Database Users

Swap Partition When Using Apps2sd

Hey guys,
I am planning to format my sdcard to fat32/ext_ partitions for use of apps2sd. I have a few questions I would like answered first though.
-Is a swap partition required? I have little space on my sd and would rather not use one. If it is required, what size/file system would you suggest? I take it there is no invisible swap partition by default?
-Ext 2, 3 or 4 for my apps2sd partition?
- I am planning to make my apps2sd partition only about 200mb, will that work well?
Thanks.

- swap: depending on rom, but in general: no
- i would recommend ext2, you can use 3 or 4 as well. keep in mind that ext4 doesn't work on any 2.1 rom until we have the kernel sources (after official release).
- it will work, the size only determines how many apps you can install there. average size of an app is ~1mb, though can go from a few kb to several mb (i.e. copilot.apk has 14mb).

Thanks a lot Any particular advantage of ext2 over ext3?

tbman1996 said:
Thanks a lot Any particular advantage of ext2 over ext3?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ext3 and ext4 wear out your sdcard quicker, because of journaling features.
Since, compared to a system or cache partition, the sdcard is not written to as much, and system crashes where the mobile is shut down during a write operation are rare for Android, journaling doesn't offer any significant advantage. The unnecessary journaling however, accounts for extra writes to the flash memory chips, which in turn equals extra wear.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext2 said:
ext2 is still the filesystem of choice for flash-based storage media (such as SD cards, SSDs, and USB flash drives) since its lack of a journal minimizes the number of writes and flash devices have only a limited number of write cycles.
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Click to collapse

Partitioning the SD

Can someone please educate me on partitioning the sd? Based on what I've read and my discussions with others, ext swap is for cache, fat32 is for apps, and the remainder is for usb storage???
I have a 8 GB class 6 (supposed to be faster) Samsung sd partioned at ext swap - 0 and fat 32 - 500.
If I'm right about ext swap (please correct me if I'm wrong), I could make my phone faster if I allocated some sd space to it??? One forum I read said that the phone is usually faster but it could have been referring to a different phone and a slower card.
If I did decide to change my partition what affects would it have (wipe sd, reinstall custom rom, etc)?
Thanks for any feedback!

Partitioning the SD card allows you to utilize a2sd/app2sd and/or swap space on your SD card - if the ROM in question supports it.
Note that the ext and swap partitions are separate things, not one and the same thing.
swap is for swap - set it to 0 (you will never need it)
ext{2|3} is for the A2SD/APPS2SD space for storing applications (and dalvik-cache for some ROMs) - 512 MB will be more than you ever need.
the rest is the VFAT partition - the MS-DOS partition you see from your Windoze box when you mount it from the PC.
Note also that partitioning your card destroys all data on it - make a backup if you decide to partition.
Neither A2SD nor having swap space will speed your phone up. (Adding swap - for ROMs which support it - will actually slow your phone down, except certain pathological cases, unless you become an expert on the process trimmer configuration and experiment with swappiness controls. The reason this happens is because the as-configured process trimmer kicks in too late if you merely add swap and do not reconfigure the trimmer).
My recommendation? Keep your life simple and avoid both A2SD and especially use of a swap area on the SD card, until such a time as you "need it". You might find a practical need for A2SD if you are going to be trying out a whole bunch of new ROMs as they come out, or you are an app hoarder and run out of space in /data.
Probably you will never need to use a swap partition on your card.
Again, in neither case will you notice a perceptible gain in "performance" of the phone.
bftb0
PS Josh. Please stop putting usage questions in the Development forum. Please. Put them in the General forum.

Thanks for clearing that up......and i will stop posting in development.

[Q] Partitioning of the SD Card

Hello
I'm posting this because I just changed my 1GB SD card for a 16 GB Class 6, everything works fine, but now (one of the goals of the operation) I want to upgrade to 6.0 Cyanogen
So, the question is: should I partition? what is the reasonable amount to allocate to keep the rest for any Debian etc.

