Database Users

[POLL] a2sd... yay or nay?

So I've learned more about android so far than I intended or expected. I haven't needed to learn about or implement a2sd but at this point my "keepers" app collection has me down to just over 20mb free internal storage so I'm considering taking the plunge.
I haven't used a2sd yet for two reasons:
A) I haven't needed it
B) I've read lots of threads regarding difficulty with setting it up and maintaining it when switching or updating roms
So what's the scoop? Is it worth it? Is there any performance gain or is it strictly a storage benefit?
Should I go ahead and learn about it so it's in place when the time comes that I want to use it or am I better off with my current rule of thumb? Which is "if I think I NEED a2sd then I probably NEED to reevaluate my app library".
Thanks guys

nebenezer said:
So I've learned more about android so far than I intended or expected. I haven't needed to learn about or implement a2sd but at this point my "keepers" app collection has me down to just over 20mb free internal storage so I'm considering taking the plunge.
I haven't used a2sd yet for two reasons:
A) I haven't needed it
B) I've read lots of threads regarding difficulty with setting it up and maintaining it when switching or updating roms
So what's the scoop? Is it worth it? Is there any performance gain or is it strictly a storage benefit?
Should I go ahead and learn about it so it's in place when the time comes that I want to use it or am I better off with my current rule of thumb which is "if I think I NEED a2sd then I probably NEED to reevaluate my app library"
Thanks guys
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unless you are running out of space on your phone, I wouldn't worry about it. It is supposed to be faster if you have one of the $100 8gb class 10 thingys but I don't know if its true. its fast enough already
My vote: Nay

I have never used it and have never run short of space on my phone. From all the millions of posts on the subject I can't imagine it being worth the huge pain in the ass it seems to be!

I use it, as I have and do run out of space on /data.

I have a 16 GB class 2, so I've always refrained. I'm not running out of space, but I usually decide whether or not I like an app right after I install it and if I don't like it, uninstall.
So, to answer your question...
I don't know, I'm curious myself.

I use, ran out of space on my phone the first week so was excited to do it. it was a piece of cake to set up with RA 1.6.2, and switching roms has been no big deal, I usually first try to update without wiping ext, and 9 times out of 10 it works fine and I don't have to download my apps again (though you do lose data, but that can be backed with titanium. If it does mess up, it's no big deal, I adb pull the apps out with a * and they're all on my computer pretty quickly so I can reinstall as necessary.

jonnythan said:
I use it, as I have and do run out of space on /data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you mean to say that even using a2sd you STILL run out of space on /data?
funcrusher said:
I have a 16 GB class 2, so I've always refrained. I'm not running out of space, but I usually decide whether or not I like an app right after I install it and if I don't like it, uninstall.
So, to answer your question...
I don't know, I'm curious myself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol, I was hoping this poll would benefit more than just myself
Like I said, I keep my app list pretty clean but 20mb as low as I've seen yet.

nebenezer said:
Do you mean to say that even using a2sd you STILL run out of space on /data?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, no, definitely not.

jonnythan said:
No, no, definitely not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ok, thanks!

I love a2sd cause I have a 8g card vs a small internal storage space on the phone. A2sd is very easy.
1. Backup your SD card on computer.
2. Root your phone if you haven't.
3. Partition your SD card via the recovery menu(I used 512mb for my ext2).
4. In the same menu at that below it change it from ext2 to ext3.
5. After complete put all of your files back on your SD card that you saved to your computer.
6. Then mostly every new 2.1 ROM has it built in now where it runs from the first bootup with no patching or user issues. Just make sure you look in the description of the ROM to make sure.
I'm running Fresh 2.0d. I just upgraded to a new 8g SD card for more music and movie storage space. So I just re-did the process. The longest part is waiting for the files to be transfered to/from the computer.

doeboy1984 said:
I love a2sd cause I have a 8g card vs a small internal storage space on the phone. A2sd is very easy.
1. Backup your SD card on computer.
2. Root your phone if you haven't.
3. Partition your SD card via the recovery menu(I used 512mb for my ext2).
4. In the same menu at that below it change it from ext2 to ext3.
5. After complete put all of your files back on your SD card that you saved to your computer.
6. Then mostly every new 2.1 ROM has it built in now where it runs from the first bootup with no patching or user issues. Just make sure you look in the description of the ROM to make sure.
I'm running Fresh 2.0d. I just upgraded to a new 8g SD card for more music and movie storage space. So I just re-did the process. The longest part is waiting for the files to be transfered to/from the computer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would skip the ext3 part if I were you, kills your sd card faster

I know some people were having so trouble with some of the ROM's cause they were in ext2 but no one was having any problems while using ext3 s thats why I posted that. To help alleviate that issue

Vrekk said:
I would skip the ext3 part if I were you, kills your sd card faster
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know why they even made this an option. I have a feeling the people implementing this have no knowledge of filesystems which is frightening....

