Database Users

[HOWTO] Partition SD card

Introduction
Transcend and several other manufacturers make 4GB SD cards these days. They're great if you use your HTC device as MP3 player or Camera, as they offer enough space for thousands of songs and pictures.
My device, the HTC Universal, handles them just fine. However some applications, most notably the Camera application, don't like it.
Why some apps don't like it
The main problem here is the way in which they calculate the free space.
the processor is 32-bit, which means it can handle numbers ranging from 0 to 2^32. 4GB is exactly 2^32 bytes, so that shouldn't be the problem.
The problem is that applications sometimes handle the number as signed, which means that it differentiates between negative and positive numbers.
With signed numbers, the last bit is actually used as the sign (positive or negative), and the new range stretches from -2^31 (-2GB) to 2^31 (2GB).
Up to 2^31, the unsigned numbers and signed numbers are the same, but after that the last bit is set in unsigned numbers, which means that if treated as signed it will be seen as a negative number.
So if you have more than 2GB free, and the application mistreats the number of bytes free as being signed, the application actually thinks you have less than 0 bytes free
How to fix this?
There are several ways to fix this. The most simple one would be to have a simple dummy file so you always have less than 2GB free. This works for the camera application, but any miscoded application taking a look at the actual size of the disk will still screw up
The other solution is partitioning your SD-card. This means that you actually split the SD-card up into several virtual SD-cards of smaller sizes. So one SD-card of 4GB could be seen as four of 1GB (my set up).
This way you still have 4GB of storage, but applications will not get confused as it's split up into several chunks.
WARNING
Before you start remember to back up the current data on your SD-Card. the procedure will completely erase your SD-card. You might be able to retain the data by using partitionmagic's resize partition features, but you'd have to test yourself.
Also I'd like to mention that although I tested this procedure myself, I can't garantuee it will work for you. If it renders your SD-card useless, I can not be held responsible.
My set-up
This tutorial was written using:
- T-Mobile MDA Pro (HTC Universal)
- Windows XP SP2 MCE (equivilant to Pro)
- Transcend 150x 4GB SD-Card
It might work with a different set-up, but I can't garantuee anything
Requirements
- Windows Mobile 5
- WM5Storage (do not use CardExport2, you need the ability to turn off "Removable Class"!)
- Big SD-Card
Let's get started
Just follow the following steps
First, make a backup of your SD-card! the following procedure will erase it!
Next, install WM5Storage. I will attach a copy of version 1.53 with this post, but you can get the latest version here.
Just copy the .cab file to your device, and execute it from the file explorer. Just make sure you install on the main memory, as the SD-card becomes inaccessible during the procedure
Start WM5Storage. On my device, WM5Storage did not put anything in the start menu or the today screen, so I had to launch it through the file-explorer. You can find it at My Device\Program Files\WM5Storage\.
Be sure to untick both "Read-Only" and "Removable Class". Optionally you can set it to light a LED on read/write, but that's not neccesarry for this procedure.
Disconnect your device from your computer.
Insert the SD-Card if you haven't done so already
Hit "Activate" (bottom, right)
Re-connect your device to your computer.
From now on all steps are done from the PC
Wait until windows has recognized all "new hardware", and you have new a new hard-drive listed in "My Computer".
Open the control panel (Start -> Control Panel)
Go to either Performance and Maintenance -> Administrative Tools (category view) or directly to Administrative Tools (Classic View)
Double-Click Computer Management
Go to Computer Management (Local) -> Storage -> Disk Management (might take a little while to find all drives)
In the bottom view, find the disk that has your SD-card in it (You can find out by looking at the contents through "My Computer", or by seeing which disk is added once you plug in your WM device)
Right click the partition (white block ), and choose for Delete Partition
In the just created "Unallocated" space, right click, and choose for New Partition
In the wizard:
choose for a Primary Partition
For size, enter 1024MB (or if there is no more remaining, just the remainder). Ofcourse you can also choose your own size
Assign any drive-letter you want (or none if you only want it to be accessible on the WM Device).
Format the partition as Filesystem FAT32, Allocation unit size Default, and pick any volume label you want (You will only see the volume label on the PC, on the WM Device it will just be "Storage Card X". Also tick "Perform a quick format"
Wait until the bottom line in the new partition reads "Healthy" (wait for it to format basically )
Create as much partitions as you'd like (just resume from right-clicking and picking New partition)
You're done partitioning! If you want, you can fill the contents of the SD-Card now before you deactivate WM5Storage
Disconnect the device from the computer
Next few steps on the Device
Click "Deactivate" (same place as "Activate" was before )
Close WM5Storage
You're all done! have fun with the multiple storage cards you have now
Afterword
I've put quite a bit of time in this tutorial, I'd appreciate if you at least told me if it worked
If you can spare a few coins, I'd also appreciate a donation. You can donate with PayPal to "[email protected]".

