I've been rooted and using 3rd party ROMs for a long time, with no intention of ever going back to stock 4.0. I'm currently using the unofficial AOKP 4.4.2 build.
In general, do custom ROMs require the 2GB/10GB partitioning that this phone comes with as stock, or can they work properly with one big data partition and storage on the physical SD card?
Reason being is I'm running out of space on \data and if I'm going to go through the steps of resizing, I'm just wondering if it's necessary to keep two partitions.
I'm not an expert on the subject by any means but I don't think messing with the partitions as it's laid out for current roms for our device would be a good idea'r. The way I understand it, and I'm most likely wrong so please educate me as well, one partition is basically for the brains of your device's OS, one is for playing ... all the other fun stuff that gets read and written to willy nilly. I replied to this post hoping to learn stuff as well!
Get a larger sdcard. The partitions are built into the recovery.
Related
...while it needs a partitioned SD-card, if mine isn't?
Hey, thanks for stopping by!
I want to try out a lot of the fabulous ROMs available for the HTC Desire, but many of them 'require' a partitioned SD-card.
Although I could just partition it anyway and enjoy the benefits that come with it, I really just want to test some ROMs out for now. Because partitioning (or anything with a certain risk) means, for me, that I have to check a huge number of guides, forum posts and Youtube video's just to make sure I'm not going to screw it all up. (Because there is never a single source that tells the entire story in the detail you actually need )
So the question:
(Concerning devices with little internal memory, like my HTC Desire)
Do these ROMs need a partitioned SD-card to be able fit on my device in the first place? Or is it that after flashing, there is so little internal memory left that the only way I can enjoy new apps is through a partitioned SD-card?
Thanks for reading and I hope some of you can answer my questions!
I have just recently (5 hours ago) purchased a 16GB Tablet, that I had them repartition at the store, which has version 1.4.2.
I've spent the last few hours reading this forum and watching videos and now know WAY more than I ever intended to know about this tablet.
Rooting, dual OP, CM7, CM9, ROM, R3, Restore, etc. etc.
Due to so many warnings I've read about, I'm a little afraid to mess things up.
All I really want to do is install games I already have on my computer to the NT.
There were a couple of threads talking about this, but they were dealing with version 1.4.1. Not 1.4.2. I don't know how much of a difference there is.
Can someone suggest the best way to install these games?
Thanks for all the info you guys provide. It was hours of very informative reading.
i'm pretty sure games need memory ( storage ) and lots of it. tell us how much of the microhcsd you have available. did they leave you with one or six and a half gig ?
Unless you have an android computer/tablet with games from the play store or some other android market, the "games" you are referring to are not as easily transferable to an android tablet like the nook. The games have to be rewritten/redesigned for the android OS.
As for many of the warnings you've read, they are mostly to protect the person writing the guide. I.e. if you somehow manage to not follow directions and screw something up horribly, they want not responsibility for your mistakes. Honestly, 90% of them time in my experience with Android tinkering, Occam's razor holds true: the simplest answer is usually the right answer. And in terms of Android tinkering, that answer is user error.
So if you can read and follow directions and do a bit of troubleshooting here and there, you will be just fine.
My advice? Start with a bootable CM7 sd card. Go from there.
My apologies for lack of info.
After repartition, I was left with 5.91GB for B&N, and 8.00GB Other storage, plus 16GB SD Card.
Regarding games. All the games I want to use are all apk android games that I had from another android product.
Cubanluke88
The Bootable CM7 SD Card will boot from the card and leave the Tablet's OS alone? Is that correct? I guess this is where I'm confused. I think I read too much.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Rooting your device is like removing the old OS and replacing it with a new one?
Booting from CM7 SD Card will boot from the cards OS leaving the original OS on the device?
On one of the video's I watched, it was said "DO NOT FLASH ON THE 16GB Nook". I don't even know what that means, but I'll look it up and see if I can find out.
