Database Users

[Q] Can't mount sdcard in CWM recovery on 3.01

I find myself being a noob after being a lurker around here for 2 years. This is my first post. I came here to learn and pretty much felt everyone here knew so much more than I did and I really had little to post of value. About a month ago I flashed several of the ROM's and then upgraded the OS on my Windows 6.5 mobile HTC HD2 using the binaries and instructions from the xda Windows forum. Everything went smoothly and it is now running beautifully on Windows 7.5 mobile. Faster than any of my friend’s stock Win 7 phones, I might add. I'm a certified Unix Engineer and pretty much an expert on Linux having written much of the original code for printing when Linus was developing the first version. I now run Linux Mint in an Oracle Virtual box on Windows 7 Ultimate for my SMTP server. I realize this is somewhat of a regression and I apologize for boring you guys with my background but I felt the need to give a bit of personal info before getting into my request for help, so that any adviser would know that I can talk the talk as well as walk the walk. My noob status is because I came here to learn and not post stupid issues and embarrass myself, I constantly see much of that in all the forums. I have searched and read all advice I can find on xda prior to this post and find others who have had the same problem but their resolutions don’t work for me. I am at the point where I had to post. If anyone has any fresh ideas that can help, please speak up. I'm not bricked but I might as well be, I'm stuck on 3.0.1. Here is my problem.
I allowed Acer's OTA 3.2 to update my Icona A500 last Thursday. The table was rooted and I had updated the xpa_supplicant to support ad hoc wifi while on 3.1. I saved that update over to my external SD before accepting the OTA update to Android 3.2 from Acer. I was hoping that Acer had fixed the ad hoc issue but afraid I might have to re-root and reapply the xpa_supplicant after the flash. I stupidly didn't read all the cries for help both on xda and on the Acer sponsored A500 forum prior to taking on the Acer OTA update. Many of the Acer forum post now showing up are from owners who aren't technical, have no idea what rooting is and no idea even that their Android is hosted on Linux but were unhappy with superficial changes the upgrade had done to various parts of the the UI and the effects it was having on some of their apps. My issue was I need ad hoc wifi or my tab is worthless for my business needs if it can tether and travel. Again, I regress and I apologize.
You guys already know the consequences for the OTA 3.2 update from Acer so I won't go into that. I had planned to flash my first ROM this weekend anyway, as I wanted to upgrade to Tabtoony 2.1. But, after realizing that I couldn't root after the OTA 3.2 from Acer, I download the Acer recovery installer and installed thor's CWM recovery v5.0.0.0 rev 1.3.4 and used it to flash the tablet back to Android 3.0.1 via stock 1.141.07_COM_GEN1. 3.0.1 was known to be buggy and won't even keep a wifi connection for longer than 5 minutes so I couldn’t just stay at 3.0.1. So I proceed forward by then following very systematically the directions from drkalo on the xda A500 forum on flashing your first ROM. These are the step that I when through.
1. I download the Tabtoony 2.1 zip via Windows. I ran IZarc test on the zip from Windows to make sure there were no CRC problems in the zip. All files were good and I even unzip it on Windows with no errors or other problems.
2. The tablet was rooted by CWM so I didn’t need to run Gingerbreak or Iconaroot. I connected the tab to Windows via wifi after re-downloading File Manager HD from the market (I like it better than Root Explorer) because it supports network connetion to Window NTFS file system.
3. I copied the upgrade zip using File Manager HD over to my External SD card and to the Internal SD card, still unsure which one it should be on. There are several YouTube video tutorials on Flashing Tabtoony to the A500. In every one, the demonstrator copies the zip to be flashed to the internal SD card but drkalo explicitly says the external SD. I copied it over to both. BTW, my external SDHD is formatted to FAT32 could that be a problem? I know most Linux distributions have built-in support for FAT32 but I realize the core Linux used on the tab is customize and not one of the standard distributions at least as far as I know. So I have no idea what features may or may not have been removed. But the external card was visible and useable in 3.1 after I created a mnt point to it manually.
3. I then booted into recovery mode and CWM came up and I cleared several caches as suggested and I then chose “– choose zip from sdcard”. I immediately got the following of message:
E:Can’t mount /sdcard
I am then returned to the CWM recovery menu
4. I have tried formatting the sdcard from CWM. Although I still don't know which SDcard is being referred to, but I get the following messages:
Formatting /sdcard…
Error mounting /sdcard!
Skipping format….
Done.
Upon rebooting back to 3.0.1 both sdcards still have all their data on them so format truly does fail. So I'm stuck in 3.0.1 and can't get CWM to mount "the" sdcard or format it. So I can’t flash a new customized 3.2. I have gone over drkalo xda post step by step several times to be sure I'm not missing something but the results are always the same. I would be grateful for any advice or new ideas.
Thanks and I apologize for the long post.
Grady

There are already some threads with the very same question and nobody seems to know the answer.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1294654
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1276082
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1261801
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1186535
I personally use the external sd card formatted on an Android phone to place the update.zip. CWM mounts the external card (even though the option is called mount /sdcard/ and you can choose the zip file on it.
Good luck!
Piotr

Just use a usb thumb drive, copy the rom to it, plug into your tab, boot cwm, select the rom and flash. I always use the thumb drive.

