After flashing a number of ROMs over the past year and a half or so, storage has been used up though the values don't add up to 16GB. Think that there are partitions consuming storage. Is there a way to safely clean this up?
Noob here trying to understand and appreciate your help
Related
This is probably a daft question but the TmoUS HD2 has 1gb ROM, so when we create partitions for CWR why dont we use the entire 1gb? It has an additional 500+mb of RAM to allow everything to run smoothly. What am I missing here? Why is 400mb the recommended size? Doesnt that just leave 600mb going to waste?
Thanks for any clarification.
It may not necessarily be daft, but it certainly is in the wrong forum.
You are completely not understanding how things works, you are messing ram with rom, you are messing cwr partitions with sd partitions..you are messing system partition with userdata partition.. summarizing: you are doing so much confusion that you will dont know also your name in some minutes
And, btw, wrong section.
btw I'm in a kind mood today:
When you flash CWR, all your availabe ROM will be used for data storage. The "400mb thing" is just for system partition, where the build will be stored
If you se a build that uses SD to store data, your availabel ROM is wasted also if you still need to use the 400mb thing (or less if the build is smaller)
Your RAM are never touched from those things.
First, not sure why this is the wrong section as it directly related to NAND/CWR, but thank for the psudo moderation.
Rafpinga: I'm not concerned with SD partitions, Don't use them as I have no need, but i gather the gist of your answer is that my 400mb ROM partition is strictly for the system (OS files) and the remainder of the 1gb will be used for data? That makes more sense.
So I basically have 1gb of ROM (700 something formatted), 400 is used for system/OS and the remaining 300 something is available for apps etc..?
Ok, I thought I had my answer but apparently not. How am I confusing NAND and SD partitions? I don't use SD partitions at all? I use NAND partitions only as far as I can tell. What did I miss? I didn't even mention SD partitions in my OP.
I have a 400mb System partition, which is on NAND, the remainder of my NAND is used for data correct? My SD card is irrelevant to this setup correct? I don't even need an SD card inserted for my setup to work...
If i'm confusing the two perhaps someone would explain how rather than just *****ing about the thread!.... If it's in the wrong place I'm sorry and I'm sure it'll get rightfully moved but that shouldnt negate trying to get an answer.
OK, you're all over the map, but lets do the quick rundown.
A partition is a chunk of named memory-space. aka c: in windows or the swap file in linux.
SD cards and internal ROM are essentially hard disks that can be written to. The ROM needs to be flashed, while the SD cards internally flash too. What you can do is partition either of them and name the partition. You can also choose the filesystem that a particular partition uses. Internal ROM for android needs to be partitioned into a proper linux filesystem with proper formatting to operate. One of the partitions is userspace, another is "system". SD partitions are extensions to the linux operating system and as such should not be considered "bad". Really, the more memory the better.
Random Access Memory (RAM), i believe some type of DDR in this phone, is a volatile memory that clears upon restart. It's only used during normal operation and never stores your Android.
Read-Only Memory (ROM) is NAND in this case. There is a large misnomer on these forums about NAND. They meant to call it Internal NAND. ROM, the 1gb, is where ALL operating system files are stored. You flash the bootstraps and system partitions once, then all your stuff is stored in a separate portion of the ROM.
NAND is the storage technology used to manufacture most consumer read-only memory(ROM). SD cards and the internal memory both use NAND type memory, the difference between the two is the bus speed between the internal NAND and the CPU.
On the TMOUS HD2, there is 1,000mb of space in the ROM. A 400mb system partition would leave 600mb for things like the swap file and the user data portion. In some cases, ie EU version, a 400mb system partition would eat the ~500mb available ROM, so developers figured out a way to partition the SD card and effectively expand the ~500mb to 1,000mb and beyond. APP2SD+ was the final solution.
The TMOUS when partitioned properly will have a huge amount of headroom for the Android to excel. Nothing really goes to waste as long as you use a TMOUS compatible ROM.
Next time, ask in the right forum and you'll get the answer you wanted without all the hassle.
