[TIP] Defrag phone storage - Sony Xperia P, U, Sola, Go

Hello Everyone !
Last week i was trying different ways to mount our phone storage ( internal as well as card ). What im about to share is the result of some experiments done at that time.
This is not a guide exactly, as many of us know the steps done here, but still, i take no responsibility of any type of problem you face.Please ask for help if you need.
for more information : Read this.
When i checked my internal storage, it was 72% fragmented !!!
so i thought may be there are others who haven't formatted internal/external storage for a year or above, thus leading to heavy fragmentation.
here it is :
method 1: (also applicable for card storage)
take backup of all data and format. That should solve it !
method 2:
i recommend using 360 security app(with root access) first.
let the app scan your phone, it will find app cache, trash and user data in your phone. but first uninstall unused apps and delete some data that you don't need. you can always copy it back if you need it.
clean all, including empty folders (it will increase simplicity of your storage).
How to Mount Internal Storage as USB DRIVE :
1. Reboot into CWM
2. Connect phone to a windows PC (prefer win 7)
3. Go to "USB mass storage"
4. Select mount sd card.
5. You should see your internal mounted as removable mass storage drive.
6. Enjoy unrestricted access to your internal drive.
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All right guys, i dont know much about the ssd, but if it is not necessary (even at > 50% of frag-level ), please tell me.
Thank you !

And here I am, thinking that we are using the EXT file system. :|

at least Samsung uses ext4, i think Sony does that too ...
DigitalDreamer said:
And here I am, thinking that we are using the EXT file system. :|
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

deshx said:
at least Samsung uses ext4, i think Sony does that too ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Samsung uses their own filesystem in the newer devices.
And I think Sony uses ext4. But the thing is why would we need defragmentation if it's ext4. The files aren't accessed as in windows. Of course that windows will find disk errors and that there is a need if defrag. But the way Linux works, do we really need that?

file access is not the issue. i think the way ext4 manages writes makes all the difference.
ext3/ext4 avoid fragmentation of data and the way they store data, they can easily manage new read/writes without decreasing performance.
but even ext4 gets some issues, i found after some googling that when free space is less than ~15%, ext4 does not get enough room to swap things around. that fragments the drive heavily, thus the issues.
in that case, defragmenting might do some good.
DigitalDreamer said:
Samsung uses their own filesystem in the newer devices.
And I think Sony uses ext4. But the thing is why would we need defragmentation if it's ext4. The files aren't accessed as in windows. Of course that windows will find disk errors and that there is a need if defrag. But the way Linux works, do we really need that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

deshx said:
file access is not the issue. i think the way ext4 manages writes makes all the difference.
ext3/ext4 avoid fragmentation of data and the way they store data, they can easily manage new read/writes without decreasing performance.
but even ext4 gets some issues, i found after some googling that when free space is less than ~15%, ext4 does not get enough room to swap things around. that fragments the drive heavily, thus the issues.
in that case, defragmenting might do some good.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh yeah, on low space. Well on my U from 4GB I usually have around 2.5GB free so I guess I'm safe for now.
Btw the fragmentation usually shows losing performance when accessing libs and stuff. But that doesn't apply to us.

i had only 500mb free some time ago, so i did defrag the internal at that time(72% fragmentation), but now i have 3 gb free ! :highfive: .so its same for me ...no need !
DigitalDreamer said:
Oh yeah, on low space. Well on my U from 4GB I usually have around 2.5GB free so I guess I'm safe for now.
Btw the fragmentation usually shows losing performance when accessing libs and stuff. But that doesn't apply to us.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Internal storage (/sdcard) uses FAT32 file system, the data partition uses ext4 file system.
I know that defragmenting a flash drive is useful only to cause more wear and tear.

Are you all insane? You can't defragment flash drives!
That slows it down and eventually will ruin it.
Sent from Hacker's U on CM11 Weekly

If sdcard uses fat32, then it should be defragmented....otherwise its fine...
One doubt though, internal is named sdcard too....
You mean external storage, right?
HandyMenny said:
Internal storage (/sdcard) uses FAT32 file system, the data partition uses ext4 file system.
I know that defragmenting a flash drive is useful only to cause more wear and tear.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sent from my ST27i

hackerpower said:
Are you all insane? You can't defragment flash drives!
That slows it down and eventually will ruin it.
Sent from Hacker's U on CM11 Weekly
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
so we shouldn't need to defragment internal or card.... Right?
Well I wasn't aware of this...
Sent from my ST27i

deshx said:
If sdcard uses fat32, then it should be defragmented....otherwise its fine...
One doubt though, internal is named sdcard too....
You mean external storage, right?
Sent from my ST27i
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Internal storage use FAT32 filesystem, external storage use FAT/FAT32/exFAT.
Both are flash drives and shouldn't be defragmented.

