I recently purchased a 16GB (class 2, dont care too much about speed, and it was only $30) SD card to replace my old 4GB one. I ran into some problems trying to transfer all of my apps over to the new card (Apps2SD obviously). Heres my setup and what I did so far:
MT3G (duh), Red (it makes it faster, I swear!)
CM 4.2.15.1
RA-magic-v1.2.3G
The process so far:
- Backed up the contents of the SD card to my PC (Win 7)
- adb pull /system/app (desktop folder)
- nandroid backup
- remove 4GB and insert 16GB
- partition, swap, ext2 (recovery)
- convert ext2 to ext3 (recovery)
- reboot phone
- adb push [desktop folder] /system/app
- copy SD contents back to main partition. Reboot.
At this point I assumed the system would recognize the ext3 partition with all of the same apps on it. The pull/push went without a hitch. When I rebooted most of my apps didnt work, and only the on-phone apps showed up in the tray. Obviously it isnt ready the ext3 partition.
- Reboot to recovery. Run uid mismatches. Reboot.
Still no luck. I then accidentally ran an old restore point that did not get transferred over to the new card as I did nandroid after I backed up the files to PC. This didnt seem to change anything, as it was already broken.
- Re-insert 4GB. Copy nandroid backup to 16GB. Apply restore to 16GB. No help.
- Re-insert 4GB and restore to latest backup (step 3).
Everything is STILL broken. The apps dont work just like the 16GB card. NOTHING on the card has been changed, only copied to/from. The original ext3 partition is still as it was, and I erased no data from it in this process.
This is the point I am at right now. I cannot understand where I went wrong. I did some searching on the forums and couldnt find anything that could help this. I wanted to start a new thread because I'm really baffled at why it broke the functionality of my 4GB card as well.
Do I need to just install the rom fresh with the new card and reinstall all of the apps from scratch? I have quite a few apps, and the default 500MB partition is definitely getting its usage.
Thanks in advance for any help/tips you can provide!!
Answered this a couple of days ago and it worked for him.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=6283301
So this was solved by using a tool from sdcard.org to format my sdcard in a PC. Once formatted with that tool cwm started seeing correctly.
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I'm running 3.1 rooted
I've flashed Thor's 1.4.2 recovery.
I have two sd cards: a 2g and an 8g.
Both work when accessed on a PC and on the iconia.
Neither work in cwm so I can't flash any roms.
I have tried formatting the sdcards on two different PCs. for the 2g I tried both fat and fat32. The 8g is fat32. In every case cwm says it can't mount it.
Additionally, I can't seem to use a USB key, although that may be that i don't know how to use it.
Thanks for any help.
-Bert
When in CWM and you go to install zip from sdcard do you see any folders where you choose the zip. Just wondering if it isn't mounted already. Physical sdcard is in /mnt/external_sd
and not /mnt/sdcard.
PsychosisNC said:
When in CWM and you go to install zip from sdcard do you see any folders where you choose the zip. Just wondering if it isn't mounted already. Physical sdcard is in /mnt/external_sd
and not /mnt/sdcard.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your reply. I'm prety sure It's not mounted already.
I'm attaching a screenshot to show the exact message I get when trying to browse for a zip. I get a similar message when I go to mounts and storage and try to mount the sdcard.
im bumping this because I'm really becoming concerned that the device is defective in some way.
I'm hoping that someone can give me some guidence on what I may be doing wrong.
So, brosell, did you figure out a solution? I have the exact same problem - cannot mount sdcard in recovery and I get the exact same message.
When the system is booted normally, the internal storage mounts ok as /sdcard
EDIT:
It seems CWM treats the external sdcard as /sdcard, not the internal storage. So, to flash an update, you need to place it on an external SD card
I always get that error, and I never had to mount anything using cwm, just booted it selected the zip to flash and flash. I still don't mount anything...?
And the zip goes on the external sd not the inturn
Can't format SC Card in Window. If won't mount.