For those of you running it:
What class cards do you have?

feld said:
I don't know why they even made this an option. I have a feeling the people implementing this have no knowledge of filesystems which is frightening....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
feld,
Care to post a brief run-down of the difference between ext2 and ext3?

funcrusher said:
For those of you running it:
What class cards do you have?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm using a class 6.

jonnythan said:
I'm using a class 6.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
See, if I had a class 6 I probably would have tried it out by now. Afraid that my class 2 will slow down apps etc. ;\

I've had no problems with a class 2 8gb.
I have a class 6 on order.

funcrusher said:
See, if I had a class 6 I probably would have tried it out by now. Afraid that my class 2 will slow down apps etc. ;\
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I doubt it, actually. The class rating only refers to the minimum write speed in an optimal situation. Read speeds seem to be decently high across the board. You'll probably never notice any difference, if there even is one.

jonnythan said:
I doubt it, actually. The class rating only refers to the minimum write speed in an optimal situation. Read speeds seem to be decently high across the board. You'll probably never notice any difference, if there even is one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah? What do you think about the 2.5 version or whatever that moves your dalvik over as well?

[Q] Updated to Froyo, Now 6 Gigs of music/pictures gone?

Also, my alarm clock isn't working. Any ways that you could think of to get around it? It doesn't even scan the media card when disconnecting from the USB.

Plug your micro sd card from your phone to a Mac or a PC via a card reader and verify it still contains your data. If it doesn't, you might have lost the data during the process.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

Yep, this is one of the reasons the update was halted.
http://community.sprint.com/baw/thread/62961?tstart=0

Man, well Im fortunate to have read some of everyones posts before updating, Looking forward to the "stable" update release.

LOL.. Samsung's OTA bricked Intercepts, now they're wiping/not seeing SD cards.
Odin FTW.

I lost 4 gigs of photos when I upgraded to dk28 in december.
A google search back then lead me to believe this was a somewhat common, but cause unknown, android problem.

lazyart said:
LOL.. Samsung's OTA bricked Intercepts, now they're wiping/not seeing SD cards.
Odin FTW.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not just the OTA, they pulled the links from Sammy's site also.

I went to the sprint store today... Turns out it was a pretty easy fix, but I have to reinstall launcherpro and everything. We'll see how I like it in a few. Importing my contacts now

[Q] Best Stable ROM for NC?

OK, so first off I wanted to say that I love how dedicated this forum is, and as a new(er) person to all this it has helped a lot. The biggest thing is, I bought a triple-boot 32gb class 4 SD card from a company and it has the cm7 kang build on it, and an ICS build on it. I'm always having problems with it freezing and having problems with it getting market errors, everything else is flawless, (happens on both roms except nook stock rom). Also I put movies on their using a nook color handbrake option and it hangs alot, so do many other applications. I have had support from the company I bought it from on ebay, but I just want something more stable, able to play n64 roms at 100% and able to pair a sixaxis controller. I have tried various overclocking options, none of them seeming to effect the fact that it will freeze with almost five minutes of decent usage. Any help would be great thanks xda nookers!
Also: ICS is preferred simply because I have it on my SGS II on t mobile and would like it on here as well. But whatever is most stable works for me!

Sounds like you have a slow SD card, which is sad because it's 32GB . A SanDisk class 4 is best for booting off of, better explained here. But other than the SD card, I like using CM 7.2 from my SD, though I'm also fairly new to the Nook Color.