Depend...
OK, I have the answer, so I give it in case you wonder.
In fact, there is no need to partition the point of view of 6.0, but some applications can seek an ext2 or swap (this is a constraint due to these applications, not to cyanogen) So if we can predict all at once as long as it does not take too much space (32 MB of swap, and around 800 / 1.2GB ext2 ...).
Still, I think there are people who program with their feet ...

Correct you don't need the EXT partition because Froyo supports apps2fat which means you can do it with a regularly partitioned card. However, if your going to install apps to your SD its better to flash fireats script that lets you use the EXT partition and go that route. Reason being, if you ever unmount your SD card with the system on, all your apps go with it.
Sent from my HTC Magic using XDA App

partition sd card?

Hi all, I've noticed lately that most of the new roms coming out require you to partition your sd card. a couple of questions;
Why?
is it perminent?
wich partition to add new files too?
can i still use stock sd card?
how big to make partition?
Thanks in advance

dca1970 said:
Hi all, I've noticed lately that most of the new roms coming out require you to partition your sd card. a couple of questions;
Why?
is it perminent?
wich partition to add new files too?
can i still use stock sd card?
how big to make partition?
Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Memory size on the phone is not adequate to handle the size of certain ROMs.
No its not permanent
Ext3 for apps
Yes
As big as you want, 2gigs is what's recommended and 32 mb swap

phatmanxxl said:
Memory size on the phone is not adequate to handle the size of certain ROMs.
No its not permanent
Ext3 for apps
Yes
As big as you want, 2gigs is what's recommended and 32 mb swap
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! .

Upgrading from ext2-ext3
On a side note, I have been attempting to partition my SDcard with the 2G on my 16G C6 card. When I use AR1.8 everything goes quickly, but it will not upgrade from ext2-ext3 and says to use adb to do this (adb does not see the partition)...partition seems to be made when checking the card. On AR2.3 the partitioning goes on forever and have to do a battery pull to get it to stop. When I check the size with this version it also seems to have done the partition even with the endless process stated earlier. It however gives me the message 'opps, something went wrong' when trying to upgrade from ext2-3.
When checking from either method in TB, it shows an ap2sd partition of around 400mb and have yet to actually upgrade to ext3 from either recovery version.
Any ideas?

Use RA recovery to partition, it makes it simple.

What ROMs require this?
I guess I've been in the AOSP world for too long...

Just the virus gingersense and the virus kingdom that I know of. The virus kindom does not require it but you wont be left if much room for apps.

phatmanxxl said:
Just the virus gingersense and the virus kingdom that I know of. The virus kindom does not require it but you wont be left if much room for apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why not just http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=855424 ?
Better performance on NAND than SD-EXT.

phatmanxxl said:
Use RA recovery to partition, it makes it simple.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, AR was my intention of RA. Have used both the initial version 1.8 (my first anyway) and 2.3 with no success.
Have been attempting to do it within ADB and keep getting this message when attempting to make the ext2 partition:
Input/Output error during write on /dev/block/mmcblk0
This is the process I'm using:
within adb shell
# parted /dev/block/mmcblk0
(parted) mkpartfs primary fat32 0 13991
(parted) mkpartfs primary ext2 13991 16039
this is where I get the error mentioned above and can not continue to the swap.
(parted) mkpartfs primary linux-swap 16039 16071
HOWEVER....
If I use mkpart primary ext2 13991 16039 it takes, but does not show that it is an ext2 in the files system under the partition information.
Does this even make sense..lol
EDIT:
Never mind..erased my edit until I really screw up my card...now it won't mount...back to the drawing board
Gave up after reading about Transcend cards and just partitioned to the single 16G. Going to get a different card/mfg and give it a go. At least I learned a bit more about ADB today...so not a total loss.

OK..after looking through many options, may have my issue as to why RA won't perform the partition and I can't do it through ADB.....MY CARD. Apparantly there have been issues with Transcend and making an ext partition. Guess it's time to go C10 and get a new one.
Anyway...found this thread and thought it might help?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=534714

Got a new C10 card today from a different mfg and that fixed the problem!

