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Hello! I've searched all over the internet about this but haven't found any usable information about this. I was thinking about storing music files etc on the ext partition on my SD-card. I've a 8GB sdcard with a 64MB swap, 1024MB FAT32 and rest of the space goes to an ext2 partition. The problem is, how do I acess the ext2 partition in the phone? I know it is placed in /system/sd. But it seems it is only the super-user who has access to this folder. Is it possible to symlink the folder to another place and make it accessible for the user?
Every info I find is about storing apps on the ext-partition, which works. But having 6GB space for apps feels very overkill. FAT32 seems to be quite limited to speed when copying files, and also it have size limit of files.
The easiest and most recommend way to solve your problems is to repartion your card to:
0M swap (no use for swap on hero)
512M ext2 (see below)
rest as FAT (over 7G for your music)
If you plan on having every single one of the apps on the market you can give the ext2 partition 1024MB, no need to give it any more. There are numerous problems that can arise from having larger ext2 partitions, just of the top of my mind if you do have more data on the ext2 partition larger than your FAT free space you can't do a nandroid backup, you'll end up storing too much stuff on the ext partition which is usually wiped on ROM update and replacement, and it is much harder to access these files, as opposed to the FAT partition which is can be mounted as a USB drive to your PC.
Finally note I said ext2, and not ext3/ext4 because Ext3/4 are journaling file systems which are NOT suited for flash devices. They also have much more CPU overhead then ext2. Finally not all ROMs/kernels support ext3/ext4 and for a good reason!
BTW, please post questions in the either the Q&A or general sections. This is the DEVELOPMENT fourm.
Good luck.
Thanks for your reply, and sorry for posting in the wrong forum, which is quite obvious when I see it now!
Moved to Q&A as not development
erasmux said:
The easiest and most recommend way to solve your problems is to repartion your card to:
0M swap (no use for swap on hero)
512M ext2 (see below)
rest as FAT (over 7G for your music)
If you plan on having every single one of the apps on the market you can give the ext2 partition 1024MB
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Click to collapse
+1, Yeppers, wow a 6gb ext... That is some serious overkill,why?
Sent from my phone.
I was thinking to use the ext partition as a storage of music etc instead of the fat32 partition. The ext-partition is faster to copy files on, especially if you get a 32gb card and maybe you want to transfer big files. If I remember it right FAT32 table doesn't allow file-sizes more the 4GB, and it is also slower to copy to or from.
Any linux operating system should be able to read the ext partition on your sd card, or a program such as gparted is another thing to look into. Remember you can boot to linux without installing the operating system (boot from CD). Ubuntu or Knoppix is a good one to check out if you're new to it all.
Hehe, I think you did misunderstand my main question. The question is how to read the ext-partition directly from the phone with a file-manager (i.e. Astro File Manager). Not from a computer, from the phone, in the phone.
Vantskruv said:
Hehe, I think you did misunderstand my main question. The question is how to read the ext-partition directly from the phone with a file-manager (i.e. Astro File Manager). Not from a computer, from the phone, in the phone.
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O in that case you have no chance lol. AFAIK there isn't any program designed for this purpose.
Vantskruv said:
Hehe, I think you did misunderstand my main question. The question is how to read the ext-partition directly from the phone with a file-manager (i.e. Astro File Manager). Not from a computer, from the phone, in the phone.
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Well it depends where your ROM mounts it. I think most ROMs mount it to /system/sd, so you can use any file explorer with root permissions to browse there (i.e. ES File Explorer).
Is it possible to repartition my SD card to use EXT4 instead of FAT32, with the Fascinate? I'm currently running an EB01 kernel and a custom EB01 build. I'm just not sure how to do this part, as I've never done it before. I've seen it done for other devices, but I don't think it has come up here yet. This isn't really a debate on if I should or should not make it EXT4, just on how to do it.
That's what a voodoo kernel does.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk
JoeDat said:
That's what a voodoo kernel does.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk
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I'm running the EB01 voodoo kernel, and yes it obviously has support for EXT4 since that is the FS it uses.
My question though is how can I mount my SD card to be recognized when I format it to EXT4 too?
Ah crap. I should have read your post more than once. Mundane detail. Just call me Michael Bolton.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk
If you don't have anything on your SDcard you mind deleting (or could just back it up), you could always try repartitioning it, and then seeing if Android is able to mount it.