Thanks so much for helping a newbie who still doesn't know the terminology. I'll concentrate on reading about booting from CM7 SD Card.
Alright I'll try to address most of your confusion.
The bootable SD card essentially means you will not touch the current internal OS. You basically burn an image of CM7 to the card and when that card is inserted, the Nook will boot into CM7 instead of the B&N Android OS.
Rooting does not necessarily mean changing the internal OS. Because the B&N OS is Android based, and because Android is linux based, "root" is sort of the equivalent of administrative access on a Windows machine. It simply means you have full control of the device. Rooting the nook means the OS stays intact, but you can install the play store (Android market) and do all sorts of other things you are otherwise locked out of.
"Flash" is simply a techy way of saying install. When someone says "flash CM7 over the internal OS" they mean that you are installing CM7 (the custom version of Android that has been built) over the internal OS.
The safest thing for you is to create the bootable SD card of CM7 as it does not touch the internal OS. However, you can also create a bootable sd card for the custom recovery. From this custom recovery, you could then "flash" (install) CM7, CM9, or one of the other roms (custom OS) for the Nook tablet. It is also in this custom recovery that you can make a "nandroid backup" which is basically images of how your nook exists in its present form.
I know thats a lot of info. But honestly, before diving into this stuff, people should try to understand as much of that as possible. There are tons of resources out there that explain this stuff. Again, I suggest the bootable CM7 sd card as its the least likely to screw up. However, remember that should you go after the internal stuff, this thing is incredibly difficult to brick. Any mistake you make has likely already been made before and recovered from. So if something goes awry, don't panic.
Thats a lot of words. Damn.
It may have been a lot of words, but you've answered all of my questions and then some. I thank you very much for taking the time. This information helps tremendously and also makes so much more sense of what I read already.
Thanks Again.
That post deserved a thank. Really good description.
Sent from my R800x
We have started a very good community here, keep up people.
I should add one more thing.
Should you ever decide to go internal, i.e. flashing over the B&N OS, which IMO is the better way, its incredibly easy to return the device back to stock conditions should you ever need to (i.e. for warranty purposes or something).
I've done it myself just to make sure that its possible. And it is. Very easily.
I just wanted to come back and say Thank you!!
I was able to created the Bootable CM7 sd card and it went flawlessly.
I still have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm having fun looking around.
Thanks to this group of wonderful people, especially Cubanluke88m who still take the time to help even the virginal newbies who don't even know the lingo.
My hats off to this forum.
In the future I may in fact do this all internally, but I guess I needed to do it this way first just to see if I could. Now I feel much more comfortable with the files, burning images, etc. then before.
Congrats, enjoy.
The next thing I would recommend doing: make a clockwork mod recovery bootable card and make a nandroid backup of the internal OS.
ok, will do. I will search for those now.
I do have a couple questions that I have searched for but I think I'm using the wrong search terms and not the correct lingo.
When I partitioned the sd card there was a tutorial for opening the card so you could use the rest of the memory, but it was for Linux? I've tried to search how to do this on PC, but again the lingo problem.
Also I have books and apps that I'd like to copy over, but do I have to put them in a certain directory on the SD Card, or do I still have access to the units directory.
I know these are stupid questions, I just don't know the right words to search for. Sorry about that. I know I can search for the two things you told me to do and they will probably come up. lol
Thanks again for all your help.
Netti2nite said:
ok, will do. I will search for those now.
I do have a couple questions that I have searched for but I think I'm using the wrong search terms and not the correct lingo.
When I partitioned the sd card there was a tutorial for opening the card so you could use the rest of the memory, but it was for Linux? I've tried to search how to do this on PC, but again the lingo problem.
Also I have books and apps that I'd like to copy over, but do I have to put them in a certain directory on the SD Card, or do I still have access to the units directory.
I know these are stupid questions, I just don't know the right words to search for. Sorry about that. I know I can search for the two things you told me to do and they will probably come up. lol
Thanks again for all your help.
