SD ROMS generally have about SD wear and being able to persist system settings?
PS: I realise there are some other threads on this but they are fairly old and seem to all involve connecting the phone to the computer or after a reboot.
Are there any roms or other easy ways to increase the size of the partition /data/data on the Droid Incredible? To this day, all I really find are ways to save space in there. That's been covered - everything from Cachemate to not using certain apps. I want to know if there are any roms out there that use space from internal or other areas and reroute them so that /data/data shows more space. Any help would be appreciated.
+1
I've run into this a lot lately. Even my Eris never had this problem.
enigmatl said:
Are there any roms or other easy ways to increase the size of the partition /data/data on the Droid Incredible? To this day, all I really find are ways to save space in there. That's been covered - everything from Cachemate to not using certain apps. I want to know if there are any roms out there that use space from internal or other areas and reroute them so that /data/data shows more space. Any help would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No roms do it currently. But its probably doable.
Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk
There is an app on the market called Notenoughspace. I have never used it, but it is supposed to take stuff out of your data/data, and insert it somewhere else. I here it is tricky, so be careful if you use it. I really don't know much about it. The first couple of times I ran into this problem it drove me crazy. Have you read all of the threads for what causes this? Stay away from Facebook. If you sync contacts in Facebook it can cause this. I am a crackflasher, so I rarely run into the problem. I don't think that a Rom can fix this, but I am a newb myself. Really just wanted TP help since I saw your disgruntled post in the developers section....good luck
Thanks for the reply. But here's the thing. Please let's not go into the likes of notenoughspace and cachemate and whiping out facebook. This is what people say in EVERY thread on this from the beginning of the droid incredible.
I'm not looking for a solution that at best can let an extra app or 2 get installed on the droid incredible. I'm looking for a way to INCREASE the size of the /data/data partition by way of taking some unused space from other areas like system or cache or better yet, from that pointless internal storage (for all the SD card users).
There is a lot of extra space on these phones. Thus it is nonsensical to have a measly 150mb to use in that area.
AS this phone is for a friend (and I generally do the upgrading or fixing), I do not experience this on my photon nor do I experience it on my Iconia tab. There was a limit for /data/data on my evo but it was about twice the Droid Incredible I believe.
So this most likely has to be a partition issue. Is there really no fix for it? Since it's not a hardware limit, I'm surprised as I've seen some out of this world ROMs for the device (like Skyraider's which I hoped would make it to the Evo when I had that).
enigmatl said:
Thanks for the reply. But here's the thing. Please let's not go into the likes of notenoughspace and cachemate and whiping out facebook. This is what people say in EVERY thread on this from the beginning of the droid incredible.
I'm not looking for a solution that at best can let an extra app or 2 get installed on the droid incredible. I'm looking for a way to INCREASE the size of the /data/data partition by way of taking some unused space from other areas like system or cache or better yet, from that pointless internal storage (for all the SD card users).
There is a lot of extra space on these phones. Thus it is nonsensical to have a measly 150mb to use in that area.
AS this phone is for a friend (and I generally do the upgrading or fixing), I do not experience this on my photon nor do I experience it on my Iconia tab. There was a limit for /data/data on my evo but it was about twice the Droid Incredible I believe.
So this most likely has to be a partition issue. Is there really no fix for it? Since it's not a hardware limit, I'm surprised as I've seen some out of this world ROMs for the device (like Skyraider's which I hoped would make it to the Evo when I had that).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have had the same problem, and I haven't seen any roms that come close to solving it. And there is no quick and easy solution.
The best work around I could find was to mod the stock rom and add Dark Tremor's APP2SD, and use notenoughspace.
With dtapps2sd you have to partiton the SD card so that you have a ext3 partition on it that can be mounted and apps can be ran from it. It does this for /data/app and a couple of other folders.
Notenoughspace will let you move folders in /data/data to the sd partition that dtapps2sd has mounted, and that survive through a reboot. The extra partition option is what you would use, not the NES partition.
Using this work around I have about 300 apps on my phone, and about 70mb free in /data/data.
My Android version is GB 2.3.4 (build 4.06.605.3).
enigmatl said:
Are there any roms or other easy ways to increase the size of the partition /data/data on the Droid Incredible? To this day, all I really find are ways to save space in there. That's been covered - everything from Cachemate to not using certain apps. I want to know if there are any roms out there that use space from internal or other areas and reroute them so that /data/data shows more space. Any help would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bootmanager will install the whole rom on /sdcard or emmc storage and as an added bonus, /data and /data/data are all in one image so you have shared space. By default you have 950 MB to share for apps and app data. As an added bonus you have the ability to boot multiple roms and have them all loaded at once. It's available on the market and the devs who made it are awesome. However it costs a few dollars.
If you don't want to go that route then it's possible to create an image on the sdcard or emmc and symlink it to /data/data and you could set the size of the file. Then the ramdisk would need to be modified and maybe a couple of things done on the rom. You asked for an easy way and this is one but not easy though. Bootmanager is pretty easy though and no coding changes need to be done to the roms and it will leave your original rom intact.
I've been wondering about this as well.
I've tried a couple different approaches, and ended up sticking with one: it takes some setup overhead for every ROM I install, but it helps a lot.
I ended up deleting the datadata mount from init.inc.rc in boot.img (get ROM, unpack, edit init.inc.rc, repack, flash), and booting in recovery mode to move the data from ([email protected])/ over to (mmcblk0p1)/data (which is now just a subdir on the 768MB /data partition.)