If it doesn't automatically work, it shouldn't be too hard to modify the system to work (either by switching it from using 'vfat' to 'auto' or 'ext4')... it's just a matter of finding out where to change it.
There's no reason why it wouldn't, I guess... worst case you use command line mount tool to mount it manually every boot
That's what I thought too, that it would work inherently, but I partitioned/formatted the entire thing to EXT3 and it was not able to be recognized. I think either A) there is no built-in module for EXT3 support, or B) I'm just not doing it right.
Could be that I used a Windows tools to do the job to get EXT3, and I'm having trouble finding one to do EXT4, and I can't find any tools/scripts to convert EXT3 to EXT4 for Android.
If you format the sdcard to anything other than FAT32, Windows will not be able to read it when you try to mount it on your PC. I'm not sure if there are any utilities available that allows Windows to directly mount EXT filesystems or not, but I would be very afraid of data loss with a configuration like that.
What is the reason you want to convert it? Is it the file size limit of FAT32, or something else?
Posted from my EB01 SuperClean Fascinate with Voodoo
ivorycruncher said:
If you format the sdcard to anything other than FAT32, Windows will not be able to read it when you try to mount it on your PC. I'm not sure if there are any utilities available that allows Windows to directly mount EXT filesystems or not, but I would be very afraid of data loss with a configuration like that.
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Click to collapse
There's been an ext2 (possibly 3/4, but all are backwards compatible long as you don't use extents on 4) driver for Windows for a number of years. There's also a number of tools that can allow you to open ext2/3/4 file systems and modify them, without actually having to mount them.
ADB would also still work, so would an app that provides access to the sdcard via webdav/ftp/sftp/etc.
What is the reason you want to convert it? Is it the file size limit of FAT32, or something else?
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Speed should improve by quite a bit, as well as greatly increased reliability (although the windows. Ext2/3/4 also support far larger files than fat32, of course, so if you like your raw-DVD rips or 1080p ultra-high-quality bollywood movies, there would be an obvious benefit by removing that restriction. I don't believe the ext family of file systems support it (but I could be wrong about ext4), but tail packing would greatly improve efficiency if you have a massive number of small files (reiserfs has it, btrfs might also- not sure).
Personally, it doesn't seem like there's enough of a benefit to really do it, especially if you're not using Linux... other than the desire to do it for the sake of doing it... which, considering where we are, that's pretty much enough of a reason to do anything.
Until I can find a good way to automount the FS every boot I wil probably stay with FAT32. I played around with different methods last night quite a bit and it turned into much more of a hassle than I liked. I really regret not having it however, because of the loss of speed.
total noob
pretty sure it's not the developers fault of tazzsensefroyobt. because for a while it was working great for me. ever sense i tried to use apps2sd on PlainJaneT2_V2.0. i keep having an error on tazzsensefroyobt saying sd card is not mounted.
used rom manager to format sd card. then trying to fix this reformated using windows
There is a reason for that - the method to get apps2sd on a 2.1 ROM like PlainJane has you create a second partition on your SD card,to create a location to hold the apps. Unfortunately, Froyo will not mount an SD card with more than one partition.
You'll have to do these things, I think:
- backup your SD card
- do a Nandroid+ext backup from PlainJane, in case you want to go back
- follow the steps to partition your SD card from before, but choose 0 bytes for both the ext2 and swap partition sizes. This will erase your SD card
- go into the USB-MS option from Recovery to copy files back over to your formatted SD Card.
- Now you can flash the Froyo ROM you want
worked beautifuly thanks
apps2sd
so if i want to get rid of apps2sd on a 2.1 rom and just use for 2.2 roms just format with 0 on both swap size and ext2 size
monkeyboy19762 said:
so if i want to get rid of apps2sd on a 2.1 rom and just use for 2.2 roms just format with 0 on both swap size and ext2 size
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Click to collapse
That's correct. For some reason I think that there is one of the 2.2 ROMs that actually will mount an SD card with more than one partition, but I could be wrong about that, and I can't remember which one it is. But if a Froyo or Gingerbread ROM will not mount a perfectly good SD card with more than one partition? That's why - it has more than one partition.
doogald said:
That's correct. For some reason I think that there is one of the 2.2 ROMs that actually will mount an SD card with more than one partition, but I could be wrong about that, and I can't remember which one it is. But if a Froyo or Gingerbread ROM will not mount a perfectly good SD card with more than one partition? That's why - it has more than one partition.