nice post, i'm bloging it right away 8)

I have a 2GB SD card. My o2 mini prompt me to format it when inserted. After formatted. o2 mini shows 0.01 MB only.
"My computer using card reader shows 14KB and from Disk Management, it shows 1.86 GB Free. I believe this "1.86GB Free" means unallocated space.
I right click on the unallocated space, but there is no option for me to choose a Primary Partition. It only has 3 options.
"New Logical Drive...",
"Delete Partition...", which is grayed out and
"Help".
Help! How to allocate this 1.86GB and format it to fat32?
Any kind soul please help me get this 2GB SD card to work with my o2 mini. 1.86GB and not 0.01MB.
Thanks

is there anyway to rename the partition with a different name? i've tried a lot of ways but in vain... the 2nd partition always follow the name of the 1st partition... any help please?
thanks in advance...
non

After having lots of problems with my SD card, I already thought that partitioning possibly could solve the problem and, using your howto, I can use my 2 GB SD-card without any problems.
Thanks!

ive done this on a 512 sd and using wm03, used a card reader to do the partition.
actualy worked well for a while if you have alot of files to store in one of the partitions, but ended up being a real pain when you wanted to re-do it

Really nice post and easy too.

thanks
hi i tried it.....realyy wonderful....thanks a lot for posting this one...keep posting things lik tis.....
cheers,
Siva....

thx for this tips!
I used it for my 2GB MiniSD card, but now I would like to keep my TomTom maps on the second partition, but TomTom can't recognize the map. (Storage Card2\)
I tried by editing the 'CurrentMap.dat' file and set the path to the Storage Card2 but still TomTom doesn't want to read this second partition. Anyone a solution for that?
thx!!

Nice tutorial. I have problem with reading of my 4GB SD card. Now I'm using two partitions (1GB for cameras and 3GB for my PocketPC). Thank you

I have been trying this but all I seem to be able to do is partition the card but only able to format the first partition s the rest of the card is rendered useless
Any help appreciated

Great tutorial, will link it up from my related articles!

partitioning 4GB help
Hi,
I've followed you instructions (great job, btw) HOWTO partition SD card....using the file download WM5torage.cab For some reason, I cannot get past the part after clicking on ACTIVATE immediately after inserting the SD Card. My MDA (TMobile Wiz) keeps locking up and I have to do a soft reset. I've tried reformatting the 4GB Mini SD card a few times and I've actually gotten different results. My last format (FAT32) shows (on PC) 1930MB free and 1931MB used which befuddles me. I formatted it again and it showed 3.78 GB free. Perhaps you or someone could assist me if possible. I bought the Mini SD card off eBay from a reputable seller. It was suppossed to be a Samsung 4GB Mini SD card and I was a bit surprised when it arrived as a SanDisk. Any idea as to why the phone keeps locking up? I also wonder if there might be an issue with the card...I examined the back of the card where the contacts are with magnification and the sides of the black composite show traces of perhaps an epoxy or bonding agent...I think SanDisks QC is better than that. To make things easier, you can also email me at [email protected]