Initial tests repartitioning mmcblk0 (houses /data, /cache, and /emmc) to make /data larger for this purpose didn't work out well: the bootloader rewrites the MBR/partition table when it finds that they don't match metrics it likes. /emmc can not really be reformatted because the bootloader updates some bits that it expects to be FAT32 on boot time as well, corrupting other filesystems.
Why on earth HTC would ship a phone in this day and age with such a crippled storage layout is beyond me.
DHowett said:
I've been wondering about this as well.
I've tried a couple different approaches, and ended up sticking with one: it takes some setup overhead for every ROM I install, but it helps a lot.
I ended up deleting the datadata mount from init.inc.rc in boot.img (get ROM, unpack, edit init.inc.rc, repack, flash), and booting in recovery mode to move the data from ([email protected])/ over to (mmcblk0p1)/data (which is now just a subdir on the 768MB /data partition.)
Initial tests repartitioning mmcblk0 (houses /data, /cache, and /emmc) to make /data larger for this purpose didn't work out well: the bootloader rewrites the MBR/partition table when it finds that they don't match metrics it likes. /emmc can not really be reformatted because the bootloader updates some bits that it expects to be FAT32 on boot time as well, corrupting other filesystems.
Why on earth HTC would ship a phone in this day and age with such a crippled storage layout is beyond me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That doesn't sound too difficult (i moved CM7 from emmc img to the actual phone partitions so that should be pretty simple). The only downside is you do lose space for apps (easily solved with apps2sd). I haven't seen you around since you posted your idea for multiboot. Been busy?
Well, the emmc method would be a loopback image which would not touch the fat32 filesystem.
Or if you're doing nightlies for instance once you mod the boot.img just add it to each new nightly.
Would Conap's dual boot work the same way? I am comfortable with this, and all the coding is intimidating for this newb. Would one of you smarter members put out a small guide as to exactly how to do this. I know it is time consuming, but it would really be worth it to us low lifes. Thanks
How can you do this?
DHowett said:
I've been wondering about this as well.
I've tried a couple different approaches, and ended up sticking with one: it takes some setup overhead for every ROM I install, but it helps a lot.
I ended up deleting the datadata mount from init.inc.rc in boot.img (get ROM, unpack, edit init.inc.rc, repack, flash), and booting in recovery mode to move the data from ([email protected])/ over to (mmcblk0p1)/data (which is now just a subdir on the 768MB /data partition.)
Initial tests repartitioning mmcblk0 (houses /data, /cache, and /emmc) to make /data larger for this purpose didn't work out well: the bootloader rewrites the MBR/partition table when it finds that they don't match metrics it likes. /emmc can not really be reformatted because the bootloader updates some bits that it expects to be FAT32 on boot time as well, corrupting other filesystems.
Why on earth HTC would ship a phone in this day and age with such a crippled storage layout is beyond me.
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Wow, that sounds like a great idea. Like the above poster, can I also ask if someone who knows how would write up some instructions on how to to this? It certainly would be appreciated by many! With Gingerbread, there's not much Incredible users can do about the tiny /data size. Thanks!
I'm encountering this issue with 384MB of phone storage free and nearly 4GB of SD free. When I checked, I only had 14.5MB free in /data/data. 150MB for this is ridiculous! I would appreciate any fix, preferably one I can set and forget (don't want to have to constantly move or create symlinks for ever new app I install).
possible fix
You should check out jermaine151's Stock+ version 2.1. http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1260994. I can't personally vouch for it as he just released it and it's a little late to start reinstalling everything, but it looks promising.
Just thinking out loud....
I don't know if the ICS leak flashes change the partition table, but the way my phone is set up, there's 11 partitions:
p1: /efs
p2: /system
p3: /cache
p4: The "Internal SD"
p5: A mere 2MB. Mostly blank (long stretches of 00 or FF), except for <1KB of... something. Nothing jumps out at me in the hexdump. Could just be leftover garbage from Gingerbread.
p6: /data
p7: 16MB. Definitely something important here. Strings present suggest it's related to, if not part of, the bootloader, or perhaps download mode.
p8: 5MB: Looks like an Android bootimg. Recovery?
p9: 8MB: Pretty sure this is where the Linux kernel and rootfs for the actual system resides.
p10: 8MB: Completely blank.
p11: 500MB. An ext4 filesystem containing only the Asphalt 6 video and screenshots that you'd find on the "Internal SD" of a freshly Odin'd Glide.
I wonder if p5 actually serves a purpose; if not, we could theoretically merge it, p4, and p6 into one gigantic /data partition. That may be a bit more useful for those running with large microSD cards.
Things we need to look at:
One, bootloader. Does it look for things at static offsets? Does it read the partition table?
Two, recovery. I'm guessing CWMR will read the partition table, but is it expecting certain partitions to contain certain things?
In both cases, it shouldn't be anything we can't work around by filling out partition numbers or stretches of NAND with blank partitions. But we'll need to know what the offsets need to be.
Just putting the thought out there.
PIT & GPT, custom PIT
Actually the last PIT partition contains GPT data, and what we've seen inside the booted system comes out of GPT. But there is unallocated ~11Mb (according to GPT) before the first partition, and the PIT contains info about that!
cross-ref my thread: [Q] mmcblk0 Partiton table type (sgh-i927)
For now I'm looking a way of crafting my custom PIT-file, did you see any info about that?