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Click to collapse
Froyo and higher will work with multiple partitions; it's just not real easy. The trick is that the SD card has to be partitioned in a certain way.
From memory of the thread that's in the Dev section (I think the OP was Conap), the first partition has to be FAT32, and would have to be large enough for any NANDs and ROMs you want to ever backup/restore and flash.
Any other partitions can be anything you want BUT with this one rule. If you have a total of four partitions or less, then the last partition HAS to be FAT32, and will be the partition that'll be mounted by the AndroidOS when it's up and running. The second part of this rule is that if you have MORE than four partitions then the fourth partition is the one that has to be FAT32.
Just like partitions 2 and 3, anything from 5 and on can be anything you want. Conap also developed scripts to mount partitions like the first FAT32 one, since it's nice to have access to it from the running phone from time to time (mounting it through USB from Amon RA or Clockwork Mod should still work as normal). I think he also made ways to mount these other partitions from Windows. My memory is fuzzy. I only tried once to make this work for me, but I wasn't really successful mounting the oddball partitions to the phone or to Windows, and I didn't try real hard - I didn't care enough to really try to figure out what I assumed I did wrong, since I believe other people were able to test it just fine.
This theory of operation appeared to be developed in conjunction with the dual-boot AndroidOS 2.1/2.2 ROM by TeamAndIRC (I think they're called), which includes Conap and others as members. I never tried the ROM.
I'm not positive if the limitation of the partitioning applies to all phones with 2.2 or higher, though. I've read some threads for other phones that officially ran 2.2 in which they mention partitioning to be able to use old style Apps2SD instead of the native one, and there wasn't any mention of any complicated partitioning scheme.
Does anyone know enough off the top of their head to verify this?
Ok after many hours tonight I have managed to put together a couple .zip files that will install a modified vold.fstab on your Nook Color. (I am a total n00b at this)
The EMMC of the Nook Color has a partition for the ROM and a 5 GB partition that's mostly if not completely unused. Presently, there aren't any 3rd-party managers to move apps to that unused partition, so I modified the vold.fstab and am now able to use that partition for apps, files, etc.
NC.SWAP.VOLD.ZIP swaps the way the SD and EMMC directories are mounted. By swapping the mount points, and renaming EMMC to SDCARD, your apps, etc., will install to the internal storage, vs. installing to your SDCARD. Your physical SDcard is automatically mounted as "EMMC."
This also means that the music player still finds files, you can move files to "EMMC," and you can still eject the SDcard ("EMMC"), put it back in and it still shows up automatically. Now your NC won't freak out if you pull the card out without unmounting it - all of the apps are on the actual EMMC. You'd just find the SDcard under /mnt/emmc instead of /mnt/sdcard.
Because this ZIP file maps the change at an OS level, when you boot to recovery, your NC sees SD as the SDcard, so no issues occur. When you boot into your ROM, the mount points are swapped and you'll have access to the renamed "SDCARD" (5 GB) on your NC.
Use CWR 3.0.1.0 to install the .zip and check out the results with File Manager.
Thanks go out to Clark008, luciferii and Cali^Gal from #nookcolor, Loonacy and Raymondull from #Cyanogenmod, and EpicFail1236 from XDA.
Sorry if this is a bit crude, it's my first script ever. I would be happy to get any advice on how to make this better!
EDIT: I have been looking into renaming the emmc mount to say SD-External or better yet making it mount as /mnt/sdcard/sd-ext. it might be possible, ill be looking into it as soon as I can got laid up for a bit.
"Because this ZIP file maps the change at an OS level, when you boot to recovery, your NC sees SD as the SDcard, so no issues occur. When you boot into your ROM, the mount points are swapped and you'll have access to the renamed "SDCARD" (5 GB) on your NC."
/\/\ That clarifies a lot compared to the brief orig post. Will likely be flashing it this weekend.
BTW, if this expands and you need this 2nd post just have a mod give it to you. Thanks again!
