My G2 with Cyanogen 6.1.1 is still only showing 1.28gb internal memory, does that mean the stock crap is still locked up somewhere? I really hate how they advertised it when it was never available in the first place
theratdude64 said:
My G2 with Cyanogen 6.1.1 is still only showing 1.28gb internal memory, does that mean the stock crap is still locked up somewhere? I really hate how they advertised it when it was never available in the first place
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This is from the HTC Vision Wiki about the memory,
The Missing 2GB
11-12-10: The following is our best understanding of the issue at-present. Scotty2 says this is "99.9%" the issue and "the only explanation that makes sense."
What Missing 2GB?
Although marketing from T-Mobile claim the phone contains 4GB of internal storage (not including the removable micro-SD card), once the phone was released, users quickly noticed that only ~2GB appears to exist.
Several theories for the "missing" flash memory storage were proposed, including a possible "shadow" installation of the operating system being hidden somewhere, as well as a possible 2GB limitation of the card when in "byte" rather than "sector" mode. Still a third theory proposed that perhaps the extra 2GB were somewhere outside the normal block device where the Android kernel's flash controller couldn't find it.
Apparently, none of these theories were correct.
So where is the missing 2GB?
To answer this, it is first necessary to understand a bit about how internal flash cards, such as the Sandisk card (also known as an "emmc") on the HTC Vision, store information.
Luckily, Sandisk has provided a helpful video. Pay particular attention to the discussion of SLC (single-level cell) and MLC (multi-level cell) in Chapter 5.
In an SLC configuration, a single bit is packed into each memory cell. In a multi-level cell, you can fit 2, 3, 4 or more bits in each cell. You get a lot of capacity with more bits per cell, but at the expense of speed and reliability.
In trying to figure out where the missing 2gb went, scotty2 noticed that most of the Sandisk card's block device (that is, the part with Android on it) had been partitioned within the regular "User Data Area" as an "Enhanced User Data Area".
Note that when we talk about partitioning the emmc, we're not talking about regular MBR partitions like /dev/whatever. An emmc partition is a very low-level partition of the flash. Each emmc partition constitutes a full block device, which can then be further partitioned into a bootloader, /system, /data, etc.
The card's datasheet wasn't too clear about what the "Enhanced User Data Area" did that was so different from the regular User Data Area, although one thing was clear-- once its parameters was set, you couldn't "un-set" it. To quote the datasheet, the Enhanced User Data Area "can be programmed only once during the device life-cycle (one-time programmable)."
But why was the entire Sandisk partitioned in this special "Enhanced" User Data area? No one knew.
Then tmzt found this. It's an article by Toshiba that suggests what's going on:
Those areas requiring better reliability are SLC or can be programmed as SLC. . . the Enhanced User Data Area, which may store, for example, system log files, are SLC. The User Data Area, which may store music, pictures, videos and other files is MLC. . . Each 1 bit configured as SLC results in 2 bits less of MLC. Theoretically an 8GB e-MMC device (densities are defined in MLC terms), could be configured virtually all as SLC and thus would be approximately 4GB. In most cases, it is more likely that the majority of the memory would be configured as MLC to support higher density.
You've probably figured out by now what's likely happened here. Assuming the Sandisk emmc works like Toshiba's, the 4GB flash has probably been, save for a few tiny partitions such as the radio, irreversibly configured to use SLC, rather than MLC. If so, the benefit is faster performance and perhaps greater stability (and more read/write cycles). But its capacity/density would be cut in half.
And that, my friends, may very well be where your 2GB has gone.
So To Conclude...
Assuming the above is a correct understanding of the issue, the following appears to be the case:
The HTC vision has a 4GB firmware card
It has been irreversibly partitioned to use a faster/more reliable configuration called SLC
This has resulted in a practical capacity/density of ~2GB
Update: Initial investigations from over a month ago reported that T-Mobile attributed this issue to "creative partitioning": ("I called into T-Mobile Android support and was assured this number is correct, and that I do have the full 4GB storage on-board... there's just some "creative partitioning" going on.") This may correlate with the explanation provided above.
