Database Users

Changing Shift HDD to CF Card Disk

Check out this site, it's the guys from Mobile01 again trying to replace the existing HDD to CF card disk, you will see the RAM and HDD in closer view.
Result......? it doesn't work, because after install the CF disk, it needs to proceed to re-install the OS, and the OS is store in the original HDD, guess this guy didn't find a solution into this. However i do believe we will be able to sort this out in the near future.
Also replacing the RAM is currently not possible, there are no 2G module out there for sell yet, I guess we need to wait for the Hardware to catch up.
Go and check out the pic in this link:
http://www.mobile01.com/newsdetail.php?id=5414

how about cloning the disk to CF first ?
Maybe use a clone proggy to clone the actual HDD to the CF card first, then mount / solder it ?
Maybe i'm too dumbed down by windows OS'es, but if you clone the HDD bit for bit to the CF card, my guess is that it will boot straight away.
Maybe one needs to fiddle a little with the MBR, or the device ID, but that should be it really.
Please keep us posted.

Are the installation files on the harddisk?
I read in another thread that the installation files are in ROM soldered to the motherboard and that all you need to do after installing a new harddisk is to press FN F3 at bootup to restore Vista. This might be wrong and I'd actually wonder what the hidden HD partition would be for if it should be true.
Anyway, if they didn't make any mistakes installing the CF card, they should be able to install Windows from a USB drive.
However, have you seen what they installed instead of the 40GB HD? A 8GB CF card. This will never be enough to hold Vista, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was the cause for their problems, the installation routine might just balk at "insufficient space".
As the linked website is using Chinese (I guess, or is it Japanese, Korean, ...) characters and language, somebody able to read this would have to evaluate what they are doing.

Swop hdd
The problem with swopping the hard drive is it has since been discovered that the drive is artificially sized down to protect a HIDDEN partition using special features of IDE drives in conjunction with the BIOS.
I'm aware of no program on windows that will clone this special hidden area as the drive removes it and it is only visible on boot. However linux can see there is a hidden partition but i'm unsure not knowing much about linux whether it can clone it.
If you simply swop out the hard drive you will lose the ability to FN+F3 on boot to restore the image.
I would suggest therefore you do the following before the swop out.
1. Boot Shift
2. FN+F3
3. Do a full factory restore
4. Switch off when directed
5. Attached external USB CDROM/DVD drive
6. Use BartPE
7. Power on Shift and boot immediately to BartPe
8. Once booted insert a usb hard drive / key using the 3-way hub, so you have the cd and hdd connected via USB
8. Ghost / clone the drive from C: to your external hard drive / pen
You now have ghost image that you can restore to on the new hard drive (ie. not a FN+F3 restore process but a CLEAN ready to initial boot installation of Vista).
Regards
Blitz

The vista installation files are in a hidden partition on the hard drive.
This is why the 40gb drive shows as a 34.2Gb drive.

mw65719 said:
I read in another thread that the installation files are in ROM soldered to the motherboard and that all you need to do after installing a new harddisk is to press FN F3 at bootup to restore Vista. This might be wrong and I'd actually wonder what the hidden HD partition would be for if it should be true.
Anyway, if they didn't make any mistakes installing the CF card, they should be able to install Windows from a USB drive.
However, have you seen what they installed instead of the 40GB HD? A 8GB CF card. This will never be enough to hold Vista, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was the cause for their problems, the installation routine might just balk at "insufficient space".
As the linked website is using Chinese (I guess, or is it Japanese, Korean, ...) characters and language, somebody able to read this would have to evaluate what they are doing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The reason why they install 8G CF card is for faster read/write speed, and i guess it will also decrease battery usage since it's not mechanic moving like the original HDD.

Thanks very much wu5262 - I fully understand why they want to use a CF card instead of the harddisk .
I was pointing at the meager 8GB size they picked.
If you want to install Vista, use at least a 16GB card. If you can get your hands on one, use a 32GB card (admittedly not so cheap). For an example: http://www.amazon.de/Components-32GB-CompactFlash-HighSpeed-Karte/dp/B00162ZOPW.

Upgrading the shift's hdd with a strange and maybe wrong way. Any help ?

I had a Transcend External HDD (SJ18M TS120GSJ18M, inside 120GB PATA 1.8 inch HDD) from last summer, but only before some days I had the time to try the change. But I have a problem, the Bios recognizes the disk as 120GB, but when you try to boot, it says "Primary Master Hard Disk Error". I boot from an Acronis Bootable Flash Disk 16GB, where I Have my image od Vista with all my progs, but either the Acronis SWs do not Recognize the HDD (Toshiba MK1231GAL). The message is "Failed to read from the sector 0 of hard disk 0". I had understood that something was wrong from the summer, because all the Acronis SWs on my Notebook did not recognized the External Transcend HDD, eventhouth you see it in Windows (format, make partitions, copy, delete things). Have you managed to boot any Operating System from that HDD (after you put it inside HTC Shift) ??
See something interesting, on some sites as i was searching on Google, it says that MK1231GAL but with Part Number HDD1813 (like mine) is ATA7.
But on Toshiba Site, It says that MK1231GAL but with Part Number HDD1811 (not like mine) is ATA3-ATA4 compatible.
Does anyone know what is going on to inform me, please ??

USB OTG to mount Galaxy Nexus?