Guys,
Unfortunately SD cards for Android must be formatted by Android. If the card is not properly formatted CWM can not mount it, nor can CWM format it. The best way to get it properly formatted is to put it into an Android Phone and use its format functions. There really is no way on the Icona Tab to reformat an improperly formatted card or a new formatted card. If you don't have an Android phone borrow a friends. You will know that it is properly formatted when you see a lost files folder created on the card by the Android phone formatting process. This is a common problem that many people encounter when performing their first ROM flash. If it was formatted under windows as FAT 32 you can access it and store on it in normal operation mode. But ClockWorkMod can not mount it in recovery mode. Hope this helps. Good luck.
Can mount SD card in Recovery
I should have also mentioned last night in my post here, that my experience has been that it is much easier to flash a new custom ROM from a USB thumb drive. Flashing a custom ROM from USB seems to be less problematic than from an SDCard that appears otherwise to be good and formatted with FAT32, but CWM can't mount it. You can fast format the thumb drive on Windows to clean it off. Then copy your custom .zip ROM to be flashed on to the thumb drive from within Windows then insert it into the USB port of your Icona Tab, boot into CWM recovery (I'm assuming you know how to do that so I won't go into it here.) I forget exactly where in the CWM menu it is, it might be under the CWM advanced sub-menu but it say's something to the effect of Install zip from USB. It always works for me with no problem. The advantage is that you do all your prep work on Windows and then flash from the thumb drive which I believe has an ISO standard across all platforms and usually comes already per-formatted. This is an alternative method if you can't get your SDCard properly formatted (see my previous post in this thread for how to get it properly formatted so that it will mount under CWM.) Again, good luck!
I want to cry!!
I tried re formatting! Nothing! Cmw is not on sd card! Nothing is working! Still stuck on acer start screen! Yes i am a noob! But i read alot into this stuff b4 i do it! I wish there was someone i can have come to my house and do this for me! I have tried everything!!!!!!!!!!! So frustrated!!! Someone pls help me!!!!
in CWM recovery, there are 2 options,sd and "internal sd" i think(for me atleast). i chose the internal sd and it mounts.
brosell said:
So this was solved by using a tool from sdcard.org to format my sdcard in a PC. Once formatted with that tool cwm started seeing correctly.
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-Bert
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank You Sir! been looking for this fix for a long time
brosell said:
So this was solved by using a tool from sdcard.org to format my sdcard in a PC. Once formatted with that tool cwm started seeing correctly.
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/QUOTE]
thanks brosell, for the solution,
I have a 512MB SD card in the g5360, was FAT formatted. reformatting the sdcard with the tool from sdcard.org worked for me as well, afterwards it could be mounted by the stock recovery
and could install update.zip (prior to install CMW)
kr, Erik
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have been looking for something like this for a while. The flipout lacks internal memory and it soon becomes a problem if you want to have a good set of apps.
Here's what you'll need:
1. Rooted Flipout (I won't post instructions to this step, look for "Universal AndRoot")
2. Partitioned SD card (see below for instructions), depending on the method, you might need a phone with CWM to do this and ADB installed on your PC.
3. Download Link2SD from Market
So here are the steps:
1. Partition your SD card. There are many ways to do it. I will post two ways:
Use MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition
My PC didn't like this tool and I wasn't able to use it. However, it should be quite easy, you just need to put your card in a card reader and build two partitions with the following characteristic:
First partition will be your main card partition, should be of the whole card size minus the extended partition you want to create
Second partition should also be fat32 (link2sd didn't like ext2 nor ext3 on the flipout, it only worked with fat32)
Use CWM. I personally didn't want to install it on the Flipout, so I used a Samsung Epic 4G for the steps. You should be able to use any phone with CWM to do it, put your SD card in the phone with CWM and boot into recovery:
adb shell reboot recovery
parted /dev/block/mmcblk0 (open partition manager for SD card)
print (prints partition table)
Here you should have one partition table, starting at some point and ending at some point like 7969 if your card has 8GB. Take note of the End value as you'll need it.
rm 1 (deletes partition 1, this will erase all data on the SD card)
mkpartfs primary fat32 0 7425 (creates a new primary partition, the second number should be the value you took note of in the last step minus the size in MB of your desired extended partition).
mkpartfs primary fat32 7425 7937 (creates the new partition for applications, starting at the end of the last partition and ending on the max size of the card. In this case I used fat32 as I couldn't do it with ext3 nor ext2, link2sd didn't like this format on the flipout for some reason).
The partitions are created and you should be able to go to the next step.