Related

[SDCARD] Storing music etc on ext2/3/4 partition?

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
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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).

Link2SD in Gingerbread

Has anyone got this working? I used to have Link2SD in 2.1 but now the ext partition is the only partition recognized by GB and not my main partition. I can access my main partition from USB connect, but not from within the phone. Anyone has the same issue?
You can natively move apps to the SD on GB in Options>Applications>Manage applications. Choose an app that supports it and the option to move to sd will be there. No partition needed.
Thx, i will just fix up my SD card into a single partition again then
Does this also mean that I don't need the app Apps2SD anymore?
With App2SD you can quickly indicate which apps can be moved to SD. So I still have it there. Furthermore, App2SD also quickly clean your cache.
Link2SD gave the option of moving ANY app to the ext2 partition. The native gingerbread app2sd doesn't support moving all apps to the SD card.
Any way of making link2sd work on GB 2.3.3?
can anyone confirm what's the current sdcard partition layout. also which partition is detected in phone.
i think i have an idea which might help up getting this to work.
anantshri said:
can anyone confirm what's the current sdcard partition layout. also which partition is detected in phone.
i think i have an idea which might help up getting this to work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
@Anant: My SD is setup as per the guidelines described here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=10711328&postcount=1
I have a 8GB card and I have allocated 7.05 GB of FAT32 memory to the Data partition, and have allocated 0.5GB to the secondary partition. This partition was also setup as FAT32 since i had issues with EXT2.
*Edit: After the 2.3.3 update, the X10 now detects only the 2nd partition (480MB) instead of the data partition (7GB) - but when I plug into a PC, the data partition gets mounted correctly.
Hope that helped.
That is not good, it means that you cannot transfer data or programs between your PC and the 7GB partition... is there a way to fix this?
When you plug into pc, your data-partition mounts correctly, so you can copy your data to your pc as a backup.
I recommend using a adapter to connect the sd-card to your pc, formatting both partitions, and then put it back. I did it that way, be it that I removed my second partition and went back to one partition only, 8 Gb, and all works fine now.
I don't intend to use Link2SD anymore, because in 2.3.3 the system can apply data2sd itself, I learned, with or without Apps2SD.
Good luck, greetz,
kwarkje
From my observation, the 2.3.3 android system moves the appdata to the sdcard only in certain large apps (apps >7mb in size?) which is good if you have are dealing with huge apks like AngryBirds, but not too handy if you have a huge number of small apps all ~3MB in size.
BTW the native app2sd isn't compatible with all apps.
Use "Move2SD Enabler" from Market to allow moving any app to SD.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.leinardi.setinstalllocation&hl=en
This didnt work with my 32GB SD card... it is now a single 32GB FAT32 partition. What type of format should I use? FAT? EXT2?
kwarkje said:
When you plug into pc, your data-partition mounts correctly, so you can copy your data to your pc as a backup.
I recommend using a adapter to connect the sd-card to your pc, formatting both partitions, and then put it back. I did it that way, be it that I removed my second partition and went back to one partition only, 8 Gb, and all works fine now.
I don't intend to use Link2SD anymore, because in 2.3.3 the system can apply data2sd itself, I learned, with or without Apps2SD.
Good luck, greetz,
kwarkje
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
@doomed151:
Thats what I was looking for! Good find!
This app has its own hitch though: the move2sd enabler needs lots of caution...some apps aren't supported, and moving them to the SD causes them to crash. There is no way of knowing which apps can be moved and which ones can't. I happened to move GT Racing HD to the SD and it stopped working. Had to reinstall!
anantshri said:
can anyone confirm what's the current sdcard partition layout. also which partition is detected in phone.
i think i have an idea which might help up getting this to work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
@Anatshri Any luck on this? I would prefer to use link2sd instead of the native move2sd in GB.
I tried a 16gb & a 4gb sd card but couldn't get it to work. I've also tried ext2, ext3 & ext4 as the 2nd partition but I don't think the stock kernel supports any of them. The sd becomes unreadable after a reboot but if I connect directly to the pc I can see both partitions.
If I make both fat32 partitions only the 2nd partition gets mounted. Do you think this is kernel related as well or can we modify the mounting scripts to correct this?
I am suffering from bad health conditions right now so can't work much however all I can see right now is if this is the case you can do two things
1) create a script that mounts partition 1 at /data/sd-ext coz link2 sd needs mounted partition at this location. I suppose init.d script could help us. However
2) the problem would be that recovery will detect only partiton one
Sent from my X10i using XDA App
anantshri said:
I am suffering from bad health conditions right now so can't work much however all I can see right now is if this is the case you can do two things
1) create a script that mounts partition 1 at /data/sd-ext coz link2 sd needs mounted partition at this location. I suppose init.d script could help us. However
2) the problem would be that recovery will detect only partiton one
Sent from my X10i using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm sorry to hear about your health, hopefully it's nothing serious and you get well soon. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give this a try when I get a chance.
Any solution on this?
I move from 2.2 to 2.3.4 and link2sd don't work anymore cannot mount the 2nd fat32 partition.
App2SD sucks because doesnt allow some apps to get moved.
Thanks
Lockon Stratos said:
I'm sorry to hear about your health, hopefully it's nothing serious and you get well soon. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give this a try when I get a chance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the wishes.
I have extended weekend this time will try to give my old card a twist and see if i can get link2sd work again on my handset.
bbsrailfan said:
Link2SD gave the option of moving ANY app to the ext2 partition. The native gingerbread app2sd doesn't support moving all apps to the SD card.
Any way of making link2sd work on GB 2.3.3?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree with you and hope that we will have this possibility, I really miss link2sd, the best app ever to move apps to sd.