I'm looking to mount my Galaxy Nexus to my Nexus 7, but when I go about it like I would a usb stick stickmount doesn't see the sd card. My USB OTG host cable works perfectly with my 64gb SanDisk Cruzer thumb drive, but it is NTFS formatted to get around the 4gb file size limit. I can read files, copy files off of it, and stream files from the stick just fine but I am unable to write to the stick. I'd like to be able to get rid of NANDROID backups, playstation games, other large files, etc without having to connect to a computer.
1. What format is the "SD card" on the Galaxy Nexus? Is it ext3/ext4 which stickmount can't read?
2. If there is a better way to make an NTFS formatted writable stick I'm all ears...
3. Maybe I should just get a smaller separate stick that's FAT32 and thus writable...

Nokia?
thirtynation said:
I'm looking to mount my Galaxy Nexus to my Nexus 7, but when I go about it like I would a usb stick stickmount doesn't see the sd card. My USB OTG host cable works perfectly with my 64gb SanDisk Cruzer thumb drive, but it is NTFS formatted to get around the 4gb file size limit. I can read files, copy files off of it, and stream files from the stick just fine but I am unable to write to the stick. I'd like to be able to get rid of NANDROID backups, playstation games, other large files, etc without having to connect to a computer.
1. What format is the "SD card" on the Galaxy Nexus? Is it ext3/ext4 which stickmount can't read?
2. If there is a better way to make an NTFS formatted writable stick I'm all ears...
3. Maybe I should just get a smaller separate stick that's FAT32 and thus writable...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't seen that done with Android devices just yet... maybe it's possible, but I haven't heard of it. I know that Nokia phones can hook up as external storage to the N8 (saw a video on YouTube) but that's as far as I know.
Also, to write files to an NTFS volume on Android, it seems that you need to add the "fuse.ko" to your kernel (in /system/lib/modules) I tried doing this with the Nexus 7 ToolKit, but I wasn't about to insmod it (make it run) since the fuse.ko I has was apparently for a different version of Android??? I've literally spent about 10 hours "searching" on xda and all over the internet. It seems (oddly) that everyone in the Android community is content with a measly 32GB total limit, and 4GB file size limit. *(facepalm)*

This won't work. Android, with 3.0, stopped exporting storage via SD card, because of reasons[1]. If at all, you can have a vendor modify Android as to export your plug-in SD card, but not the internal storage.
Currently, Galaxy Nexus etc. offer their files via the 'MTP' protocol when plugged in, and there's no support to act as an MTP client AFAIK (since Linux support for MTP sucks balls).
[1]: since a separate storage for /data, /system etc. was considered uncool, as it made you dependent on a predefined partition size (remember 256MB 'internal storage' phones and Android Market "uninstalled due to low disk space"?), newer phones, and especially the Nexus line, features a single storage container.
The USB mass storage interface works like plugging in a hard drive into your system: it gives you block-level access, and this is usually synonymous with "exclusive" access, as it results in destroyed or confused file systems if two independent systems try to mount the file system on a storage device.
Problem is that Android still needs to be able to actually run, so it can't give you block level access to the internal storage. The only way that would be feasible is to turn off your phone completely and have the bootloader give you USB mass storage access, which is counterproductive.
Thus the need for something like MTP (which was already around for a while) was born, which gives you the ability to make it look like a file system, but actually work on a client/server basis like FTP.
tl;dr: no usb mass storage ("usb stick mode") with galaxy nexus. ever.

Can't check at the moment, but can't you mount the SD card from CWM recovery on the Nexus in USB Mode rather than MTP?

What we need is a file manager that can use MTP. I'm also interested in hooking my Gnex up to my 7. There must be something out there that can do this.

Bluetooth file transfer.
or
Connect to the same wifi and share.

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)
Sent from my DROID4 using xda app-developers app

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
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF300TG using xda app-developers app

Switch adoptable storage

I currently have a 128GB SSD I'm using as adoptable storage. With the prices of larger SSD's dropping I can see buying a larger one sometime. If I buy a larger one and plug it into usb and select it to be adoptable will all the files on the smaller SSD be copied over?

How strange I was going to post this exact same question today. Hope someone has an answer, as my Google-foo seems to not be turning anything up.

AFAIK, adoptable storage is encrypted
when the SSD formatted as adoptable it will ONLY work with the device format that drive
if you remove the SSD it will not work with other device (include a PC),, at least android system file won't read in PC
then it's impossible to copy the system file to new SSD
maybe you can attach 2 SSD (old and new one)
use it a couple days,, then remove the old one
crossfinger the system file already copied (automatically by android itself) to the new one
VIOLA!!
IDK it'll work or not.. i don't have 2 SSDs this time
LOL
AFAIK,, android allow u use more than 1 storage as adoptable
that is your chance

qzxi said:
AFAIK, adoptable storage is encrypted
when the SSD formatted as adoptable it will ONLY work with the device format that drive
if you remove the SSD it will not work with other device (include a PC),, at least android system file won't read in PC
then it's impossible to copy the system file to new SSD
maybe you can attach 2 SSD (old and new one)
use it a couple days,, then remove the old one
crossfinger the system file already copied (automatically by android itself) to the new one
VIOLA!!
IDK it'll work or not.. i don't have 2 SSDs this time
LOL
AFAIK,, android allow u use more than 1 storage as adoptable
that is your chance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah this is kinda what I was getting after, plug in the second SSD, pick it as adoptable storage and hope the files copy over