I have cingular 8125 and vista. I tried to use the program wm5storage but when I go to computer management there is not recognition of the 4 gig sd, nor is there any recognition of an sd when using my pda. Anyone know how to get the phone to recognize it (I tried reformatting) so that I can partition. Thanks

I have had some success with 4 GB cards from IntegrityElectronics and TopRam on my T-Mobile MDA running latest TMO ROM.
The problem I am running into a when using apps that are installed on the card and write dat to the card, other files get corrupted and render those applications unsuable. If I limit use to playing MP3 and videos, thing tend to stay stable.
Has anyone else observed this behavior?

Ok, I used the storage program to access the card. Then with the disk
management on XP I formatted the card as FAT for the entire 4gb card.
It looks like it worked. I copied all my files to it. Everything is running.
I have done several restarts with no problems...
Hope it stays so.
Good luck folks. I will report back if anything weird happens.

Ok. So it all got completely screwed.
I guess it got corrupted. My guess is when
I started using the camera. All of a sudden
there are only blank folders on the storage
card with a period as the names. Tons of them.
Nothing else. Any ideas?
And now I cannot get wm5storage to work.
It keeps telling me that something is accessing
the card. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

It seems the problem was that there was a hidden Recycler folder on the storage card that would not let me use wm5storage. Probably from
Resco File Explorer... Deleted that with my PC...
Somehow magically my pc read the card. I don't know how to explain
that seeing as it was formatted in FAT not FAT32...
Then wm5storage worked and I paritioned it into 2 halves.
Lets see how that goes.
I hope, well.

This may be a silly question but...
Can't you plug the micro SD into a card reader and use Windows XP Disk Management tool (or any other partintioning tool) to create the partition on the storage card? What's WM5Storage actually doing?
SG

Anyone? Can't one just soley use the Disk Management tool in Windows to partition a SD card?

[Q] Recover defect SD-Card (Micro) accessing nand flash direct?

Situation:
- My HD2 with WP7(7004) no longer recognize my micro sd-card. I know the best friend is the the backup, but some new picture are not included in the last backup.
- Accessing the micro with a adapter and pc failed. win7 aborting after a while and no drive appears.
- I think the controller on the sd-card is defect. So no accessing with recovery tools.
Idea:
- After some time and investigation i found a special service. The reason for defect cards are to 80% defect controller not memory. They offer to read the nand flash with a direct interface to the chip.
- I Know the sd-card(my) is encrypted, and as far as i know, the key is saved on the HD2 after first install with the sd-card or factory reset.
Behavior:
- Sporadically my HD2 reboots, sometime 2-3 times, but then it boots correctly with saved settings.
Question:
- Whats your opinion to rescue the raw data this way, make a copy to a not defect card and accessing with the HD2 and the key in it.
Of course any other suggestions are welcome.

digital-native said:
Situation:
- My HD2 with WP7(7004) no longer recognize my micro sd-card. I know the best friend is the the backup, but some new picture are not included in the last backup.
- Accessing the micro with a adapter and pc failed. win7 aborting after a while and no drive appears.
- I think the controller on the sd-card is defect. So no accessing with recovery tools.
Idea:
- After some time and investigation i found a special service. The reason for defect cards are to 80% defect controller not memory. They offer to read the nand flash with a direct interface to the chip.
- I Know the sd-card(my) is encrypted, and as far as i know, the key is saved on the HD2 after first install with the sd-card or factory reset.
Behavior:
- Sporadically my HD2 reboots, sometime 2-3 times, but then it boots correctly with saved settings.
Question:
- Whats your opinion to rescue the raw data this way, make a copy to a not defect card and accessing with the HD2 and the key in it.
Of course any other suggestions are welcome.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you sure that your photos weren't uploaded to skydrive?
Check using pc and log-in to skydrive using your windows live id

Hi Robbie,
no way, because SkyDrive was not activated. I have made some videos that were to large for my 500 mb volume rate.
dn

Its going to be difficult to copy the card because of the encryption you mentioned.
Its difficult enough to format it! Most OS don't recognise it.
The link you mentioned would only return to you a load of stuff.
Not sure what you can do, sorry.