Use all internal memory

So I put Carbon on my wife's tablet after not touching it for over a year. Amazing that I can come here and get exactly what I need. What a great community!
I do have a question. I have a 16gb model and a 16gb card. I can see and use the card, no problem.
Using astro or other file manager, the directories seem weird. That's not a problem. The problem is, I can only use 1gb of internal storage - is there a way to get at the balance of that? Or is it lost forever?
Sounds like your NT has the BN's old 1GB allocation for the user-media partition instead of the new 8GB.
To get a 8GB allocation, you can restore the NT to stock ROM and take it to a B&N store to have the repartition done; or you can (Google) search for a repart.img SD-based tool which also does the repartition (and in the process restore the NT to stock ROM). Either way, you can use CWM recovery to back up your current Carbon ROM before the operation and then restore it afterward.
Ah, I completely forgot about this little point. Thank you for the reminder and the options!
One more question from me about this, does it make sense in CM to have two internal storages anyway? Couldn't I just reformat it to have only one partition?
I know how to use parted, so this isn't why I am asking. I just wanted to ask here about potential other side effects.
I already reformatted that my internal memory is about 4GB and my sdcard0 storage is 10GB, but now I installed a huge app in internal memory which can't be moved to SD for some reason, and I want to at least reformat it the other way around or the default 12GB sdcard0 + 1GB internal
All apps are installed in the first internal memory anyway I have figured, so I don't know why this first sdcard0 does make sense at all? I first thought that would be used for apps, but currently there are 10 unused Gigabytes....
I am using a real sdcard in the device ( which is per default mounted as sdcard1 ), maybe that is the reason nothing is put on the internal sdcard0 ??
Any comments on this?
I'd also like to know if this can be done. I've read the posts that explain how to resize partition 10 (media) and 11 (user data), but I would like to know if it is possible to combine partition 10 and 11 into a single partition so that all available space that isn't used by the system can be used for apps and other data. Is this not possible because of different file systems or is there a way to do it?
I've also noticed that even though the Nook Tablet 16 GB physically has 1 GB RAM only 672 MB is recognized and the other 332 MB or so seems to be used as some type of virtual SD Card (this can be seen in Settings -> Apps -> On SD Card). Is there a way to make the entire 1 GB recognized and utilized? I have not been able to find any information on this anywhere.
I am running CM 10.1 on Nook Tablet 16 GB.
bluesock said:
One more question from me about this, does it make sense in CM to have two internal storages anyway? Couldn't I just reformat it to have only one partition?
I know how to use parted, so this isn't why I am asking. I just wanted to ask here about potential other side effects.
...
Any comments on this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Combining the two partitions without tweaking the ROM will likely result in errors when the system at boot time attempts to mount the partition you eliminate, and when some apps reference the file-system that supposedly resides on that eliminated partition. To avoid these errors, the eliminated partition would have be removed from boot-time auto-mount list, and its file-system root would have to be mapped (e.g., symbolically linked) to the mount point of the remaining partition.
skelnik said:
I
I've also noticed that even though the Nook Tablet 16 GB physically has 1 GB RAM only 672 MB is recognized and the other 332 MB or so seems to be used as some type of virtual SD Card (this can be seen in Settings -> Apps -> On SD Card). Is there a way to make the entire 1 GB recognized and utilized? I have not been able to find any information on this anywhere.
.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The 'missing' RAM is what the OS needs to keep the device going. 672 MB RAM free sounds very reasonable. What you see in the list as apps on sd card is the virtual sd card in storage, not RAM.
Sent from my BNTV600 using Tapatalk 4
The "missing" RAM is actually shared memory for the GPU (the SGX540). Video cards need RAM to load textures and whatnot.