I use gpart on ny ubuntu OS. It is NVIDIA to keep a Linux OS around guys. I can do the wholebpartitioning without erasing any files or data. soo I'm good to go. Also its fast as well.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

Quick question!!

i bought a new memory card for my phone..... and im just wonderin if do i have to format in FAT 32 or just leave it and erase the files of a new memory card??
Thank you

rizer08 said:
i bought a new memory card for my phone..... and im just wonderin if do i have to format in FAT 32 or just leave it and erase the files of a new memory card??
Thank you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it's new, there's no real need to format. It is already formatted in FAT 32.
You could however partition the memory card within CWM Recovery to setup SWAP and ext4.
Hope that helps =)

Agree it should already be formatted for windows - I would just add:
You can apply the 4EXT extension easily enough in recovery - my personal favorite 4EXT touchcovery...
I would not use a swap file on this device - useful for my old MT3G but I wouldn't do it for this phone IMHO

I use SDFormatter (it's free) for formatting all my MicroSD cards. I had problems getting a 32 GB MicroSD card to be recognized on my MyTouch 4G and after formatting it with that program, no problems anymore

SH31KH said:
If it's new, there's no real need to format. It is already formatted in FAT 32.
You could however partition the memory card within CWM Recovery to setup SWAP and ext4.
Hope that helps =)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Alright, I've been around for awhile and still haven't really looked into this, but what exactly is swap and ext4? Like what are the benefits?
And also, I'm trying to find the differences between the 4ext touchcovery and clockworkrecovery other than themes and touch. What would you recommend and why?

I2IEAILiiTY said:
Alright, I've been around for awhile and still haven't really looked into this, but what exactly is swap and ext4? Like what are the benefits?
And also, I'm trying to find the differences between the 4ext touchcovery and clockworkrecovery other than themes and touch. What would you recommend and why?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Swap is a portion of your card (or hard drive for desktop) that the system will use almost like RAM - for frequently accessed files/information. This was very useful for the older phones that had little RAM but not really needed for newer phones. That swap will get 'thrashed' quite a bit too, and with a limited amount of read/writes per SD card I would not recommend it except on older phones.
ext4 is a file system and ext3 was better than ext2 etc... ext4 in a nutshell is faster, and more stable - lots of googling available on that one if you are interested in the fine details.
4ext recovery - has a couple of really nice features like md5 checksum check and a few others and the new touchcovery is so slick - no buttons needed at all, great UI and all the features of the original - I practically feel guilty using it! Try it - if you don't like it you can always go back ...
Hope that helps...

Homerbsharp said:
Swap is a portion of your card (or hard drive for desktop) that the system will use almost like RAM - for frequently accessed files/information. This was very useful for the older phones that had little RAM but not really needed for newer phones. That swap will get 'thrashed' quite a bit too, and with a limited amount of read/writes per SD card I would not recommend it except on older phones.
ext4 is a file system and ext3 was better than ext2 etc... ext4 in a nutshell is faster, and more stable - lots of googling available on that one if you are interested in the fine details.
4ext recovery - has a couple of really nice features like md5 checksum check and a few others and the new touchcovery is so slick - no buttons needed at all, great UI and all the features of the original - I practically feel guilty using it! Try it - if you don't like it you can always go back ...
Hope that helps...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea, so swap is in other words Virtual Memory? When i had an iphone 3g, I used a VM mod and a couple others to speed it up cause it has very little RAM.
And I'm using 4ext touchcovery and I love the wipe all but sdcard function.
What are the benefits of partitioning your sdcard?

I2IEAILiiTY said:
Yea, so swap is in other words Virtual Memory? When i had an iphone 3g, I used a VM mod and a couple others to speed it up cause it has very little RAM.
And I'm using 4ext touchcovery and I love the wipe all but sdcard function.
What are the benefits of partitioning your sdcard?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah touchcovery is sweet and you are correct about swap being virtual memory.
For partitioning your card with 4EXT, I am no expert but I think stock Android expects FAT, and if you run windows you would not see 4EXT easily etc... but I use a 4EXT partition of 500 MB for Android, since it is faster, more stable etc... and android has no problems reading it since it is a *NIX derived OS and the more recent ROMs should take advantage of that partition format.
You can partition pretty easy in 4EXT touchcovery BTW ... not sure how it handles existing data so I would back up if you go that route...