[Q] 1st time SSD upgrade- Is it possible to avoid a reinstall?

So I'm considering throwing in my first SSD. I'm looking at nothing too fancy (OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SATA3 6GB/s, Read: 560MB/s, Write: 430MB/s).
I already have Windows 8 Pro installed and activated on a 500 Sata HD. I'd ideally like to throw in the SSD and have Windows running off of that. Now I've already seen a lot of posts recommended a clean install. Which I'd like to avoid if possible. I'm wondering if I could say, create a back up image of my C: from my SATA drive, wipe everything, install the SSD and do a fresh Win 8 install. Then once I'm up and running restore that image.
Or use some other Windows 8 recovery feature to back up files, settings and apps.
Anyone know if this is possible within Windows 8? I'm ultimately trying to avoid as much reinstalling of apps and programs as possible.

It doesn't hurt to find out. Do your image backup, pull out the HDD, plug in the SSD, and restore. If it works, great. If not, plug the HDD back in and figure out an alternative.
I don't see why that wouldn't work, other than Win8 installing any needed driver for the SSD, and perhaps a re-auth, since a HDD change qualifies as a "major" config change.
I'm assuming you already have a good image backup program handy.

So I guess I'd lose my activation key?

Try reading some articles about it? I have no experience with it so i have no idea:
http://lifehacker.com/5837543/how-to-migrate-to-a-solid+state-drive-without-reinstalling-windows

why don't you just ghost the drive this is what I do. I forget the name of the software I use but it is free and really easy and you can ghost the drive you on as it runs before windows boots. I will update once I have found the software as its been a while since I needed to do this.
edit: I don't have it on my laptop and I wont be back to work till Monday but if you google clone hard drive there are many options. You want one that will clone the running partition.
http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/home-edition/

pistol44 said:
So I guess I'd lose my activation key?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Although I have never tried it, you can backup your windows activation activation following this:
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/35737-GUIDE-How-to-backup-and-restore-Windows-8-activation

or just clone the harddrive like I said then its all just as if it was on the old you just plug new one in and off you go, then format the old one once tested. 2 points on this your going back into same hardware so that does not matter and windows 8 you can take the hdd out of a pc plug it into diff hardware and off you go after a slightly longer boot. I have swapped from an amd fx based desktop and put into an intel Centrino laptop and worked. I did this after cloning the drive so both desktop and laptop have activated windows 8 from same cloned hard drive (bit odd though as seems to avoid the need for keys and could be a work around to distro win 8)

pistol44 said:
So I'm considering throwing in my first SSD. I'm looking at nothing too fancy (OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SATA3 6GB/s, Read: 560MB/s, Write: 430MB/s).
I already have Windows 8 Pro installed and activated on a 500 Sata HD. I'd ideally like to throw in the SSD and have Windows running off of that. Now I've already seen a lot of posts recommended a clean install. Which I'd like to avoid if possible. I'm wondering if I could say, create a back up image of my C: from my SATA drive, wipe everything, install the SSD and do a fresh Win 8 install. Then once I'm up and running restore that image.
Or use some other Windows 8 recovery feature to back up files, settings and apps.
Anyone know if this is possible within Windows 8? I'm ultimately trying to avoid as much reinstalling of apps and programs as possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you more worried about your desktop apps or your RT apps? If you have signed in with a Microsoft account and you are on your Trusted PC, your RT app settings will transfer to the new installs and you already know most RT apps install super fast.
If you are worried about your desktop apps, they will install much faster on an SSD drive and just make a backup copy of your "AppData" folder. That's what I did when refreshing my PC caused a bunch of errors and I re-installed.
Windows 8 uses different algorithms for SSDs than for HDDs so ghosting your drive is a bad idea.

