Here's what I have discovered, on froyo and above you have the abillity to do app2sd which puts part of the apps data to sd card, this is not available for all apps either, this is great if you are stock rom (NO EXT) limited internal space and upto 32GB of SD disk space.
While playing around and learning about rooted phones, I have just started using darktremors a2sd, this extends/tricks the phone into thinking its got more internal storage.
The apps2sd is different to a2sd, if you use apps2sd then you will use more sd space, you have already partitioned a space for a2sd (ext) which is using sd space, when you install apps they go into ext partition or inernal space if ext is full, but if you do apps2sd it uses the ext plus the sd drive section aswell, IMHO waisting space.
Your lucky that either of yours works. Mine stopped. I called HTC and Bell. Nothing they can do. That's bad product support.
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it says not enough memory.is it same for you too?
I haven't had this on the SGS2 as it has 16GB of internal memory but if you're having trouble then download something like this which will allow you to move all apps to sd.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.a0soft.gphone.app2sd&feature=search_result
Failing that use the ADB script that is floating around on the forum.
Just make sure you don't move widgets or live wallpapers to the SD card or they won't work at startup.
app2sd didnt work.it is still same.and when i checked my phones storage it shows:
total space: 11.50gb
why not 16gb?
Some space is reserved for System data, some space is reserved for Personal data, and some space is reserved for Application data, so you only end up with about 11GB of usable space. I know this to be the case for the Tab so I presume it'll be the same for the SGS2.
I also believe you need root access to use stuff like app2sd?
cCeT said:
total space: 11.50gb
why not 16gb?
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Click to collapse
Because there is space reserved for the ROM/OS and for Apps. 11.50GB is the internal SD. You also have about 2GB of space for apps. And some space is for the OS I believe.
i see.maybe that not enough error because of,system doesnt see the 11gb phone storage as an external storage and it means you dont have an sdcard so you dont have enough space?
I don't have an SGS2, but as I believe it is pretty much the same as the SGS1 which I do have.
apps2SD is for moving apps to a removable SD card. If you don't have an SD card in how do you expect to move to it?
The internal SD card is partitioned into several drives, for the rom, cache and includes a 2GB drive for installing applications to. After this it has about 11.5GB left for personal use, eg music, pictures, whatever. None of these partitions are considered the external SD.
Personally, I have never found a need to actually use apps2sd on the original and I can't see much need on the S2.
Clear your doubts guys!!!
Ok, so here's the deal, in a very longwinded way that should hopefully explain everything and answer ALL questions.
You have an SD card in your phone and, a bit like normal PC Hard Drives, you can "partition" them (split them into two or more sections of different filesystems). Normally, your SD card is just one big FAT32 partition, which is fine for storing your pics, messages, emails, etc.
Now, other then your Phone's SD card, your phone will have its own internal flash memory (or "NAND") storage. Tradditionally with Android, you could only install applications to this NAND storage, you cannot install them onto your SD card. So if you have an empty 32GB SD card, but only 5Mb of internal phone storage, you still wont be able to install many apps, if any at all.
This was done to protect the apps from things like piracy - it's not easy to access the location where apps are installed on your phone's internal storage (normally impossible without root), so you can't for example buy an app, copy it, refund it, then install it again.
Still, this is no good for those of us who like to install lots and lots of apps, legitimately, as we run out of internal storage very quickly.
So Google came up with a way to install apps to the SD card. A folder is created called something like .android_secure and this stores (I believe) encrypted versions of applications, but there's a few catches:
1) Apps aren't automatically stored here, you have to manually "move" them
2) Not all apps are capable of being moved, in fact most apps aren't, the developer needs to update their app and allow it. Some apps aren't and wont be updated and some developers may not want to allow it for whatever reason.
3) Not all app data is moved, most of it is but some data is left on your phone so many people still run out of internal storage quickly.
4) You can force ALL apps to be moved to this area by default, but it breaks incompatible ones - such as Widgets, which are unable to load due to the SD card not being "prepared".