3. Reboot your flipout with the partitioned SD card, make sure to have link2sd installed.
4. Open link2sd, it will take a while, ask for root permissions (always accept and make sure to have Remember checked).
5. It will ask for the partition type, select fat32. If you are asked to reboot your phone you have everything setup, otherway please post your problem.
6. Once rebooted, open link2sd again and go to settings and configure. I don't like having all applications automatically linked as widgets and this kind of apps can fail if they are on the SD, so I have this setting unchecked. However this is a personal decision.
7. To move an app to the card, hold your finger on it and when the menu appears, press link and confirm.
8. To move an app from the card to the phone, hold on it and press unlink, check everything and wait for the app to be returned.
Further Tips:
Avoid moving apps to the SD that are use widgets or that run all the time like: messenger apps, alarm clocks, climate widgets, etc. I tried one or two without any failure but I feel they could be less reliable this way.
Don't remove your SD card if the phone is turned on, now it has a partition that is used by the system, if you remove it you could have issues, I would only remove the card with the phone turned off completely and not boot without the card.
I made some tests connecting the USB cable to the PC and using the phone in storage mode, the PC could see the primary SD card partition and the phone could still work with apps on the second partition, so it seems to be stable in this sense.
If you need to switch to another card, you would have to setup the new card in the same way; I don't know yet if backing up the second partition and restoring it to the new card will work. If your data is critical use some SW like Titanium backup to back up the apps that are linked, remove them completely and restore when you have the new card setup.
So, this has worked for me like a charm, the phone really seems stable and I have so far like 150MB of apps on the SD card. No need to have a newer Android version, it seems very stable.
Disclaimer:
Any process that involves rooting your phone and partitioning can potentially cause data loss and/or bricking your phone. Do this only if you are 100% sure of what you're doing, I will take no responsibility for any data loss / damage caused by this process.
If you have any questions I will be glad to help.
Hi great post above
I rooted my phone and I partitioned my sd card into 2 partitions , both FAT32 primary 3.7GB and when i open link2sd and select either ext 2 or ext 3 I get an error message
"Mount scrip error
Mount scripe cannot be created.
mount: no such device
ext 2 may not be supported on your device. Try FAt32 on the second partition"
Has anyone come accross this problem before ?
Hi,
When you open link2sd,scroll down and select fat32. I tried formatting the second partition with ext2 and ext3 wit no luck. Fat32 is working just fine.
Regards
Hi Thanks a million that worked great
thanks
hi i tried wat u told but after some time link2sd is showing failure that "cannot link readonly" can u help me
Your guide works great. Finally I can have all apps I like to have installed at once.
mschmiedel said:
[*]If you need to switch to another card, you would have to setup the new card in the same way; I don't know yet if backing up the second partition and restoring it to the new card will work. If your data is critical use some SW like Titanium backup to back up the apps that are linked, remove them completely and restore when you have the new card setup.
[/list]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can tell some experiences with backups.
Before I had blur stock rom with link2sd and changed to deblur central europe rom. After reinstalling link2sd all apps where still gone.
And even after restoring all user apps with titanium backup they were restored to phone memory. I had relink them with link2sd manually and to batch restore with titanium backup twice because it broke down in the middle because phone memory was full.
Unfortunately link2sd is no magically way to have them backed up apps and to be independent from the rom. Titanium backup is still needed but that is fine. Nothing seams broken after restore with TI and relink with link2sd.
lovdanie, it's strange, had no issues with the tested phone yet, I partitioned 500mb and it has already like 200-250MB of apps linked and is working great, no issues.
One thing that could have happened is that you removed the SD card. Are you sure the SD card hasn't been touched or formatted?
bagers, it's not really a magical solution, it's just a way to get more space on a phone that lacks internal memory...
Regards
Just for some info.. under windoze try the "MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition" makes partitions like charm..
Guys any one have links for disk partitioners? minitool is not a freeware as u have t buy it when you apply the partition. any one know a way roubnd this? please help
miniProBhashi,
That's why I always use CWM to partition the SD card. As I don't have it on the Bllur, I put the card on another phone I have with CWM and it always works... Maybe if you have a linux PC you could do the same thing...