Update 12/6/10: A more technical discussion of this (with pictures) is here.
heres the link:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/index.php?title=HTC_Vision#Rooting_the_G2
interesting
Well that is something to think about......
Related
I've been watching, reading, and doing my own research on the subject.
Here is my conclusion. Curious to see if you run into the same:
1) There were a bad batch of 16gb class 2 micro sdhc cards that were replaced by T-Mobile.
2) The micro sdhc cards were CLASS 2.
3) On the original stock ROM had \storage card\application data\htc data stored on the card. As of the new ROM, that data is officially stored on the phone memory. I know this because I sync my sdhc card to my home PC using ViceVersa and haven't had a single file in that directory change since the ROM upgrade.
4) I've never had any freeze issues, but that's because I have a 16gb CLASS 6 sdhc card that moved everything to and don't have the speed/reliability issues that others may have experienced because of #1 and #2.
I have no idea what the data is that was being pushed to the card in the old ROM, but I believe that T-Mobile recognized issues with pushing data to a card where it may not get mounted quick enough on boot, has speed issues (class 2), as well as having a possible bad shipment of cards.
I also believe that depending on the above scenario, T-Mobile may have been blindly replacing "bad" cards as a fix when in reality, it was more of an issue with the speed of the card and/or possibly the card not getting mounted quick enough on system boot causing stability issues.
I would challenge anybody with the original ROM to pull their SD cards for 24-48 hours and I bet your freeze issues go away, unless you actually do have a bad SD card.
On that same note, that would explain why a custom ROM would fix the problem, because chef's weren't configuring their ROM's to cache any data to an SD card.
Bottom line, it wouldn't matter if you installed anything to the card or not. Because the original ROM was configured to write to the SD card if it found one, you would "potentially" have freeze issues with a bad or slow card, no matter what.
Sorry if this is redundant, but I've seen everybody making conclusions on bits and pieces of the information, but not with the entire picture I painted. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong. You decide.
=)
Update:
After finally deleting the \storage card\application data folder, the files did come back. Does anybody know what these are? I'd like to get those to point back to the phone memory personally. I don't like anything on the external card, other then what I say should be there.
Am I crazy? Kies wont recognize my phone in either of the two USB modes. I use Kies for my Captivate and its quite handy. Im really upset with this phone so far between the whole Bing thing, the lack of an internal SD card, possibly no Kies connection, no TV out, and a few other things that are bugging me. I was hoping that there was more similarity between the Captivate, Fascinate, and Vibrant, but apparently there are a few very major differences...
~T.J.
Ongoing issue. I doubt it will be fixed, but one can hope. It works with PC suite software.
02CWRX said:
Am I crazy? Kies wont recognize my phone in either of the two USB modes. I use Kies for my Captivate and its quite handy. Im really upset with this phone so far between the whole Bing thing, the lack of an internal SD card, possibly no Kies connection, no TV out, and a few other things that are bugging me. I was hoping that there was more similarity between the Captivate, Fascinate, and Vibrant, but apparently there are a few very major differences...
~T.J.
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what do you mean "no internal SD card"? the SD card it inside the battery cover. as for the TV out, it seems to be a software issue and from what i have seen it may be fixed when the 2.2 update comes out.
jatilq, how would one get the PC suite software that works with the Fascinate? I've spent the better part of 2 days trying to get Kies to work with no luck whatsoever.
Mylt1 said:
what do you mean "no internal SD card"? the SD card it inside the battery cover. as for the TV out, it seems to be a software issue and from what i have seen it may be fixed when the 2.2 update comes out.
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On the Captivate there is an "internal SD card" (not accessible by the user), as well as the external SD card slot which the user can fill with a card of his/her choice.
On the Captivate, this boils down to 2 GB of "Internal Phone Storage", 16 GB of "Internal SD card" space (13 GB usable), and however large of an SD card you put in it for "External SD card" space. Thus, a 16 GB card will net you 32 GB of total available storage space on the phone.
On the Fascinate, you have 2 GB of "Internal Phone Storage", and the "External SD Card" of your choice (ships with 16 GB). Thus, the 16 GB card it ships with nets you only 16 GB of total available storage space on the phone, as opposed to the 32 GB the same size card would get you on the Captivate.
~T.J.