You might have noticed that desktops without a dedicated GPU have much lower system RAM than advertised. Ex: my laptop with 3GB of system RAM actually shows something like 2970MB RAM (instead of 3096MB). The 100 odd MB of RAM is shared by the GPU (Intel GMA). If I had a dedicated GPU in my laptop, something like the GTX M GPUs with its own RAM, I would see and be able to use the full 3096MB of system RAM. It's the same thing with mobile devices, they share system RAM with the GPU.
That makes sense about the shared resources for the system and graphics. Thank you for the explanation!
Okay, if that is all, probably changing /system/etc/vold.fstab after repartitioning/removing the emmc-sdcard-partition and symlinking the other of the partitions should do it already? Or how does the storage settings things finds the storage memories? Or is there even something a bit more deeply buried, e.g. inside the kernels initrd or something like that? Does someone know those details?
@skelnik as written in the other thread something more here ...
It probably isn't completely beginner friendly to do all this just by this information here, but I might attempt to do this too, and then will share the information as step-wise as possible. But might take some weeks until I have a bit time left...
And be aware! There probably will be some downsides when not using a physical/external sdcard at all: You will not have the internal storage accessible as a usb storage device anymore (not sure about mtp or ptp mode, but these don't access everything anyway) - so if you screw up something it might become harder to recover. You should then probably have at least some 2gb sdcard you can use, just in case. But my opinion is that you should just pay those $5 for a physical sdcard (should even give you 4 or 8GB already...) and then there won't be these problems.
Use Ineternal Storage as sdcard on Nook Tablet
bluesock said:
@skelnik And be aware! There probably will be some downsides when not using a physical/external sdcard at all: You will not have the internal storage accessible as a usb storage device anymore (not sure about mtp or ptp mode, but these don't access everything anyway)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually you will still have access from the PC (Windows OS at least) to this partition after using the internal storage as an sdcard. You need to go into the USB Connection Settings under Storage and change it to "USB Mass Storage" mode. Also USB Debugging needs to be unchecked in order for you to get prompted to enable USB Connection to PC. After that you will be able to transfer data to and from your PC to the internal partition being used like an sdcard on your Nook Tablet. That partition is set to 10GB for me so that is a huge benefit and allows me to swap out multiple external sdcards any time without disabling any apps.
skelnik said:
Actually you will still have access from the PC (Windows OS at least) to this partition after using the internal storage as an sdcard. You need to go into the USB Connection Settings under Storage and change it to "USB Mass Storage" mode. Also USB Debugging needs to be unchecked in order for you to get prompted to enable USB Connection to PC. After that you will be able to transfer data to and from your PC to the internal partition being used like an sdcard on your Nook Tablet. That partition is set to 10GB for me so that is a huge benefit and allows me to swap out multiple external sdcards any time without disabling any apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you sure you mean the same thing as me? I am talking about removing one of the partitions and just making one large partition where both /data and a link from /sdcard into that will be. As far as I understood, Android does not do a virtualization of a path but really makes one of it's partitions accessible as usb storage? Or can you also format in ext4 and still read it in Windows?
If that works I am probably not right, otherwise read on:
All your configuration data and everything is on /data and would be removed from being accessible by the system as long as it is connected as usb storage (also all installed apps, ...), and besides that you would need to use the FAT filesystem for Windows compatibility, which is also probably not the best idea, security-wise (any app being able to read sdcard would for example be able to read your wifi configuration, maybe google account login data, etc. etc.).