Regards
Help
Hi, I just partitioned my SD card. When I open the Link2SD app, it did prompt me to select the file system of the SD card's second partion, however, after I select FAT32/FAT16, Link2SD could not gain root access, there's no pop-up of indicating me to select "Allow" on the Superuser Request. Now wot do I do. Please help, thank you...
Well, I would start checking the SuperUser app to see if there is some exception in there. If you don't have it, check out if your phone is rooted by installing some other app that requires root access.
If not, check the root method for your phone.
If it's the Motorola Flipout, download version 1.6.1 from this thread, install it and run it:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=747598
Regards
mschmiedel said:
Well, I would start checking the SuperUser app to see if there is some exception in there. If you don't have it, check out if your phone is rooted by installing some other app that requires root access.
If not, check the root method for your phone.
If it's the Motorola Flipout, download version 1.6.1 from this thread, install it and run it:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=747598
Regards
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My phone is Galaxy ace, and superuser doesnt prompt anything on start-up.
Tried rooting manually, doesn't work as well
Hi,
I would try on a Galaxy Ace forum to check for the rooting process and validate if your phone is really rooted. When you are 100% sure you have root you can come back to this post and we can check if there's some other issue...
Regards
Flipout problem
Done all u told...
Then this problem came..
Mount script cannot be created.
mount: Invalid Argument
p0kjats said:
Done all u told...
Then this problem came..
Mount script cannot be created.
mount: Invalid Argument
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
Have seen similar problems when using ext filesystems. Are you 100% sure that the secondary partition on the sd card is fat32? It really should work on the flipout without any issues.
Remember that you need:
* Rooted flipout
* Partitioned sd card (secondary partition must be fat32)
* Link2sd opened and allowed to use root permission
If you are sure you did everything stated above, we can look at it with more detail. What tool did you use to partition the sd card?
root permission
hi,
i have installed Link2SD from Market to my lg optimus p500 os,gingerbird2.3.3,when i stared to move app to sd it asks root permission.
so pls guid me to activate root permission in my device
drnags said:
hi,
i have installed Link2SD from Market to my lg optimus p500 os,gingerbird2.3.3,when i stared to move app to sd it asks root permission.
so pls guid me to activate root permission in my device
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
It doesn't make much sense to use Link2SD if you're on Gingerbread as your OS natively can copy apps to the SD card (at least some of them). Just go to "Manage Applications", and select the app you want to copy, there should be an option to "Move to SD"...
If you still have some good reason to use Link2SD, you should first look in a forum for your specific device to find out how to obtain root (I cannot help because it varies for each device)... Once you have root access, I can help you out with this process.
Regards
miniProBhashi said:
Guys any one have links for disk partitioners? minitool is not a freeware as u have t buy it when you apply the partition. any one know a way roubnd this? please help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I partitioned mine I used GParted Live. It's a Linux-based boot disk, but you don't really have to know anything about Linux to use it. Just download the .ISO and burn a CD, pop it in your PC and boot off it. Its free, graphical (not command line) and relatively easy to use. There is also an option there to set it up to boot live off a USB drive, but that's a bit more involved to set up.
gparted . sourceforge . net / livecd.php (sorry, it won't let me directly post links yet)
If you can burn a .ISO to a CD, you can probably figure it out. Just make sure you pay attention to which disk you are partitioning (look at the sizes) so you don't accidentally re-partition the hard drive in your PC.
EDIT: If there is anything you need to back up off the SD card, I would do that in Windows first, and then copy it back using Windows after. You CAN do this with GParted Live but there would be additional steps to mount / unmount the Windows partition on the PC that you want to copy to.
the bootstrapped recovery seems to be having a partitioning tool.
Maybe im wrong, haven't used it though
I have done multiple searches and not found anything like this, apologies if I missed it. Here goes ...
Is their a version of rooting for the Nook N2E that can be run completely from the SD card? (Think a Linux LiveCD) I would like to try some of the other eReader software available to see if I like them before I decide to fully root my Nook. If I knew enough about Android, I would attempt this myself, but I don't want to brick my device.
Currently, no. It is possible, and is widely used on the Nook Color, but the work just hasn't been done on the Nook Touch. There was someone working on it a while ago, but it seems to have been dormant lately...