So that's Froyo's version. Before Froyo existed, some very clever people came up with a thing called "Apps2SD". Remember I said that your SD card normally is one big FAT32 partition? Well, Apps2SD works by having your SD card patitioned into TWO filesystems. A normal FAT32 partition for your usual stuff and a secondary "EXT" partition. EXT is just a filesystem, like FAT32 or NTFS, but it's the filesystem used by Android internally. The SD card is normally FAT32 because it's a "universal" filesystem, that just about any machine will be able to read, whereas EXT filesystems are generally Linux only, but I digress.
EXT has several different versions. The most common one you'll see is ext3. The main difference between ext2 and ext3 is "journaling", which is just a fancy way of saying that should an operation (such as copying, writing or reading) be interrupted unexpectedly (say, by you turning your phone off), then no data should be lost or corrupted. You know how when you turn your phone on, it says "preparing SD card"? It takes a few minutes, but what it's actually doing is checking that the FAT32 partition hasn't been damaged, because FAT does NOT have journaling. If you used a computer back in the Windows 98 days, you may remember that lovely blue "Scandisk" screen that had to run every time you didn't shut your computer down correctly - that's the same thing. But then Windows 2000/XP came along with NTFS, which also has journaling, meaning you had less chance of loosing data. But I digress once more.
So you have your SD card partitioned into EXT and FAT32. Generally it doesn't matter if it's ext3 or ext4, but you don't get any real advantage with ext4 over ext3 in this instance. Apps2SD then runs a special script on your phone which "symbolically links" the folder from your phone's internal storage where your apps are normally stored, to the ext partition on your SD card. A symbolic link is a bit like a shortcut for folders, except it's transparent to the OS: In other words, Android doesn't know that when it's installing it's apps to the internal phone storage, it's actually being stored on the SD card. This effectively boosts your internal phone memory from the previous 5mb that you had in my example above, up to whatever size you made the ext partition on your SD card (often 512Mb or 1Gb, but it depends on how many apps you install).
Plus, because it's "journaled", it doesn't need to be "prepared", meaning it's ready to go as soon as the phone starts - so your widgets and apps work immediately (unlike "forced" Froyo Apps2SD, where widgets disappear).
The catch with Apps2SD is that whatever space the ext partition takes up is taken away from the SD card. So if you have a 4Gb card (with something like 3.5Gb of actual storage) and you make a 512Mb ext partition, your SD card will "shrink" to 3Gb. The space isn't actually lost, it's just being used by the ext partition. If you reformat your card, you'll get it back.
Finally, there's a difference between "Apps2SD" and "Apps2SD+". Remember I said that your apps are stored on a special folder inside your Phone's NAND storage? Well, that was a bit of a lie. It's actually stored in TWO places. There's a second area which is called the Davlik Cache. You don't really need to worry about what this is for (Hint: IT's to do with the Java runetime your phone uses to run apps), all you need to know is that apps use it to store data, which also eats up internal phone memory. Apps2SD+ moves davlik cache to the ext partition on your SD card as well, freeing up even more space. Some people believe that this may come at the cost of performance, as the internal NAND memory should be faster than your SD card (Which is why you also get people arguing over which "class" SD card is better for Apps2SD - the logic being that a faster SD card means less impact from this move), but the truth of the matter is that your applications will be running from your Phone's RAM anyway, so performance isn't really impacted at all. Since most apps are only a few hundred Kb's in size, or a couple of MB at the most, it's a non-issue.
Finally, any recent version of Apps2SD/Apps2SD+ should work with an SD card that is or isn't formatted with an ext partition. It'll check for this partition when your phone first boots and if it's not there, just use internal phone storage.
Having an ext partition WITHOUT Apps2SD+ shouldn't cause any issues, either, so you can format your SD card whenever you're ready.
So in summary:
Apps2SD "fakes" your phone's internal memory and puts it all on a hidden section of your SD card.
Apps2SD+ pushes even more content to the SD card, freeing up even more space on the phone itself.
"Froyo" Apps2SD has various limitations that "old" apps2SD does not, but is much easier to handle as it doesn't involve any kind of "partitioning".
I installed Kyrillos Rom v1.0 and partioned my formatted SD Card in CWM with 1024m for ext3 and 256 for swap. But booted into the OS and there's no extra RAM and it shows no extra storage.
