I'd like to have a better understanding of the full memory / software / firmware / etc. contents of my Galaxy Note. My understanding is as follows:
There's an internal and external SD card (the latter of which is the 16 GB MicroSD I installed). The contents of both of these are accessible to me when I connect the phone to my computer via the USB mass storage mode, in a fully readable / writeable fashion.
However, there's also some other memory - NAND or something of that nature - to which the firmware is flashed. This is not as easily accessible.
The android structures all of these memory areas into an internal file system, with various parts existing in different directories. /sdcard is the internal SD card, /sdcard/exernal_sd is the external SD card. Everything that is not within the /sdcard top-level directory exists somewhere in the NAND... or something.
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So, assuming all of that is correct - then I have a few questions:
Where on the phone is everything that is NOT in the sdcard directory stored? Is there an additional memory chip in there? Is that what the NAND is?
On the Storage screen, it is broken down into there categories: Device Memory (1.97 GB Total space), USB Storage (10.84 GB) and SD card (14.83 GB). Is the NAND this 1.97 GB "Device Memory" section?
What about the custom firmware I installed - the ROM? Where is that located? Is it on the NAND?
What about the TWRP Recovery?
And what is a "bootloader"? Does it play into all of this?
It would be really helpful to have a clearer understanding of these general concepts.
The entire internal nand is 16gb.
The "rest of the stuff" is up a folder, in the root directory.
You need root access to access to the root directory funny enough.
The firmware is installed in the /system directory, so was the stock Rom, when you flashed you formatted and overwrote that partition.
Those are pretty much all I'm gonna answer, all of this very beginner and can be found In a plethora of places with little effort.
And please... don't call storage memory, they are different. Memory is ram.
Related
i have done alot of nonsense to my tablet, but for some reason i don't think my tablet is recognizing my internal sd card as memory. I tried downloading a file from a website and it said that i needed an sd card to download the file...this never happened to me before recently. I remember the tablet recognizing the 16 gigs of internal memory as essentially an sd card on the system. I think it now recognizes it as maybe internal memory and needs to show it as an sd... i don't know for sure... is there anything i missed. do i need to partition something? i just flashed cyanogen 7.0.3..
so it happened just after flashing, or already before? in cm in a file manager do you see sdcard?
Dunno about thekafka, but I have just flashed the same version of cyanogen to my G-tab, and am now experiencing the same issue. This did not start until after the installation. File Manager and CWM do find the SD card.
Is there an optimal partitioning scheme to use when flashing this ROM?
In CM-7.0.x, the internal SD card is mounted at /mnt/emmc and the external SD card, if one is attached, will be mounted at /mnt/sdcard. They're not trying to make things difficult for new users--it's just what's sensible for the wide range of devices that CM runs on: internal SD cards at /mnt/emmc and removable SD cards at /mnt/sdcard, whether on phones (remember, most phones don't have internal SD cards) or tablets.
If you're coming from another ROM where the internal SD is at /sdcard (or /mnt/sdcard) and the external is at /mnt/sdcard2, you, and some of the applications that you use, might get confused.
It's easy enough to switch the mount points so that internal SD is at /mnt/sdcard and the external will be mounted under /mnt/emmc. There is even a CWM-installable zip file floating around to do this easily. Search around here or at the cyanogenmod gtabet forum.
Thanks for being helpful and smart and stuff.
Here's the address of a thread with fixes, including the ZIP file that rajeevvp mentioned:
forum.cyanogenmod.com/topic/19492-no-sd-card-apps-fail-to-use-emmc/
I don't understand storage on Android and how it works. I would be grateful if someone could explain it.
Normally I thought that Phone memory refers to the storage space on the phone (like ROM) that was fixed and not removable. SD card is the microsd card that I physically insert into a slot on the phone. However, it seems that Android has 3 types of storage: Phone, Internal SD and External SD. Is this correct? I would appreciate if someone could clarify. Also, when I do move Apps to SD card on my CyanogenMod ROM, it seems to only move them from phone memory to internal SD, not external SD. As a general rule, is is better in terms of speed to keep the apps on internal or external SD? I don't want to keep in Phone memory since it is quite small, only about 1.8 GB. I should point out that I am using a Class 10 MicroSD, so it should be quite fast, or so I've been told.
What you refer to as Internal SD is probably not on the SD at all but read/write memory in the device itself. Basically built in storage that's an addition to the read only memory where the important stuff is.
As an example, the Omnia i900 had ROM + 8GB Storage in the Phone, with whatever you wanted to add as External SD. Plug the Omnia into a PC and you had two lot's of storage that you could drag and drop files to.
Basically you have 3 things:
ROM (Read-Only-Memory): This is where Android itself resides. All the OS stuff is here.