[Q] Vonino Onyx QS 7 root

Hi guys, so I've got this tablet for free with my new contract and I want to root it to play a bit with it . Do you guys have any idea how to do it ? I haven't managed to find any tutorials on the web .
Vonino Onyx QS root request
+1 on this issue.
I too have a Vonino Onyx QS tablet running on Android 4.4.2. The device is decent enough, but storage management is awful! Despite being advertised as an 8 GB tablet in terms of storage, the Onyx QS runs aground at about 900 MB of installed apps (including related data and cache) and starts yelling that there is "Insufficient storage available". This renders the tablet virtually unusable after installing just a few essential apps. Emails stop working, apps will no longer update and data-intensive apps such as Google Earth will simply refuse to run. The 32 GB external SD card I've added makes no difference. It's almost like the OS has no clue what to do with it.
I suck at Android. However, after a lot of digging for pieces of information I've come to undersand that these devices use separate partitions for the apps and other files. Some folks have also hinted towards the fact that the puny 0.9 GB app partition can be resized on a rooted device by means of a partition management app. Or apps could at least be moved to the SD card right before their installation (making use of an app such as Link2SD and, again, a rooted device).
This bring us full circle back to the OP's request: could someone please create and explain a rooting method for this tablet?
Just so you know, these are fresh screenshots of this fresh factory reset configuration. Thought it would fix the problem, but it didn't.
SilentGTX said:
Hi guys, so I've got this tablet for free with my new contract and I want to root it to play a bit with it . Do you guys have any idea how to do it ? I haven't managed to find any tutorials on the web .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Muravey said:
+1 on this issue.
I too have a Vonino Onyx QS tablet running on Android 4.4.2. The device is decent enough, but storage management is awful! Despite being advertised as an 8 GB tablet in terms of storage, the Onyx QS runs aground at about 900 MB of installed apps (including related data and cache) and starts yelling that there is "Insufficient storage available". This renders the tablet virtually unusable after installing just a few essential apps. Emails stop working, apps will no longer update and data-intensive apps such as Google Earth will simply refuse to run. The 32 GB external SD card I've added makes no difference. It's almost like the OS has no clue what to do with it.
I suck at Android. However, after a lot of digging for pieces of information I've come to undersand that these devices use separate partitions for the apps and other files. Some folks have also hinted towards the fact that the puny 0.9 GB app partition can be resized on a rooted device by means of a partition management app. Or apps could at least be moved to the SD card right before their installation (making use of an app such as Link2SD and, again, a rooted device).
This bring us full circle back to the OP's request: could someone please create and explain a rooting method for this tablet?
Just so you know, these are fresh screenshots of this fresh factory reset configuration. Thought it would fix the problem, but it didn't.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
try with Kingo ROOT. You do it at you'r own risk.
Successful rooting of Vonino Onyx QS tablet
Paget96 said:
try with Kingo ROOT. You do it at you'r own risk.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, Paget96! Thank you so much for the solution!
I'm writing this to let you, the OP and everybody else know that Kingo Root did it! I have succesfully rooted the tablet and the process itself was quick and merely a matter of installing the software on my PC, connecting the tablet via USB and clicking my way through.
Afterwards I installed Link2SD Plus to manage the transfer of apps from internal storage to the external SD card (32 GB in my case). The app is dirt cheap and truly what you need, because the free version does not allow you to move app data, only the app itself and its libraries. As I've come to know, data and cache build-up is what ends up killing storage space.