EDIT: Here is a quick Google (not Bing...) image search of the phone storage menu from a Captivate. Notice this whole menu is the internal card. If you scrolled up, above it is the menu for the external card which looks identical. The available internal phone memory is only 700 MB because of the user, when new this is 1.74 GB or so just like the Fascinate.
http://media.tested.com/uploads/0/3/10454-screenshot_super.png
EDIT AGAIN: It looks like the Vibrant is also setup the same as the Captivate. Way to go VZ...
Durangodude said:
jatilq, how would one get the PC suite software that works with the Fascinate? I've spent the better part of 2 days trying to get Kies to work with no luck whatsoever.
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Yes, i'm curious what the PC suite software is. I have a few employees that have fascinates and we're trying to figure out how to sync the fascinate with Outlook for contacts and calendar. I have a Captivate and use Kies.
Some here may have different opinions, but I personally will accept the lack of the on-board storage chip, knowing that I have a flash for my camera. They probably figured the camera flash was a more worthwhile feature to most people, and cut the on-board storage as a compromise to keep costs down.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App
Oh, and BTW, I believe I remember seeing an official statement from Samsung somewhere, stating that Kies updates are only intended for the GT-i9000, and should not be applied to the US Galaxy S variants. I don't have a link to the source handy though, sorry.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App
it would appear, that on aggregate from other forums as well as my own install attempts, that the SCH-I500 is NOT compatible with kies.
all driver issues have been worked out, USB modes understood and adjusted, and now it just says "not supported".
latest versions, appropriate permissions, reboots, etc... it's not going to happen.
the galaxy S phones really are in no-mans-land. even the manufacturer won't support it, which is really odd, I thought it was well received across multiple carriers.
It's not quite as daft as it sounds this. When I briefly had a S5 and was trying to speed the thing up I ran a tester app which showed my SD card was capable of faster data transfers than "internal SD." Now I don't know if the note 3 has the same sort of setup but would an app be slower on the external SD as you'd expect, or if there's an advantage to moving stuff to SD aside from making more room for stuff.
joebongo said:
It's not quite as daft as it sounds this. When I briefly had a S5 and was trying to speed the thing up I ran a tester app which showed my SD card was capable of faster data transfers than "internal SD." Now I don't know if the note 3 has the same sort of setup but would an app be slower on the external SD as you'd expect, or if there's an advantage to moving stuff to SD aside from making more room for stuff.
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It's generally faster on internal memory due to the lag of retrieval from external but not sure now with these new high speed cards. Would depend if the hardware on the Note 3 has the ability to utilise the actual speed of the sd card and the type of formatting the sd card has....
Hi guys,
my girlfriend's Lumia 800 got run over by a car and the mainboard broke apart. There is very precious data on the internal flash memory and I am searching for a possibility to save the data.
My Idea is, to move the flash memory to another Lumia 800.
My question is, if I was able to remove, reball and place the chip correctly to the new Lumia, would the data be accessible or is the data only accessible by the original combination of processor, IMEI and memory chip?
Please excuse my poor english.
bye
Kravudin
Did you obtain an answer because i have the same problem ?
Thank you for your answer.
1.May be your device is protected by FDE (full disk encryption), If it is protected, there is no way to access your data except original device is provided
2.If there is not a FDE protection, you could not access your data by moving the eMMc to other devices, because the IMEI and other IDs are not matched (but may be it works, you know the eMMc issue on samsung galaxy S3? After replacing a eMMc with system but without IMEI information, the cellphone still works, but could not call or send SMS before using a specail software to write correct IMEI)
Worth to try, but there are risks
Z3x or atf box. Remove emmc from board or soldering isp and read full dump. After that extract data. Photo, video, contacts.
Moving to another Lumia might, or might not work, asides from being extremely difficult, and possibly damaging for the memory.
I'd try to unsolder it and hook it up with SD memory reader, using really thin wires. eMMC chip can be actually read by most of SD card readers, when connected properly, through reduced interface.
Or actually I'd ask someone experienced to do it, if it was really important data. There are companies out there that specialize in exactly such things.
Lookup data recovery company around. Ask them for pricing (it certainly won't be cheap), and then decide if you want them to do it, or give it a try yourself.