Thank you. I really appreciate that explaination and again, sorry for being in the wrong forum.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App
Ok, now that the whole NAND/RAM/CWR thing is cleared and little badgering, I'll move this thread to the Q & A section. If you see a thread in the wrong section, just report it. Once you've posted the question in the wrong thread, there is nothing the OP can do to move it. So if you can answer then please do. This way when a MOD moves the thread to the correct place it has some useful information. So I'm deleting the SPAM/light Flaming and moving this along.
noellenchris
HD2 Forum MOD
I have a question that is more android-in-general than Nook specific. I am trying this out on my Nook first, as it is an unbrickable device, before tinkering with my target device (a phone). My phone also does not have Clockworkmod recovery support, so a bricked device would be fatal.
I am attempting to increase the memory available for installed apps. My phone has limited space, but a bunch of pre-installed junk that I thought I might be able to get rid of in order to make more space for more apps. Knowing that simply deleting these pre-installed apps from the /system folder does really nothing, I set about making and editing an image file from the /system partition, then reflashing this image back to phone. As I am trying this on the Nook first, here is what I did:
1. Adb into the Nook and dd the system partition to a system.img file on the sd card.
2. Copy the system.img file to my desktop and mount the image.
3. Edit the image, removing the LiveWallpapers.apk file (a hefty ~3M file), then save the result back out as a new system.img.
4. Copy the new system.img to the sd card, then adb back into the Nook and dd the system.img from the sd card back to the system partition.
Everything appeared to work fine. The Nook boots, runs fine, and the LiveWallpapers.apk file is nowhere to be seen. Problem is, there is no difference in the available memory on the device.
In retrospect, I suppose I should not have expected there to be a difference. I am under the impression that the system partition is a read-only partition, and that extra space on this partition is not available for installation of apps. I am guessing that in order to increase the memory available, I would need to resize the data partition.
So, ultimately, my question is whether or not this is correct. Do I need to resize the data partition in order to actually get more memory available for apps, or is there an easier way? If I would need to resize the partition, how would I go about doing this, and would I need to take this extra space away from the system partition (the extra memory would need to come from somewhere, I imagine). I would envision removing bloatware from the system partition, shrinking that partition as I would no longer need that much space, and giving that extra memory to the data partition. Bear in mind that I need to do all of this through adb as I will not have Clockworkmod recovery on my target device.
Alternatively, I could be out my gourd and none of this makes any sense. Feel free to let me know if this is the case.
Thanks!
You've got it right.
The Nook emmc has partitions for boot, rom, system, data, and media. Originally data was 1g and media (/emmc under CM7) was 5g, newer models have reversed this. Data is where apps and their data go.
There are threads here about repartitioning newer Nooks with lots of good discussion. It sounds like you are capable (or want to be capable) of creating a custom partition scheme; there's enough info there for you to do that.
Experimenting with an 8g SD card might be a good place to get familiar with the tools. The "size-agnostic" installer will use a pre-partitioned SD if it finds one IIRC.
Good luck!
Sent from my NookColor using xda premium
xdajunkman said:
I have a question that is more android-in-general than Nook specific. I am trying this out on my Nook first, as it is an unbrickable device, before tinkering with my target device (a phone). My phone also does not have Clockworkmod recovery support, so a bricked device would be fatal.
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just wanted to re-iterate the importance of what you said here.
I have sent several people off to buy Nook Colors who were interested in developing for android, for this very reason.
Nothing else you can get your hands on ( to my knowledge ) is as safe of a dev-tool as the Nook Color, because of the first boot to sd-card.
It doesn't matter what you do to it, at the end of the day you'll have a working device unless you throw it down the stairs or something.
Bonus points for running an sd-install directly, because when you hose it you just reflash a new microsd card.
Can't reformat the card because windows only reads the boot partition? No problem - if you still have your Nook Color with it's stock software just boot it up and pop the microsd card in. The B & N software in the Nook Color will just format the card, without a care in the world for any existing partition schemes or whatnot.
You're on the right track for what you're trying to do, as the previous poster has pointed out, so just wanted to give you another vote of confidence letting you know you're doing all the right things for all the right reasons.
Thanks for the replies!