BRILLIANT. Will be definitely testing this later today. Can't wait to run SD Tools on this
Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk
it works! interesting how it'll work out as to unmounting, flashing roms. but with emmc being useless this is fantastic.
Thank you for the effort and time place in this mod
Yeah. The whole point of this was to utilize the 5GB internal emmc and not waste it. The next step is to mod the CWM to mount emmc as /sdcard so you can flash your zips from where you download them to (usually /mnt/sdcard/download), which in this case, goes to your emmc. But CWM will mount your external sdcard instead. For the time being, we can just put the zips we need to flash to the external sdcard, ie. /mnt/emmc.
I don't know if anyone noticed it yet, but if you usb mount after the swap, the transfer speed is kind of slow (~1.5mbps). I don't know if this is due to the emmc or that the read ahead cache needs to be tweaked.
We're open to make this even better. Feel free to comment and provide feedback.
This sounds like a step in the right direction, however, what I would like to see would be merging the emmc with the internal storage. What I mean is this; right now, when I go into "Storage", I see an "SD card" (8gb), "Internal Storage" (0.92gb), and "/mnt/emmc" (5gb). Why can't we combine the .93 Internal and the 5gb emmc together to make a 5.92gb Internal storage and eliminate the emmc from teh storage area? I'm sure there is a reason that I'm not aware of, but it seems that this would be the same as just about every other device. I am pretty sure the ROM is running from the emmc partition, so that has to have something to do with it, but I don't see a purpose for 3 storage places. I keep getting errors when I try to download apps and I don't even have very many installed. I have had to move most of them to the SD card to make room and some apps don't like to be installed on the SD card.
Another option would be to swap the emmc with the Internal storage. Then we'd be using the 5gb and the .92 gb would be sitting there doing nothing instead. Again, I'm sure there are reasons for this, I'm just asking to learn.
I agree.. ideally having the emmc mount be part of the system would be ideal.
Calla969 said:
This sounds like a step in the right direction, however, what I would like to see would be merging the emmc with the internal storage. What I mean is this; right now, when I go into "Storage", I see an "SD card" (8gb), "Internal Storage" (0.92gb), and "/mnt/emmc" (5gb). Why can't we combine the .93 Internal and the 5gb emmc together to make a 5.92gb Internal storage and eliminate the emmc from teh storage area? I'm sure there is a reason that I'm not aware of, but it seems that this would be the same as just about every other device. I am pretty sure the ROM is running from the emmc partition, so that has to have something to do with it, but I don't see a purpose for 3 storage places. I keep getting errors when I try to download apps and I don't even have very many installed. I have had to move most of them to the SD card to make room and some apps don't like to be installed on the SD card.
Another option would be to swap the emmc with the Internal storage. Then we'd be using the 5gb and the .92 gb would be sitting there doing nothing instead. Again, I'm sure there are reasons for this, I'm just asking to learn.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i have no idea TBH but thats far beyond my ability. really it would be nice to symlink emmc to the SD card or the other way around. the issue is that you cant symlink with fat partitions :-/
This is neet. I don't know enough to comment, but it looks valuble for some people.
I just use my stock emmc for music storage and let apps sit on SD w/ videos.
WobbleTheHutt said:
i have no idea TBH but thats far beyond my ability. really it would be nice to symlink emmc to the SD card or the other way around. the issue is that you cant symlink with fat partitions :-/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, but you can symlink to them. Why not set vold.fstab to mount the partitions onto other names and make symlinks named /sdcard -> /othername? That way, the symlinks can do their jobs or rearranging the namespace to suit our needs.
The ramfs isn't FAT32, is it?
I'm an old cmdline type, tricks like this are used all the time to fool software with stubborn opinions about filenames.
Dennis
Jiggity Janx said:
If this works as effectively as it sounds like it will it's gonna rock! With the multiple wifi/bluetooth file transfer options I can say bye bye to the need for an sd card!
EDIT: I think this thread is eerily quiet because of the popular advice written up HERE. Specifically #5...
IMO, with a great write up on the best ways to work with this, all of the things it will affect (positive and negative), and the proper words of warning then the individuals that take it upon themselves to modify their devices are the only ones that can be held responsible if it doesn't work out as they had hoped. They also have to understand that when they work outside the boundaries of an accepted "standard" that they are somewhat desolate and will need to come back into the fold before they can/will be helped...