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It's fine, it's always better to ask first. Could save you a lot of trouble in the long run. Unlike lots of other users, you seem like you are willing to search and learn things which is always good!
You can regain the remainder of the storage after writing the CM7 .img to your SD card. To do this in Windows, you'll need to download and install either MiniTool Partition Wizard or EASEUS Partition Master. I usually use Partition Wizard.
Unfortunately, while using the CM7 SD ROM, you won't have access to your apps and books from the stock ROM, so you'll want to transfer them to your storage inside the SD ROM. So I recommend copying the files to your computer, then connect your NT running the SD ROM. From there just copy the files to your SD card.
Hi there,
I've dabbled in using custom ROMs on a few android devices and I'd like to try to clear up a few hazy concepts. I'm mostly interested in tinkering with my Nook Tablet lately, which is why I'm posting here. At the moment I've got CyanogenMod-7-20120703-TEAM-B-acclaim installed, with what I think is the original partitioning of 1GB for /media and 12GB for /data (which leads to one of my questions below). My intent is to repartition and upgrade the ROM when CM10 beta is released, but I wouldn't mind knowing a bit more about what certain steps are doing in the background:
Q1. When you go in to Settings, Storage, Erase SD card, my understanding is that this only erases certain parts of internal storage. Does it just delete all files and subdirectories of certain partitions? Which ones? Does this vary depending on the OS version?
Q2. Do some custom ROMs do repartitioning automatically, or is this always a separate step?
Q3. Do most custom ROMs simply leave the partitions at the sizes they were?
Q4. I've seen repartitioning instructions referencing the resizing of /media and /userdata. I have /media, but not /userdata. Is this abnormal, or is it due to the specific ROM I have? As mentioned above I do have /data.
Thanks in advance for your time!
~In Your Kitchen (drinkin' your wine)
It appears that the only methods that have been used to expand webtop focus on mounting an alternative webtop on an external SD card and using the alternative webtop instead of (or in addition to) the standard webtop (webtopMod, webtop2SD, simpletop, etc. all do this in one form or another).
Has anyone played around with resizing the the sdcard partition (mmcblk0p18) so that it is smaller and then resizing the webtop partition (mmcblk0p13) to a more appropriate size (~4G)?
I see that something similar has been done on the Nook (that is, people have changed the internal memory partition sizes without tragic consequences):
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=22157605&postcount=25
As for know (I don't know much) the trouble with the partitions it's that everythings works with that layout, recoverys must be rewritten to accept that partition layout, or something.
Besides, why you want WebTop, when you can have Android ICS/JB? .
Contrary to popular belief (and driven by how it works on computers), the partition table is NOT a part of the internal storage. It is most likely defined within the bootloader which, while can be hacked to allow flashing unsigned content (so called BL unlock), is both entirely closed off and extremely sensitive. Hardbricks can happen almost effortlessly if you try to tamper with it. That's why nobody has managed (yet?) to do any kind of alteration of the partition layout on the Atrix.
I would also like to point out when it comes to such low-level stuff trying to compare two completely different devices is often time dangerous and almost always misleading, so I'd avoid that if I were you. The fact this or that is possible on some other device in some certain way will have almost nothing to do with the Atrix (unless the device is really similar enough, like say the Photon).
Ravilov,
I thought that the bootloader would just need to point to the bootable partition. I thought all of the disks/devices would have their own GPT or MBR record that the system would use when it mounts those devices. It looks like just about most everything is mounted from init.rc (even mmcblk0p13, aka OSH).
I am not saying that this idea is without risk, but I guess I am surprised that someone hasn't been brave (foolish?) enough to try it and report back.
tamuin said:
Ravilov,
I thought that the bootloader would just need to point to the bootable partition. I thought all of the disks/devices would have their own GPT or MBR record that the system would use when it mounts those devices. It looks like just about most everything is mounted from init.rc (even mmcblk0p13, aka OSH).