Googie2149 said:
Sounds like you have a slow SD card, which is sad because it's 32GB . A SanDisk class 4 is best for booting off of, better explained here. But other than the SD card, I like using CM 7.2 from my SD, though I'm also fairly new to the Nook Color.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How would I go about that and are their any workarounds? What sd card would you suggest so I can get the most of making this a full-fledged tablet with high speeds and overclocking etc. Sorry for the bump post, have been very busy thanks!

wierd165 said:
How would I go about that and are their any workarounds? What sd card would you suggest so I can get the most of making this a full-fledged tablet with high speeds and overclocking etc. Sorry for the bump post, have been very busy thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would not necessarily blame the SD. Who knows what those scalpers put on that SD. They ripped off something. Go to racks' triple boot and redownload his image (which is free, by the way) and start over.
Look here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=21458075

leapinlar said:
I would not necessarily blame the SD. Who knows what those scalpers put on that SD. They ripped off something. Go to racks' triple boot and redownload his image (which is free, by the way) and start over.
Look here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=21458075
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I should probably format my sd before right? (using easues or whatever its called haha just being lazy)

wierd165 said:
I should probably format my sd before right? (using easues or whatever its called haha just being lazy)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you re-burn racks' image there is no need to format first. But it would not hurt anything to go ahead and do it.

leapinlar said:
If you re-burn racks' image there is no need to format first. But it would not hurt anything to go ahead and do it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey this works great, no lag at all non-stop speed freakin sweet thanks! Whoever can close this thread now.:good:

living without a SD?

yes im asking this. im on a HTC Desire Z now with a sd card and i wanted to know if its a big difference to live with or without a SDcard. is it do-able? i cant choose bitween the s3 and nexus 4

The SD card doesn't make a difference, you just have to figure out if you can live with 8/16 GB of storage. The answer is probably yes, if you are willing to use streaming services (google music, netflix, etc.)

I personally would not be able to live with SD cards in my life. I will have to end myself soon because Dropbox and Google Drive are taking over.

Oh well...

yumcax said:
The SD card doesn't make a difference, you just have to figure out if you can live with 8/16 GB of storage. The answer is probably yes, if you are willing to use streaming services (google music, netflix, etc.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i have 32 GB now so and i have 9GB free. but google music is not available in my country (yet). does it stream your music or is it like itunes?

more threads of sdcard complaints... will it ever end?

Will u be able to transfer stuff from phone to a computer, even if u don't have a SD card
Sent from my GT540 using xda app-developers app

mohnim said:
Will u be able to transfer stuff from phone to a computer, even if u don't have a SD card
Sent from my GT540 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
of course you can, just plug the phone into your computer and it gets recognized as a mass storage device...

I think 16GB will be more than sufficient for me. If it isn't than I will just get a USB OTG cable and use the current Micro SD card that I have. I have an adapter that I can plug the SD card into that allows it to be plugged into a USB port. So effectively giving myself access to expandable SD storage
Probably won't need it, but that's my plan.

DonDizzurp said:
more threads of sdcard complaints... will it ever end?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
eh man i am not complaining

Came from a G2 (with microSD card slot) to a Gnex, I have to say I didn't miss the card even a bit. 16GB is fine since I use Google music for streaming, and that's the majority part of storage. I don't use GNex's camera that much. I have a Canon D550 and there isn't a phone camera that could produce pictures even similar in quality.
You might want to mange your space a little, like deleting unwanted backups, not having a million Titanium backups, but it's manageable.

I must admit, although I would rather have a micro-SD slot, its really not a feature I'm over worried about in terms of storage. What concerns me is whether it increases the risk of flashing roms etc to the phone. I you brick you phone, is it not going to make it more difficult to unbrick it? Or can adb always push stuff to the phone one way or another?
Also, just to confirm, you personal data stored internally (in what I assume will be called the sdcard folder) is retained each time you wipe your phone, right?

mazdarati2 said:
eh man i am not complaining
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what do you want to hear, then?
did you not see the other 25 threads on the same damn topic?
no, living without an SDcard is not doable, it is like burning in hell. dont do it or you will hang yourself within a week. okay? okay. now stfu and gtfo

DonDizzurp said:
what do you want to hear, then?
did you not see the other 25 threads on the same damn topic?
no, living without an SDcard is not doable, it is like burning in hell. dont do it or you will hang yourself within a week. okay? okay. now stfu and gtfo
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
wtf man what is your problem. You cant stand it that im not as smart as you so you are going to flame on me? dude please, grow up