dragon_76 said:
Are you more worried about your desktop apps or your RT apps? If you have signed in with a Microsoft account and you are on your Trusted PC, your RT app settings will transfer to the new installs and you already know most RT apps install super fast.
If you are worried about your desktop apps, they will install much faster on an SSD drive and just make a backup copy of your "AppData" folder. That's what I did when refreshing my PC caused a bunch of errors and I re-installed.
Windows 8 uses different algorithms for SSDs than for HDDs so ghosting your drive is a bad idea.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True, the RT apps will come back after the install.. I guess I was more concerned for the 15 to 20 games I had installed. I'm looking at a good 4-6 hours of re-install time to get it back to the same state I'm at now. All personal items are backed up externally so I'm ok there.
I guess I've considered just re-installing from scratch now. But last question is will I need to re-activate Windows 8 if I'm adding an SSD? Since I'll be formatting my current HDD, installing an SSD which I'll want the OS running off of I guess there's no way to do a fresh install and keep activation since I'll be formatting the drive the OS is on.
Can I hypothetically, install the SSD initiate a Windows "reset" and hope that it gives me the choice to format my old HDD and install to the new SSD. For some reason I think not. Or do I need to image my C: drive, install the SSD then copy the image over then do a reset? I'm so confused..

pistol44 said:
True, the RT apps will come back after the install.. I guess I was more concerned for the 15 to 20 games I had installed. I'm looking at a good 4-6 hours of re-install time to get it back to the same state I'm at now. All personal items are backed up externally so I'm ok there.
I guess I've considered just re-installing from scratch now. But last question is will I need to re-activate Windows 8 if I'm adding an SSD? Since I'll be formatting my current HDD, installing an SSD which I'll want the OS running off of I guess there's no way to do a fresh install and keep activation since I'll be formatting the drive the OS is on.
Can I hypothetically, install the SSD initiate a Windows "reset" and hope that it gives me the choice to format my old HDD and install to the new SSD. For some reason I think not. Or do I need to image my C: drive, install the SSD then copy the image over then do a reset? I'm so confused..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can type in your serial and it will fail to activate by internet. Select to activate by phone and it should work, deactivating your old, erased installation.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk 2

Windows 8 and Asus takes HALF of SSD Space?!

I just got an Asus Zenbook UX31A.
It has a 128 GB of SSD. but when I went to Desktop > File Explorer > Desktop > Computer.
Where it says Hard Disk Drives (1), it says that I have 65.5 GB free of 93.9 GB. WHAT THE HELL?!
I bought this laptop cause it has a 128 GB SSD, and I know that I won't get all 128 GB of space, but the fact that HALF is already taking space?!
How can I find out what it is, and how do I remove it?!
Thank you.

There is a windows 8 recovery partition using about 10gb (this can be moved to USB).
ASUS may also have a recovery partition.
Normally on a 128gb drive you would only expect about 110 to be usable.
Of what is used on the C drive. Windows 8 alone takes up a good 10-15gb. Apps add more onto that. Anything asus preinstall adds onto that again.

Ok, so how can I remove these recovery partitions? or should I not remove them at all?
I'm thinking of installing this: http://download.cnet.com/Advanced-U...9986.html?tag=dropDownForm;productListing;pop
to uninstall some stuff. Probably all asus apps.

xMoKax said:
Ok, so how can I remove these recovery partitions? or should I not remove them at all?
I'm thinking of installing this: http://download.cnet.com/Advanced-U...9986.html?tag=dropDownForm;productListing;pop
to uninstall some stuff. Probably all asus apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i would open up disk manager (type disk under settings in start and click on create and format disk partitions), and see what is there. if you post a screen shot of the program open, ill look at it and tell you

Is this what you wanted to see?