I am not saying that this idea is without risk, but I guess I am surprised that someone hasn't been brave (foolish?) enough to try it and report back.
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That would be true if we were talking about NORMAL computer harddrives. But we're not. There is no such thing as MBR or GPT or even an "active" partition - this is a much different world.
BTW the bootloader is about 10 MB in size, it contains MUCH MUCH more than just some code to boot a system. For example, the whole fastboot protocol is implemented there, and I believe the offline charging (when the phone is off) complete with its graphics is also in there.
By the time the system reaches ramdisk (ie. init.rc), the partition table has already been set up and the devices nodes created.
Beware however, I have no 100% solid evidence to this, this is just an educated guess (to me this would make the most sense).
> That would be true if we were talking about NORMAL computer harddrives. But we're not.
That is my concern too.
One thing that might work is to repartition mmcblk0p18 into two partitions, the first being a smaller FAT partition and the second being an ext3 partition (mmcblk0p19). We would not need to move/resize anything else (and it looks like CWM does not normally do anything with mmcblk0p18). A full featured webtop could then be put in mmcblk0p19 and it could be mounted as OSH in init.rc.
Of course this doesn't make any better use of the internal storage space, the only thing it does is that it would put the modified webtop in the internal storage which appears to have faster write speed than class 10 micro SD cards.
The benefits are probably not worth the risk and effort.
tamuin said:
One thing that might work is to repartition mmcblk0p18 into two partitions, the first being a smaller FAT partition and the second being an ext3 partition (mmcblk0p19). We would not need to move/resize anything else (and it looks like CWM does not normally do anything with mmcblk0p18). A full featured webtop could then be put in mmcblk0p19 and it could be mounted as OSH in init.rc.
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Click to collapse
You can't do that. Despite it not having a "standard" partition table, some rules still apply - for example, you cannot partition a partition. Even if you could, what would the new partitions be called? mmcblk0p18a and mmcblk0p18b? Not going to work. The whole entire system is hardwired to use mmcblk0p18 and only that. Plus, you cannot have a root partition as you suggest (mmcblk0p19) that's contained within another partition, it just doesn't make any sense.
Trust me, the webtop2sd and similar ideas didn't come out of nowhere. If there was a decently safe way to change the internal repartitioning with the knowledge we have, it would have been done by now. The only way to do this that I know of is to either change the bootloader or the kernel. The bootloader is obviously out of the question, and I suppose nobody's ever felt the need to mess with the kernel just for this seemingly insignificant thing, when there's a perfectly good workaround (webtop2sd).
Hi all / @linusdan,
I wondered if any kind soul could just briefly offer their knowledge please... I've been happily flashing roms to the i9100/i9100P, N7000 for some time now, and all has been great... :good:
However my dads phone went a little screwy the other day, and so I said I would re-do it. Upon looking at it, he had a couple of storage areas of 0MB (zero) MB's and nothing could download or write to the internal storage.
I've since STOCK rom'd it, returning to the original PIT files, and tried to reset it up again. (Storage is back to normal, all fully accessible again) I've been looking at the newer roms. However in TWRP, I notice I have a SDCard0 and SDCard1 (and that's without removal storage added yet).
So I think I may a Frankenstein build of storage at moment, so re-read Linusdan's instructions, and going to totally annihilate the filesystems and start again, following the instructions.
My question is this....
Once I have done this, and moved over to fully Emulated Storage. Will this work for older roms, say KitKat / Lollipop era, or do I have to prep for stock / physical storage again? Failure to do so, would I end up with double confused storage again??
Or would simply flashing an old rom, make use of the emulated storage??
Thanks, Lister
@listerofsmeg
These days I was wondering how to do this and looking for a way to reverse the conversion.
Maybe so, but so far I have not found how.
For now, the only way to use the old ROMs is to install the stock and TWRP without emulated storage.