G405T said:
I must admit, although I would rather have a micro-SD slot, its really not a feature I'm over worried about in terms of storage. What concerns me is whether it increases the risk of flashing roms etc to the phone. I you brick you phone, is it not going to make it more difficult to unbrick it? Or can adb always push stuff to the phone one way or another?
Also, just to confirm, you personal data stored internally (in what I assume will be called the sdcard folder) is retained each time you wipe your phone, right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
intern is not your SD

I've got a GS3 with a 32gb SD Card (as well as the internal at 16gb) and now a 16gb Nexus 7. I have to be honest and say it does bug me. If you download nightlies and make a lot of Nandroids then your going to suffer to get used to it. There is no way I would recommend an 8gb. I travel a lot on flights and that is when I really miss the storage for music and films, but I do have the phone to fall back on. That said, there are plenty of iSheep out there that don't seem to struggle and Google Drive and Google Music are awesome services. Perhaps I'm the one that should be more tolerant.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

mazdarati2 said:
yes im asking this. im on a HTC Desire Z now with a sd card and i wanted to know if its a big difference to live with or without a SDcard. is it do-able? i cant choose bitween the s3 and nexus 4
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey mazdarati2,
I came from the Droid Incredible to the Galaxy Nexus and I can tell you that having a large internal memory rather than the SD card slot is really not a big deal. At first, I thought I would miss it also, but I really wanted the Nexus. The only downside comes if you have a tendency to work with experimental/unstable ROMs, which can corrupt the filesystem on the memory and you will have to reformat and push the factory image with fastboot. When you do this, the SD memory partition gets formatted as well, which is a bummer and if you ever had any problems like that on phones with a physical SD card, you wouldn't have that problem. For the average user that doesn't use more than 8-16GB of space, it will cause no problems, in fact, it will be better because it gets rid of system confusion when saving pictures/videos/other files and then finding them when you connect to your PC. I hope this helps and sways your decision towards getting a nexus 4. It's a great phone and if you're on pre-paid, it will save you a lot of money in the long run! Good Luck!

mazdarati2 said:
intern is not your SD
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The reason I assumed 'sdcard' folder, is because the LG 4X HD, which has both sd and 16GB internal storage places all of your user files in the sdcard directory independent of whether you are using an sdcard. The actual sdcard files are stored in '/sdcard/external_sdcard' which I must admit I found slightly odd.

nschiwy said:
Hey mazdarati2,
I came from the Droid Incredible to the Galaxy Nexus and I can tell you that having a large internal memory rather than the SD card slot is really not a big deal. At first, I thought I would miss it also, but I really wanted the Nexus. The only downside comes if you have a tendency to work with experimental/unstable ROMs, which can corrupt the filesystem on the memory and you will have to reformat and push the factory image with fastboot. When you do this, the SD memory partition gets formatted as well, which is a bummer and if you ever had any problems like that on phones with a physical SD card, you wouldn't have that problem. For the average user that doesn't use more than 8-16GB of space, it will cause no problems, in fact, it will be better because it gets rid of system confusion when saving pictures/videos/other files and then finding them when you connect to your PC. I hope this helps and sways your decision towards getting a nexus 4. It's a great phone and if you're on pre-paid, it will save you a lot of money in the long run! Good Luck!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i dont think im gonna try out new ROMS. maybe only Pimp My ROM, but thats it

SUer said:
I've got a GS3 with a 32gb SD Card (as well as the internal at 16gb) and now a 16gb Nexus 7. I have to be honest and say it does bug me. If you download nightlies and make a lot of Nandroids then your going to suffer to get used to it. There is no way I would recommend an 8gb. I travel a lot on flights and that is when I really miss the storage for music and films, but I do have the phone to fall back on. That said, there are plenty of iSheep out there that don't seem to struggle and Google Drive and Google Music are awesome services. Perhaps I'm the one that should be more tolerant.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes i need to know to use Google Drive and stream apps like that. never used it

[Q] SD card compatibility issues? How to reformat?