Here is another screenshot, after I opened OS (C:

So, five partitions. The first one is the boot partition (it's usually only 200MB and can happily fit in less, but that doesn't matter much). Don't mess with it. Technically it's only required that you use a separate boot partition when using BitLocker, but it's a pretty good setup.
The second is nearly a gig of some kind of recovery data. It's too small to be the Win8 recovery installer, so I'm guessing it's some pile of Asus-specific crap that probably isn't even useful enough to be something like a bunch of drivers that you could download newer versions of from their website; more likely its useless garbage like that wallpaper it comes with and other pointless stuff. Check before deleting it, I guess, but it should be safe to kill.
The third is your OS volume. It is, as you noted, less than 80% of the SSD's size.
The fourth is probably the standard Win8 recovery image. It's basically a Win8 install DVD, and its purpose is to allow the use of the "Reset" functionality to wipe the OS clean - essentially just automating the "format and reinstall" process. It also can be used to repair a system that becomes damaged or to manually reinstall Windows if you manage to nuke the OS partition so hard you can't use the Reset feature. This partition can usually be safely removed after writing it to a DVD or Flashdrive; there are steps and utilities for doing so.
The fifth is the real hog that's using up your space, being almost four times as large as all the other non-OS volumes put together and taking up about 18% of the total capacity of the drive. My guess is that this is the image used to restore the OS to exactly the state it was in when you bought it (Asus pre-installed-crapware and all). It's almost certainly a complete waste of space, unless you paid for a copy of Office or something when you bought the computer and the re-installer is on there. Anyhow, that partition as a whole is too big to copy off to anything except a large flashdrive/SD card/etc., an external HD, or a blu-ray disk, but it *might* be possible to mount it and find any parts that are actually of any real value and blow the rest.
If you're interested, here's what I would do (it's what I do, and recommend doing, with *any* new PC): now that you've verified that the OS boots up, the hardware works, etc, prepare a bootable flashdrive, put the Windows installer on it (should be possible to get it from the 4GB recovery volume; as I said, there are steps and utilities to do this), download all the drivers for the hardware from the OEM's site (Asus.com in this case) and put them on the flashdrive too, then reboot from the flashdrive. Choose to do a custom install of Windows, delete every single partition from the existing scheme, select the resulting unpartitioned space, and tell Windows to install there (it will set up a sane partition scheme for you). This process removes unwanted partitions, removes OEM garbage (which can be a pain to remove otherwise), gives you a clean Windows install without the horriffic tampering the OEMs like to do (interesting fact: I ran Vista, and found it just fine and far better than XP, with no crashes since RTM on my clean-installed copy... until I tried using an OEM copy on somebody else's machine - more powerful than mine, mind you - and discovered what all the complaints about slowness and crashing came from; the difference between an OEM and a clean retail copy of the OS were astonishing and painful), and puts you in control of the disk usage.