Here's an example how it can be hooked up:
http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G135393511084
http://forum.odroid.com/download/file.php?id=1036&mode=view
And yeah. You won't be able to read a thing if it's encrypted with a hardware key.
Hello all,
Used to be on here for about 10 years but now I don't have access to my old email so I'm back to being a newbie. I feel like one too since the last device I rooted was a HTC HD2. Those were the days... LOL I've been a longtime Windows guy since 6.1 and before and have followed the progress through 7, 8, 8.1 & 10 as an insider but I think it's time to start looking at Android again.
Anyway, saw this really great deal on Amazon for the Idol 5S and since I was already using an Idol 4S with Windows, I thought I'd give it a go. Especially for $211 it seemed like a pretty good deal to me. Now the first annoying thing is really why the price was so good and that's the Amazon Prime ads on the lock screen. No way to get rid of them. They've obviously rooted the phone already and taken away any developer options and that's what I was looking for when it brought me back to XDA.
My problem is that I have an SD card installed, I made sure to format it and it functions as you'd expect with one exception. When I connect to my PC via PTP (Win10 latest insider build), I see internal storage but not the SD card. If I change to MTP use for the USB, I get nothing at all just a charge. I've installed the correct drivers in Windows so I don't see why this should be an issue unless something has changed these days with you having no external access to the SD card? I was thinking of checking USB debug mode to make sure that was off but like I said, no developer options are available.
That brings me to my question (Dumb or not), anyone got any ideas? Is my new newbie status just making me blind? I guess there is no way to root this device yet until some clever dev comes up with a way but if anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears. thanks in advance and have a great day! :good:
There are no dumb questions (as long as there are no sticky threads that already contain the answer ).
Are you using the SD card as an external storage or is it recognized by your phone as part of the internal storage (c.f. settings->storage)? The latter is an optional feature that got introduced with android M. Neither your phone nor your PC will distinguish between the phones internal storage and the SD card if you use this option.
You need to be aware that your SD card gets encrypted if you decide to use that feature and that only your phone is able to decrypt the data that is stored on the card. In other words if your phone dies due to whichever reason then you won't be able to recover the data on your card. In addition, the internal storage of nowadays smartphones is quite fast (in regard to its read/write speed). Most of the SD cards on the market aren't (in comparison to the internal storage's speed). This means that integrating an SD card to your internal storage slows your phone down.
Flippy498 said:
There are no dumb questions (as long as there are no sticky threads that already contain the answer ).
Are you using the SD card as an external storage or is it recognized by your phone as part of the internal storage (c.f. settings->storage)? The latter is an optional feature that got introduced with android M. Neither your phone nor your PC will distinguish between the phones internal storage and the SD card if you use this option.
You need to be aware that your SD card gets encrypted if you decide to use that feature and that only your phone is able to decrypt the data that is stored on the card. In other words if your phone dies due to whichever reason then you won't be able to recover the data on your card. In addition, the internal storage of nowadays smartphones is quite fast (in regard to its read/write speed). Most of the SD cards on the market aren't (in comparison to the internal storage's speed). This means that integrating an SD card to your internal storage slows your phone down.
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Thanks for the reply Flippy. I've tried to format the SD both ways. First as external storage and secondly as internal storage. Either way I do it, it is not showing up in Windows file explorer as expected. I see internal storage being the actual phone with no problem but no go on the SD card. It's a strange problem that I've never run across before. I've read that this may occur if USB debugging is on but since this is a pre-rooted phone by Amazon, I am unable to confirm if this is the case or not since there are no developer options or ways to get to USB debugging. They are omitted from the settings menu. I guess you get what you pay for buying from Amazon but I will hold out hope that the price and build quality will make this phone popular and some clever dev will find a way to root it so I can flash it with a new build without the limitations.
With regard to the build, it's very nice. All aluminum bezel, beautiful design. Responsive and snappy and a perfect form factor with it's size. I like it so far but I would say that I am looking forward to making it my own...
Thanks again for your response.
I need root my phone
[email protected] said:
I need root my phone
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I'm wondering if this phone will be rootable? Seems Google is making it harder with Nougat.