WIP thread
There appears to be a semi active thread about this here. At least is should provide a starting point.
David0226 said:
There appears to be a semi active thread about this here. At least is should provide a starting point.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't post on the development forum yet, so I am posting this here hoping others working on an SD boot image will see it.
I have been working on this myself.
I made a backup of my NST and then wrote that image to an SD card (4GB).
I changed the init.rc file and change all the mmcblk0p? file names to mmcblk1p?. I also changed the booting.png image so that I could confirm that my NST was booting from the SD Card.
I than inserted the SD Card and powered up. The booting.png image from the SD card showed up, but the device hung right there.
So I started looking at some other files. There is a file called env.txt that contains the following string:
root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rw rootdelay=1 mem=512M
so I changed that to
root=/dev/mmcblk1p2 rw rootdelay=1 mem=512M
and attempted another boot. It still hung at the booting screen.
I suspect that it may not be able to access all the partitions on the SD card (after writing the backup image to the SD card, it contains 8 partitions, the 7 partitions from the NST and an eighth unallocated partition with the remaining 2GB from the card.)
My next idea is to attempt to get all the files off the SD card and create one partition that contains all the files in their correct directories and comment out the mount and mkdir commands from init.rc to see if I can get it to boot. (My problem is I have no easy access to a Linux system and WinBLOWS will not access the Ext2 and Ext3 partitions.)
Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.
My goal here is to attempt to get it to boot the "standard" NST firmware and if I get that working, then attempt to set up a "rooted" OS on the SD card.
Progress????
Okay, now I got it to start a boot from the SC card and eventually I got a message that said failure to install.
Here is what I did.
After inserting the SD card into a linux machine, I mounted all the partitions.
I then copied all of the data into a single directory preserving the directory structure from the mounts.
I tar'd up this directory and ftp'd it to my windows machine.
On the Windows machine, I used bootutil to unpack the init.rc and env.txt files from uRamdisk.
I modified the files as can be seen in the attachments and repacked them.
Then I renamed the directories to correspond with the device file names they were supposed to mount from.
Then I created a single FAT partition on the SD Card and copied the directory structure to it.
It did not hang this time, so perhaps I am getting closer.
I'm running deodexed build from this post: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=40232503&postcount=43 and CWM bootloader. I'm using link2sd and 16GB external CD card.
Strange things started to happen (I think) after using my phone in the swimming pool. Apps from my external card vanished and I couldn't fix this issue, so finally formatted SD card (minitool didn't work, partition toolkit did). Meanwhile every now and then "no place on disk" error while installing apps popped up. Approx. 400 MB of internal storage was free...
After format things started to look promising, but "no place on disk" error still bugged me, so I thougth about workaround, and tried adb shell pm set-install-location 2. After restart I got bootloop. Tried several options and finally was able to flash firmware with odin 1.85. While I was at it, I flashed bootloader with CWM mod and odin 3.09. (Before flashing I was getting an error after restart and had to reboot manually:
E: failed to verify whole-file signature
E: signature verification failed
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
). Well, that worked, and no data was lost, but my external card is unusable, link2sd warns me about my second partition not being automounted and every time I restart phone I'm in the bootloop again, having to flash firmware to be able to unbrick it.
I tried to fix second partition from within partition toolkit, but no luck, formated it, again, but now link2sd doesn't see it mounted at all (partition toolkit does). I've reverted install location already, set it to 0, and later to 1, but no luck... I mean it works, but doesn't solve the problems.
I'm running out of ideas. I backed up everything with titanium backup and I'm considering factory reset, but not sure if it will help at all...
UPDATE:
I bought 32 GB SD card and replaced the old one. Formatted it and things seemed to work, but in roughly 50% of cases I couldn't install application due to "usufficient space on disk" error.
And another issue: yesterday my phone hung, so I restarted it. Basically it entered bootloop, but starts normally as soon as SD card is removed. Recovery log says "can't partition non mmcblk device" regarding SD card.
It looks as if SD card was mountable only when fresh formatted, any application moved to it (link2sd) and things end up as described.
Tried to boot without SD card and insert it later when system starts, but no luck (card is not discovered at all).
I'm seriously considering selling this phone - without external space for installing apps it's next to unusable, and it seems I am not able to solve the issues with SD card.