Follow this

GoodDayToDie said:
So, five partitions. The first one is the boot partition (it's usually only 200MB and can happily fit in less, but that doesn't matter much). Don't mess with it. Technically it's only required that you use a separate boot partition when using BitLocker, but it's a pretty good setup.
The second is nearly a gig of some kind of recovery data. It's too small to be the Win8 recovery installer, so I'm guessing it's some pile of Asus-specific crap that probably isn't even useful enough to be something like a bunch of drivers that you could download newer versions of from their website; more likely its useless garbage like that wallpaper it comes with and other pointless stuff. Check before deleting it, I guess, but it should be safe to kill.
The third is your OS volume. It is, as you noted, less than 80% of the SSD's size.
The fourth is probably the standard Win8 recovery image. It's basically a Win8 install DVD, and its purpose is to allow the use of the "Reset" functionality to wipe the OS clean - essentially just automating the "format and reinstall" process. It also can be used to repair a system that becomes damaged or to manually reinstall Windows if you manage to nuke the OS partition so hard you can't use the Reset feature. This partition can usually be safely removed after writing it to a DVD or Flashdrive; there are steps and utilities for doing so.
The fifth is the real hog that's using up your space, being almost four times as large as all the other non-OS volumes put together and taking up about 18% of the total capacity of the drive. My guess is that this is the image used to restore the OS to exactly the state it was in when you bought it (Asus pre-installed-crapware and all). It's almost certainly a complete waste of space, unless you paid for a copy of Office or something when you bought the computer and the re-installer is on there. Anyhow, that partition as a whole is too big to copy off to anything except a large flashdrive/SD card/etc., an external HD, or a blu-ray disk, but it *might* be possible to mount it and find any parts that are actually of any real value and blow the rest.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your response! So..
Partition 1: Don't Touch.
Partition 2: Asus bull****. Check first. OK to delete.
Partition 3: Volume. Don't Touch.
Partition 4: Win8 Recovery. OK to delete, after backup. Do I have to back it up to thumb drive? Can I back it up to an External Hard drive? DynamicRam told me to follow this: http://lifehacker.com/5991431/how-t...r-windows-8-and-free-up-some-hard-drive-space <Will that work?
Partition 5: I didn't buy a copy of Office, so I'm guessing that it is a complete waste of space. I'll try to mount it and see if there is anything that I would actually need [probably show you a screenshot], and delete the rest. If for some reason I'm not able to mount it, will I still be able to delete the contents inside?
GoodDayToDie said:
If you're interested, here's what I would do (it's what I do, and recommend doing, with *any* new PC): now that you've verified that the OS boots up, the hardware works, etc, prepare a bootable flashdrive, put the Windows installer on it (should be possible to get it from the 4GB recovery volume; as I said, there are steps and utilities to do this), download all the drivers for the hardware from the OEM's site (Asus.com in this case) and put them on the flashdrive too, then reboot from the flashdrive. Choose to do a custom install of Windows, delete every single partition from the existing scheme, select the resulting unpartitioned space, and tell Windows to install there (it will set up a sane partition scheme for you). This process removes unwanted partitions, removes OEM garbage (which can be a pain to remove otherwise), gives you a clean Windows install without the horriffic tampering the OEMs like to do (interesting fact: I ran Vista, and found it just fine and far better than XP, with no crashes since RTM on my clean-installed copy... until I tried using an OEM copy on somebody else's machine - more powerful than mine, mind you - and discovered what all the complaints about slowness and crashing came from; the difference between an OEM and a clean retail copy of the OS were astonishing and painful), and puts you in control of the disk usage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This right here, you said to put the Windows installer in a flashdrive, and to get it from a 4gb recovery volume? So, you're saying that inside Partition 4, the Win8 Recovery, there will be the Windows installer inside, and the file will be 4gb in size?
I'm really wanting to use Ubuntu instead of Windows 8. Will my best bet be, to backup the Windows installer in a flashdrive, completely delete everything (except partition 1 and 3?), and install Ubuntu?

Also, according to this person:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HU_jEWT6w8
It's best for me to install Ubuntu 13.04, instead of 12.04, since 13.04 has Windows 8 UEFI Secure Boot BIOS support, whatever that means.
To sum up what I pretty much want to do, is to remove all bloatware and pretty much delete Windows 8 (but back it up, for warranty purposes, if something happens to my laptop), and have only Ubuntu on my laptop.
Is this possible?

Been doing research all night, came across this:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Installing-Ubuntu-13-04-348582.shtml
In the "Installation Type" section, it says you have a couple of options, and option 2 says:
"2. Erase OS and reinstall/Erase disk and install Ubuntu (if there's no OS on it)
- Choose this option ONLY if you have another OS and you want to install Ubuntu 13.04 on a fresh drive, replacing the existing OS. This option will completely wipe the target disk drive."
So, can I just select Partition 5, and will it completely wipe everything inside, and install only Ubuntu 13.04? Just wanting to know if this is possible or not. Instead of having to go through the 5th partition and deleting/backing up whatever I need, and then installing Ubuntu.