You know, I actually did the repartition of my Nook using the CWR zip file. I hadn't thought to go look through the original thread for the manual instructions. As you pointed out, I found the directions here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=13971291&postcount=110
The only problem is that his instructions require that you boot from the SD card in order to manipulate your interal memory. This is fine and good on the Nook, but not possible with my phone. Any idea what would happen if I tried to repartition the internal memory while booting from the internal memory? Seems that this would not be possible....or at least wrought with peril. I think that my phone can boot into a fastboot mode, but have not tried that...anyone know if this would help?
Perhaps I am just playing with fire here and need to settle for cramped memory space on my phone. I am just too accustomed to my 5GB of available app space on my Nook.
Thanks again.
Well, after some more Googling, I think I might abandon the repartitioning bit. I think I am likely to brick my phone, even though I think I could do it manually on the Nook. In addition, it appears that many phones are set up so that the kernel resets the internal memory partitioning on boot....so I might also need to mess with the kernel to get this to stick. This is beyond my skill set and really not worth my turning my phone into a paperweight.
I thought of a bit of a workaround, however. As I can extract and edit the image of the system partition, I will simply install the apps that I will eventually want on my phone on my Nook instead, extract the apk's from the Nook, then insert them into the system image file from my phone. Reflashing the system image then puts these apps into the system partition instead of the data partition, effectively saving me hoards of space on my data partition. A bit laborious, but for several core apps that I know I will want and that are memory hogs, I think it will be worth it.
Anyone see any problem with this approach?
Hey Guys,
I'm attaching a screenshot to make my problem a little clearer.
I own a 16GB version Nexus 4, after backing up my stock ROM before flashing others and backing up my apps somehow i ended with just 1GB of free storage.
I was backing up my ROM again (CWM) for a different purpose and it said i had about 5GB available. Somehow the backup failed and i was left with just 1GB of free storage.
The weird thing is that if i go under Setting->Storage to see my usage the math doesn't add up. You'll see it in the screenshot.
I tried freeing the unused backups in CWM but its the same thing. This problem persisted with the Stock ROM as well as with PA.
Thank You.
If somehow this thread already exist please post the link so we can close this one.
Peace.
It's been bugging me for a while that the system partition sizes are so huge, and I only get a little over 9GB for actual storage. Specifially the cache, of which I'm only using 104/2037MB, and the system, of which I'm only using 485/2717MB.
Is there any way to resize these partitions to give me more room for storage? I'm looking into making a new partition on my sd card, but that still doesn't solve the stupidly huge cache/system partitions.
There is also the issue of the missing space. As far as I can tell, my phone only has 14892MB in total, not the advertised 16GB. I understand that usable space is frequently lower than advertised on storage devices, but this is a little bit too much.
I've researched this but couldn't find anything useful. Maybe my google-fu is low haha.
Thanks in advance.
Bump.
Masterjuggler said:
Bump.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been looking for a way to do this as well. I feel like I'm wasting at least a good 3gb that could be used for installing some larger games or something. As far as I can tell, there is a way to do it on another variant of the S4, involving using odin to flash a Chinese version of the stock rom(specifically the PIT file) which repartitions the storage. But it only works on that variant, and won't work for us. No way to do it on the sph-l720, at least none that I can find.
I was thinking I could reclaim some of the system partition by taking any apps that are essential to me, and converting them to system apps. But since the system partition gets wiped every time I update the rom, which is very frequently, that would be a disaster.
Is there a way to increase the partition size for the apps?
goodjuju said:
Is there a way to increase the partition size for the apps?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am going to make an assumption here that you don't mean via adopted storage... Is there a way? Probably
Is there a reasonably safe way to increase the /data partition size? No... This device has around 30 partitions, if you start messing with one you have to mess with all of them and the issue is we can't control 2/3 of them at all. It would be very easy to hard brick your device, not to mention you would never be able to accept an OTA again (it re-writes the gpt.bin which is the partition table) or flash a stock image, and although 3rd party ROMs likely wouldn't care the problem is the chances of modifying it and getting it right are slim. And since we don't have working blankflash files, brick means hard brick and send to Moto if they will even look at it since the bootloader is unlocked.
Best answer? Use adopted storage or get a device with more internal storage... it's been many core Android versions ago since messing with the partition table was even slightly safe (even then a brick condition was pretty easy).