And if I then install an application it still takes up phone memory, and using app2sd to move it to SD Card still puts it on my main SD Partition.
The only thing that changed is now when I remove the SD Card the phone crashes.
Install titanium backup and look for sdcard(app2sd), you will see the extra space..
Kyrillos uses app2sd v2 which doesn't totaly transfer all data to sd ext, a part of internal memory will always be used.. don't worry it wont get full till you indtal ~150 apps
Rapier07 said:
Install titanium backup and look for sdcard(app2sd), you will see the extra space..
Kyrillos uses app2sd v2 which doesn't totaly transfer all data to sd ext, a part of internal memory will always be used.. don't worry it wont get full till you indtal ~150 apps
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Click to collapse
To get apps on the ext3 partition, do I have to use the app2sd app and move apps to SD? Or do I just download like normal and they get put on that partition?
in fact, it hided,you can use R.E. explore or TIback to show swap and app2sd area.
Okay this is strange. Titanium backup is showing an app2sd partition even when I take out my sd card ...
Hello Guys
I would like to know that if my SD Card 16GB has partition into 2 primary drive - FAT32, EXT3; and my android system is running on FAT32 partition, can I run the Link2SD to put all apps into EXT3 partition?
I try it and it shows the manual of the mounting partition. However, it shows the error message of mounting /dev/block/vold/179:2 on /data/sdext2 failed. I would like to use it even it is in SD version of Android so that I can minimize the usage of internal ROM. I use the traditional App2SD and the memory is gradually reduced when I install new apps.
Thanks
Wilson Fung said:
Hello Guys
I would like to know that if my SD Card 16GB has partition into 2 primary drive - FAT32, EXT3; and my android system is running on FAT32 partition, can I run the Link2SD to put all apps into EXT3 partition?
I try it and it shows the manual of the mounting partition. However, it shows the error message of mounting /dev/block/vold/179:2 on /data/sdext2 failed. I would like to use it even it is in SD version of Android so that I can minimize the usage of internal ROM. I use the traditional App2SD and the memory is gradually reduced when I install new apps.
Thanks
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Click to collapse
SD Android uses no ROM. The applications are stored on what is read by the system as 'internal storage' but is actually a data.img file which is normally 1gb, therefore you already have 1gb of your SD card dedicated to storage of apps. I don't know if you still would like A2SD despite this, but I thought this would probably influence your decision.
Nigeldg said:
SD Android uses no ROM. The applications are stored on what is read by the system as 'internal storage' but is actually a data.img file which is normally 1gb, therefore you already have 1gb of your SD card dedicated to storage of apps. I don't know if you still would like A2SD despite this, but I thought this would probably influence your decision.
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Thanks for your reply. When downloading apps, Android will treat it storage at the internal storage, that is, the memory reduces very fast. Using App2SD will help to show higher memory storage, which is similar to NAndroid. However, the memory is still lowered as it seems to move the apps only to outside, keeping data internally. Therefore, it can download up to 60-70 apps, but it is impossible to store like 200apps. Link2SD could solve it, but I cannot link to EXT3 after using it. Any suggestion on it?
I want to use app data from sd card (since internal memory is just 4.2 gb including application storage and data as well) what should i do, Am i suppose to do swapping ?? or some thing else?? kindly help..
I'm not sure what you mean, but if you're running low on internal storage, here's what I did for a fix:
First, apply one of the myriad of options for allowing any app to read/write the external SD.
Get the xinternalsd xposed module.
Tell it to make everything point to the external uSD card.
Then move everything from the internal emulated SD card to the external.
That will probably clear up a ton of space.
If you're still running low, clean up the app caches. If you really have 4GB of apps and data on internal storage, 1GB is probably caches.
ahmadmemon said:
I want to use app data from sd card (since internal memory is just 4.2 gb including application storage and data as well) what should i do, Am i suppose to do swapping ?? or some thing else?? kindly help..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you rooted? do you have a large SD Card which you do not swap out?
On my previous phone it only had 420MB of user space for apps. I created a 2GB EXT4 partition (could of been 32GB on my 64GB card if I wanted), then used Int2EXT system to move all the apps to the partition on the SD.
See: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1716124
Apps2SD (on the Market) performs the same thing, with a front end