Just my .02...
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This may be slightly off topic, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what that post is complaining/ talking about, I have had no trouble bouncing between HC, CM7 and stock.
All you have to do is flash to stock and then worst case you force the boot failure and the nook resets its self automatically
The last few posts on that message are myself and another person who have had not trouble with that now the OP hasn't responded so i'm not sure what to make up that post.
Is it real and an actual issue?
Or did the poster overreact to something?
Can some one please explain it to me if I am wrong about something in using a EMMC version of HC?
chisleu said:
This is neet. I don't know enough to comment, but it looks valuble for some people.
I just use my stock emmc for music storage and let apps sit on SD w/ videos.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems neet to me also. Always interested in using both emmc and sd space.
@ chisleau - I like the concept of putting all my music on emmc. Do you use an option in CM7 to install or move all your apps to your SD card?
thinking out loud (and not actually doing it) -- but we know that /data is /dev/block/mmcblk0p6 and and the "media" or "emmc" is located at /dev/block/mmcblk0p8 -- can't we just repartition and merge the two?
minotauri said:
thinking out loud (and not actually doing it) -- but we know that /data is /dev/block/mmcblk0p6 and and the "media" or "emmc" is located at /dev/block/mmcblk0p8 -- can't we just repartition and merge the two?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We can repartition but don't do it for this Reason -#5 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=12494638&postcount=1
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=12494666&postcount=2
ROMs that follow proper packaging - This emmc swap mod is one of them. So we're fine for those who are still hesitating.
Clark008 said:
ROMs that follow proper packaging - This emmc swap mod is one of them. So we're fine for those who are still hesitating.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, I was hesitating, but between your post above and the "Thanks" from fattire to the OP, that is all the encouragement I need to take the plunge.
A few questions, tho, if someone can help me to understand this better....
I guess until I saw the OP, I did not realize that all apps in CM7 are installed to the SD card, as when I look at my installed apps in App Mgr, they don't show as being on the SD card. Is this some sort of CM7 voodoo or are my apps really on the internal memory?
Right now, with CM7, I am using the EMMC partition to store my music, under "My Files/Music". Power Amp can see this folder and it will play all my music just fine from within that directory on the internal partition, so if I install this update, what will that do to the 5Gb of internal storage I have now and the music on it?
Also, if I do install this update, what will happen to the apps and their associated data that I already have installed? Is this best done on a fresh build or will everything (apps/data and music) be A-OK after the Swap update is applied?
Just want to know what I am getting into by applying this update, as I have things pretty stable right now. If I could roll with apps on internal and music on SD, I would be more than fine with that, as long as I don't lose any of my apps/data/music in the process. If this is just mere partition re-naming/re-pointing, then I suspect my assets will remain intact?
Thanks to all who collaborated on this project!
why can't the entire internal partitions be imaged?
i use dd all the time to backup my sd card installs in case a test kernel or nightly goes poorly- or to burn a fresh install for multiple people. I just pop in the sd card into my laptop and burn the image back to the sd card.
if this was possible i'd have no issues with running off internal entirely if i could just burn the img. and get everything back as stock, including important device identifiers incase those were erased.
Need undo
This did what it's supposed to do but it seems to be causing a problem with the way I'm booting from sd. Is there a way to undo this?
Bump since I found this useful. +1 for CWM sdcard/emmc swap to enable SDcard-less flashing goodness from ROM Manager.
Hi all,
I was wondering today if it would be possible to resize the internal memory (emmc) of this phone in order to create an ext3 partition (on the emmc, not the SdCard) in order to put some apps there with link2sd ?
I know it's easier to make that on the sdcard but... correct me if i'm wrong but, emmc speed must be better than sdcard (even class10), no?
I thought it would be great to put the "big ones" (mostly games) on an ext3 partition and get benefits from high speed memory like emmc.
And restoring an ext3 partition with apps on it is way more quicker than restore apps with TIBackup, all roms testers know what i'm talking about.
But as i said above, i may be wrong all the way, could someone bring me the light?
Thanks for reading !
Not possible as far as I know. Internal EMMC is already a partition, you can't partition it any further.
What's the point anyway? IMO, link2sd is mostly useful on devices with little internal storage available. The Atrix has plenty...