So I have a few questions. I recently just got a Samsung Galaxy S4 Active and I have a Sandisk Ultra 32gb class 10 UHC-1 MicroSDHC card that was previously in a rooted Motorola Photon running CM10. I already wiped all the data and it is almost ready to put in the S4, I just wanted to reformat it just for the piece of mind and to restore it to out of the box condition. While I was googling how to reformat it to make sure I did it exactly right, I came across a bunch of forums on how Sandisk microSD's malfuntion and don't seem to work right in Samsung smart phones. Specifically the Galaxy line and the Note's. Has anyone experienced this problem? And is there anyone out there that has one of these cards in an S4 that actually works properly? I was so excited to gain 32 more gb of storage space on my phone, and now I'm scared =[ looks like I may have bigger problems now than just reformatting the card.
But speaking of reformatting. How do I reformat this card properly? And I also read that you should format it as exFAT? is that right? And I also read that formatting it through Windows can mess it up as Windows reformats it to work best with their system, not for phones. So is there a program anyone can recommend to use to reformat it? And could you also please give step by step instructions on how to reformat on said program. Like down to every option I should select, or shouldn't select. I want to make sure I do this exactly right and don't mess up my card. Especially with all of these horror stories I've been hearing.
Thanks =]

I haven't seen a specific thread/posts on doing this. Google didn't help much.
I would recommend, however, getting a 64gb Samsung card from Amazon. Already exFat and works perfectly. Very fast--
Samsung Electronics 64GB Pro microSDXC Extreme Speed (UHS-1) Class 10 Memory Card (MB-MGCGB/AM)
The Sandisks, some anyway, have had problems--

Ehh.. I dont really need a 64gb card and don't really want to pay extra for space I dont need. Also I'm confused about exFAT. Ive seen a lot of posts on that as well and have read thst exFAT doesn't play nice in smartphones and that the only time it's really recommended is if you're rooted and on a custom ROM, which I'm not. I just gave up on reformatting and just put it in my phone last night as-is. It was completely wiped, so good enough. I don't want to take the chance messing with any of that. So far its been fine. But from what I've read it usually doesn't strike until a few months later. For right now I will keep my photos set to save on the internal just in case and the only thing im really going to put on the card is music, which I can easily get back off the computer if the card fails. Worst comes to worst sandisk has a lifetime warrenty and I have a reciept of the purchase so if anything happens I will just buy a 32gb Samsung or go with sandisk again. Apparrently the issue was with the ultra cards manufactured before or in December 2012 (which mine was). I also can't confirm this as I only saw one person say it in one forum, and it was neither confirmed nor denied by anyone else, but I saw someone say recently, I think last month, that the most recent huge update At&t pushed fixed the problem with Sandisk cards. So hopefully thats true. I guess I will just wait and see. Lol
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using xda app-developers app

Eh. Maybe I will get a 64gb. Can't hurt to have more space. Especially with me. Lol. I'll have to look into it when/if the time comes. Thanks for the advice =] sorry, I have a bad habit of answering my own questions sometimes. Lol
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using xda app-developers app

ok, just keep a backup on pc
the exfat handles +4gb files

Galaxy_S_ said:
So I have a few questions. I recently just got a Samsung Galaxy S4 Active and I have a Sandisk Ultra 32gb class 10 UHC-1 MicroSDHC card that was previously in a rooted Motorola Photon running CM10. I already wiped all the data and it is almost ready to put in the S4, I just wanted to reformat it just for the piece of mind and to restore it to out of the box condition. While I was googling how to reformat it to make sure I did it exactly right, I came across a bunch of forums on how Sandisk microSD's malfuntion and don't seem to work right in Samsung smart phones. Specifically the Galaxy line and the Note's. Has anyone experienced this problem? And is there anyone out there that has one of these cards in an S4 that actually works properly? I was so excited to gain 32 more gb of storage space on my phone, and now I'm scared =[ looks like I may have bigger problems now than just reformatting the card.
But speaking of reformatting. How do I reformat this card properly? And I also read that you should format it as exFAT? is that right? And I also read that formatting it through Windows can mess it up as Windows reformats it to work best with their system, not for phones. So is there a program anyone can recommend to use to reformat it? And could you also please give step by step instructions on how to reformat on said program. Like down to every option I should select, or shouldn't select. I want to make sure I do this exactly right and don't mess up my card. Especially with all of these horror stories I've been hearing.
Thanks =]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As an update I have seen it mentioned to take card out of phone and put in card reader. Then plug into pc, right click and your will have your format choices. Also, there are Formatter programs to dl from web too. Been so long since I did that--kinda forgot--lol

I have recently reformatted my 32 gig card to exfat. Only been a week but no problems so far. Why did I? Because I down load movies that are over 4 gig on accasion. Plain fat doesn't let you store more than 4 gig. Hope that helps. Took me a while to figure out why my file transfers kept falling.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk 2