Before installing Link2SD however, one must prepare the SD card by means of a partitioning program. Highly recommend you do this via card reader on an actual PC. Use MiniTool Partition Wizard, it seems to be very popular these days. Delete whatever's already on the card and make two PRIMARY partitions: the first one will be FAT32 and will store the media you consume (like music, photos, videos etc.), while the second partition has to be ext4 (ext2 did not work for me on this tablet) and will hold the apps and their data. You can go ahead and name them "Media" and "Apps" respectively to avoid confusion. Remember: both must be primary partitions, the first one is FAT32 for media, the second is ext4 for apps. I made my app partition 10 GB big. Overkill, you say? Hey, I'm done with insufficient storage space errors, ok? :silly:
While you're at it, you might want to add a third partition for swap space to add more RAM to your device. There are tutorials for it on the web.
Once you're done formatting the card, reinstall it in the tablet, open up Link2SD and choose ext4 at the script mounting prompt. From there on, moving apps from internal to SD card space should be intuitive.
Prior to all this fiddling I suggest you perform a factory reset on your device so you can start clean. Can't tell you anythihg about custom ROMs or stuff like that because I didn't have a need for them. This thing works fine apart from that silly storage limitation.
Phew! I can finally enjoy using my tablet... :fingers-crossed:
Muravey said:
Hi, Paget96! Thank you so much for the solution!
I'm writing this to let you, the OP and everybody else know that Kingo Root did it! I have succesfully rooted the tablet and the process itself was quick and merely a matter of installing the software on my PC, connecting the tablet via USB and clicking my way through.
Afterwards I installed Link2SD Plus to manage the transfer of apps from internal storage to the external SD card (32 GB in my case). The app is dirt cheap and truly what you need, because the free version does not allow you to move app data, only the app itself and its libraries. As I've come to know, data and cache build-up is what ends up killing storage space.
Before installing Link2SD however, one must prepare the SD card by means of a partitioning program. Highly recommend you do this via card reader on an actual PC. Use MiniTool Partition Wizard, it seems to be very popular these days. Delete whatever's already on the card and make two PRIMARY partitions: the first one will be FAT32 and will store the media you consume (like music, photos, videos etc.), while the second partition has to be ext4 (ext2 did not work for me on this tablet) and will hold the apps and their data. You can go ahead and name them "Media" and "Apps" respectively to avoid confusion. Remember: both must be primary partitions, the first one is FAT32 for media, the second is ext4 for apps. I made my app partition 10 GB big. Overkill, you say? Hey, I'm done with insufficient storage space errors, ok? :silly:
While you're at it, you might want to add a third partition for swap space to add more RAM to your device. There are tutorials for it on the web.
Once you're done formatting the card, reinstall it in the tablet, open up Link2SD and choose ext4 at the script mounting prompt. From there on, moving apps from internal to SD card space should be intuitive.
Prior to all this fiddling I suggest you perform a factory reset on your device so you can start clean. Can't tell you anythihg about custom ROMs or stuff like that because I didn't have a need for them. This thing works fine apart from that silly storage limitation.
Phew! I can finally enjoy using my tablet... :fingers-crossed:
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10gb is too big, you will broke your sd.
Better use 512mb.
Paget96 said:
10gb is too big, you will broke your sd.
Better use 512mb.
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Could you expand on that one, please? Why am I at risk of ruining the SD card?
Muravey said:
Could you expand on that one, please? Why am I at risk of ruining the SD card?
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Brcause sd work without stop, that is not good.
SD prob
Hi, i have the same tablet ... and i managed to root it ... but i cant manage to increse the storage . l've done the exact stepts ... installed micropartition deleted my sd card (2gb micro sd samasung) i did the first partition fat32 primary with a size of 800 gb and when i try to make the second one ext4 the program says that windows cant see the second partion on a removable device but i continuued anyways ,,, and created the second one with ext2 and then with ext4 as primary ... my windows and my tablet cant see the second partion ... need a little help ... thx
I heave installed the drivers, and nothing happens. Its not connecting to my pc. I changed the pc too. I heave the error: Unfortunately, Mobile data has stopped. I tryed to repair this with recovery -- Wipe data, factory reset. Not working.