Windows 8 to SSD Installation

I've been having an absolutely horrendous time installing Window 8 onto an SSD i bought. Let me give you a rundown of what's going on.
I bought a 120gb SSD off of my friend for a new laptop I was getting. My intentions were to replace the 1TB HDD in this laptop with the SSD and use the HDD as an external, so I can have massive speed increases in everyday computing activity. Originally, I thought the laptop had 2 hard drive bays, making it simple to install Windows onto it. However, due to my negligence to pay attention, it turns out that this laptop only has 1 hard drive bay. So next, I say, "oh simple, I'll just get an external HDD enclosure and install windows that way." Nope, cockblocked by Microsoft on this one; I figure out the hard way that one cannot install Windows onto a device via usb. I then researched some more and found "Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool". I tried installing Windows onto a flash drive, but then accidentally formatted my camera's 16gb memory card losing hundreds of pictures. In vain, I should add, since it didn't even work in the end. Currently, I am stuck on how to install windows 8 onto my external SSD to later swap with the internal HDD. Hopefully this paragraph made sense lol. Any help here is greatly appreciated.

You've got the enclosure you need for the 1TB drive, right? What's stopping you from swapping the drives now, and installing the OS on the SSD when it's mounted internally? Alternatively, create a new partition on the current drive that is the same size or smaller as the SSD, and then install Win8 there. You can then copy that partition (the whole thing, using something like dd on linux) to the SSD, although getting the bootloader to come along for the ride would be tricky.
Also, with all due respect, if you managed to lose hundreds of pictures that weren't yet copied off the camera card while attempting (and failing) to install Win8 on a flashdrive, this might be a "don't try this at home" moment. I'm sorry for your loss, and I realize it was probably a very simple accident - confusion of which drive you were targeting, perhaps - but messing around with disk partitioning and advanced installation techniques without somebody who knows what they're doing guiding you is a dangerous idea.

Windows 2 Go locks down a number of system features, which limit its usefulness as a day-to-day OS. There's some configuration in the registry that controls this, so you might be able to use the W2G installation and then "fix" it, but you may want to do some research into W2G before attempting this.

I guess one could call me a noob when it comes to Windows lol... my expertise is Android
So I can swap the ssd and hdd while the computer is running? Wouldn't that cause all sorts of errors? Because when I tried swapping them, I couldn't get windows to boot from the hdd (which was in the external enclosure)
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Take the HDD out. Put SSD in. Put windows install disk in (not upgrade disk, most disks sold are upgrade only, you need install). Boot from instrall disk, follow instructions.
The hard disk replacement can only be dome when powered off. SATA devices do not support hit swapping and may even be damaged by it.
We ignore the HDD completely. Once win8 is on the SSD then you can put the HDD in the USB enclosure, plug it into your laptop now running win 8 and retrieve your files.
Copying wijndiws between different hard disks rarely works in my experience.
Oh, for the SD thing. Partitioning SD cards is not recommended, not all laptops can boot from SD either so it may have been completely futile.

If you don't have an install disk (only upgrade), you can copy the contents of your current Windows OS volume onto the SSD and then do the swap, which should cause the installer to think you already have Windows installed (if perhaps in a corrupted form). If you can do a full partition clone, then it needn't even be a corrupted copy; you could simply clone Windows onto the SSD (it may demand to be reactivated if you do this; ignore that) and then use an upgrade install.
Contrary to the name, upgrade installs do not need to be in-place upgrades; you can in fact wipe the entire SSD (and I recommend you do so) using the advanced install options once the installer has verified that these is (or was) a Windows install there.

I've done it on my HP DV6, the process was with a samsung ssd to clone the hard drive on the ssd with the program furnished by samsung. I expect there are other programs doing the same. I used a second external HD to take the files that didn't enter the SSD (256 GB).
Then I swap the disks (SSD internal) and I replace the DVD reader by the old HD repartition and format it (Now I use an external DVD Writer.
Then I upraded with win 8.
Take a bit of time but works
I hope it helps
François
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