Phone Storage: You may consider this as the phones HDD. This is where all the apps/SMS/MMS/... are stored. (This is usually not meant to be accessed by the user to place files there, thats what the SD-Card is for)
SD-Storage: Your SD-Card where you can put everything you want. Music/Pictures/Files...
m0jo said:
Basically you have 3 things:
SD-Storage: Your SD-Card where you can put everything you want. Music/Pictures/Files...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is it possible to run apps off the SD-Card? When I use an app like App2SD, does it actually copy to the SD Card or just to the Phone storage? This is what confuses me, because I selected 'move to SD' on my phone (I'm using Cyanogen 7.1.0). But its still in the Phone Storage. I know this because when I put the SD card into my laptop, it does not show any of the software files.
When you move apps to the SD not all data is moved to the SD. The phone needs some files on the internal storage to run, since it needs to know that the apps are installed on the phone. When it needs to run it'll find the executable files in the internal storage, and run the data files from the SD card. Much like on a computer when you've installed an application and install it on an external HDD.
Apps you move to the SD will be moved to /Android/data/ and /data i believe since i have quite a bit of appdata in these folders.
Question
SG S2 has 16GB of internal storage, how can I expose ALL of this to Windows or Linux? At the moment I am only able to see a 11.5GB partition. I need to be able to read(no writing necessary) all of the 16BG in order to perform data recovery.
Prelude
I had "USB storage damaged" problem on a stock handset. Where this message was showing up in notifications and internal storage could not be mounted. I had to format the internal storage in order to make it accessible again.
Since then I've been running various file recovery tools on internal storage by making it accessible to Windows through Settings > Wireless and network > USB utilities > Connect storage to PC. A lof of the data was successfully recovered using this method, but I had no luck recovering content of /sdcard/DCIM , which has family photos.
Problem is, Windows sees the drive as a 11.5 GB device. I understand that internal storage contains several partitions and only one of them is exposed to Windows. I need to run data recovery tools on ALL of the 16GB, how can this be done?
I would greatly appreciate any pointers or suggestions. Thank you.
If you had files on /sdcard, it would be on the 11.5GB partition.
It seems unlikely Android specific software would be better, but you could always give http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1352515 a go.
@oinkylicious, thank you for the link, I'll give it a try.
I don't fully understand how internal storage is partitioned. How is 16 GB divided into different partitions? Camera pictures are stored on on /sdcard/DCIM , which partition would this be on?
Some data recovery tools are finding remains of two partitions, one FAT16 4 GB and one FAT32 12 GB, this seems to add up to 16 GB. I am assuming that because USB internal storage failed and had to be formatted, that all of the 16 GB were formatted.
Found how partitions are done on Galaxy S - http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_Series#Partitions
but no luck finding similar info for S2.
The answer isn't hard to find.
pulser_g2 said:
OMG WTF I was conned. Where's my 16 GB??? I WANT IT NAO!
Answer:
Your device uses 500 MB of space for the actual system software, plus around 2GB for your applications and their data storage. There are other partitions used for other system functions, and these take up some of the remaining space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
pulser_g2 said:
OMG WTF I was conned. Where's my 16 GB??? I WANT IT NAO!
Answer:
Your device uses 500 MB of space for the actual system software, plus around 2GB for your applications and their data storage. There are other partitions used for other system functions, and these take up some of the remaining space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is there any way to mount this 2GB partition(apps+data) on Windows/Linux?
I have a custom-made rooted MTK6575 based phone, and it has internal storage of just 127MB and an external SD Card of 8Gb.The Phone spec is 512MB
I want to swap these two and tried all the ways I found from the forum such as
a. Modifying the vold.fstab and vold.fstab.nand
b. Trying out External 2 Internal with Universal Init
Both did not work out.
Upon check the /mnt folder, I realised that there is only one sdcard folder. The internal memory of 127MB seems to be shared with the 512MB and there is no mounting script that I can find.
The only effect I have gotten is from modifying the vold.fstab.nand file. If I change the sdcard to sdcard2, my sdcard will not be seen under storage and only the 127Mb internal storage will be seen.
Anyone can help ? :crying:
LG ms500
Xperion 4.2.1.
Tr.apk root
​Ssu access
Fredom kernal overclock modded with androidforums.com/metropcs-optimus-f6-all-things-root/838351-mod-beta-sdcard-memory-hack-6.html
After successfully modding my kernal thanks to press4pie I have decided I would like to format my internal fat32 and mount it to external sd via volstab. But i don't know which file contains the correct path. Is it 179:32 or 33? (Both contain no os)
Also the correct script to mount it successfully.
Thank you : )
Edit: reason i want internal flash mounted like this is so i can expand my ram onto it, making a nice and responsive virtual ram considering its the internal.
I couldn't figure this out but, i did find out that the emulated sd card is now called "data-stock" and its mounted but not as sd. I also found out that ram eexpander has an option to manually write the address where you would like to allocate the vram. So i cleared out the emulated storage on the internal flash and connected roesoft to it. Done. Using the 1.14g of f6 unused emulated storage for vram. And it writes hell of alot faster then if i was to allocate the vram on tru extsd!!!!!!!