Expanding internal memory?

I'm a kind of a guy who wants atleast 250 apps on his phone which he actually had when he was on Kitkat (Link2SD linking did all the magic). After switching on to lollipop, the LP version of Link2SD is totally buggy and hardly works. Linked apps don't work, they force crash or show some other error. Link2SD is out of question and I think it's not getting any fixes because the dev says "v4 is is fully functional with LP" and v4.0.6 is already released but is still super duper buggy and it's working for no one, I'm not alone. I don't understand why does the dev still say it's "fully functional" when linked apps don't even work and neither do the mount scripts.
Anyways, link2sd is out of question now.
My query is, is there no way to "expand" the internal memory? I googled and found out some solutions like swapping internal and external memories (means internal would act as external and vice-versa, so if we have a 32GB card, system will see 32GB as internal and 2.1GB internal memory as external memory).
This appeared to be the best solution to all th problems of low internal memory and this is achieved by editing the /system/etc/vold.fstab file. But that file is not there at all on KK or LP! What the hell?! Why is Google "removing" "features" from the newer versions?!
Is there no way to swap?
nilanko said:
I'm a kind of a guy who wants atleast 250 apps on his phone which he actually had when he was on Kitkat (Link2SD linking did all the magic). After switching on to lollipop, the LP version of Link2SD is totally buggy and hardly works. Linked apps don't work, they force crash or show some other error. Link2SD is out of question and I think it's not getting any fixes because the dev says "v4 is is fully functional with LP" and v4.0.6 is already released but is still super duper buggy and it's working for no one, I'm not alone. I don't understand why does the dev still say it's "fully functional" when linked apps don't even work and neither do the mount scripts.
Anyways, link2sd is out of question now.
My query is, is there no way to "expand" the internal memory? I googled and found out some solutions like swapping internal and external memories (means internal would act as external and vice-versa, so if we have a 32GB card, system will see 32GB as internal and 2.1GB internal memory as external memory).
This appeared to be the best solution to all th problems of low internal memory and this is achieved by editing the /system/etc/vold.fstab file. But that file is not there at all on KK or LP! What the hell?! Why is Google "removing" "features" from the newer versions?!
Is there no way to swap?
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XinternalSD is the only solution for you dude. I can confirm that it is working. It works flawlessly on lollipop, no issues at all.
I already use that but but apks, dex, lib, cache all go to internal only during installation.
I realised that even if I swap the internal (/mnt/emulated/0) and external (/mnt/media_rw/sdcard1), there still a magical "data" partition formatted in ext4 where everything goes-- dex, apks, libs, caches. So, that internal 2.17GB on Moto E which is free is actually shared by both the /mnt/emulated/0 and /data/ which is something I don't understand.
Can anybody explain how does this work? If I check in ES File explorer, 972MB of internal is shown as used up. When I open it and select all folder and files and see the properties, it shows 3 MB used up. This is so confusing.
Isn't there no way other than LINK2SD which would currently work and allow me to successfully link or directly install stuff to the second ext4 partition or SD card or *any* similar workaround? :'(
Android is so stupid :'( Why such a devastating limitation? :'(
Link2sd really works on lollipop also. After creating mount script for the first time reboot the phone , there will be a link2sd mount warning in the notifications after sometime , double click on it and choose the quick reboot option instead of recreating mount script. After quick reboot from the link2sd all the linked Apps will appear. You have to do this every time your phone boots .
Hit thanks If this helped you !
rkmiks said:
Link2sd really works on lollipop also. After creating mount script for the first time reboot the phone , there will be a link2sd mount warning in the notifications after sometime , double click on it and choose the quick reboot option instead of recreating mount script. After quick reboot from the link2sd all the linked Apps will appear. You have to do this every time your phone boots .
Hit thanks If this helped you !
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It doesn't always work. Those apps which have lib files don't work after linking. Even if we don't link the lib files, it still doesn't work because the lib files kinda "vanish" and show 0 bytes after linking. And the apps either FC or complain about missing lib files.
nilanko said:
I realised that even if I swap the internal (/mnt/emulated/0) and external (/mnt/media_rw/sdcard1), there still a magical "data" partition formatted in ext4 where everything goes-- dex, apks, libs, caches. So, that internal 2.17GB on Moto E which is free is actually shared by both the /mnt/emulated/0 and /data/ which is something I don't understand.
Android is so stupid :'( Why such a devastating limitation? :'(
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Click to collapse
The internal 4GB is partitioned into /system, /data and internal sd.
/system is fixed and stores your ROM and system apps.
Back in the days /data/ used to be just like system. However now /data and internal sd are say dynamic. They grow as you install / copy stuff. This is much better than having fixed size partitions. This isn't a limitations instead consider it a flexibility.
All user apps are installed to /data by default which you cannot swap.
They don't seem to expand at all, for instance, /system/ which has a fixed size and once space is over, I can't copy anything to it!
nilanko said:
They don't seem to expand at all, for instance, /system/ which has a fixed size and once space is over, I can't copy anything to it!
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Okay. Once again. /system/ is fixed in size for security reasons. You are not supposed to copy anything to it.
Its /data/ and internal sd that are dynamic.

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