Thanks your point is well taken. I used a Windows 7 phone to format the the SD card. I noticed in one of the links that you posted for me a link to a program called SD format. That link provides a format program for Windows and Apple. But, one of things they explain is that a properly formatted SD
has a reserved area for file indexing. I've probed mine and can't find such an area visible or hidden. That may the problem. I don't have a Win machine that uses micro SDs but I'll try formatting it in my friends Android phone and see if that fixes the problem. Thanks for you help. I'll post back to this thread so anyone interested can kow the result if this resolves the problem or not.
Sent from my A500 using xda premiium

Thanks Shaun, I did notice that USB was an option. Actually that's probably the easest way. That never ocurred to me. Fortunatly I have a few thumb drives lying around unused. Bet that will work. I'll try that tonight. I still fell a bit obligated to help solve the SD card problem since it seems to be
so prevelant. I'll let you know how it goes. One question though how do you format your USB? Do you do it on Windows or your adriod device?
Thank for you help and suggetion.
Sent from my A500 using xda premium

I don't know if I have ever formated my thumb drives just the factory format. Did a windows format and it still worked fine for a test and fat 32. Have you tried a different msd card. Good luck, can get stressful.

Well Piotrdev was correct. I reformatted the drive on a friends Android phone and immediatly noticed a difference. While still in the phone it now showed a lost file folder that the Windows phone format did not create. There may hane been other differences, but I didn't take the time to explore further. I immediatly reinserted the card back into the tablet, copied over the Taboony 2.1 zip and rebooted into CWM. Chose the option - install zip from sdcard, it then ask me to choose which file to install. I navigated to the Taboony 2.1 zip, pressed the power button to select it and installation began. Several message flew by indicating installation was proceeding then it said ROM flash completed sucessfully. I did a power off and back on and immediatly saw a new spinning screen that said Taboony. It ran for about 3 minutes then went to an unconfigured login screen. I knew I had made it then.
So the lesson learned is that neither Windows FAT 32 format is acceptable to CWM, nor is CWM's format acceptable because CWM's format fails if the card is not already properly formatted because he can't mount an improperly formatted drive.
Guys thanks for all your help. I had been stuck for 2 days. I learned something and maybe the others who Piotrdev reported posted a similar issues can get theirs resolved too. I'm pretty sure improper drive formatting is the cause of most other posters problems. We need to write an SD format program for Android Tablets. There is nothing in the market that indicares that it formats SDHDs.
I now have a Taboony 2.1 Tablet which has lots of new apps not available in the market. I need to explore a bit more to see what apps were in the flash but the most needed by me is a full featured office suite and ad hoc wifi to my cell phone router. The xda Taboony Team has ported over Asus's Polaris Office and my first look at it indicated that it appearedsc that it fits the bill. Of course I've just voided my warranty, but after Acer's lockdown to preventing rooting, I had pretty much decided to avoid any updates from them in the future anyway As I told my friend whose phone I used to format the card, at the price they are selling for now, it's just a throw away if you brick it and can't recove.
Problem solved!
Peace
Sent from my A500 using xda premium

gradyzero said:
I find myself being a noob after being a lurker around here for 2 years. This is my first post. I came here to learn and pretty much felt everyone here knew so much more than I did and I really had little to post of value. About a month ago I flashed several of the ROM's and then upgraded the OS on my Windows 6.5 mobile HTC HD2 using the binaries and instructions from the xda Windows forum. Everything went smoothly and it is now running beautifully on Windows 7.5 mobile. Faster than any of my friend’s stock Win 7 phones, I might add. I'm a certified Unix Engineer and pretty much an expert on Linux having written much of the original code for printing when Linus was developing the first version. I now run Linux Mint in an Oracle Virtual box on Windows 7 Ultimate for my SMTP server. I realize this is somewhat of a regression and I apologize for boring you guys with my background but I felt the need to give a bit of personal info before getting into my request for help, so that any adviser would know that I can talk the talk as well as walk the walk. My noob status is because I came here to learn and not post stupid issues and embarrass myself, I constantly see much of that in all the forums. I have searched and read all advice I can find on xda prior to this post and find others who have had the same problem but their resolutions don’t work for me. I am at the point where I had to post. If anyone has any fresh ideas that can help, please speak up. I'm not bricked but I might as well be, I'm stuck on 3.0.1. Here is my problem.
I allowed Acer's OTA 3.2 to update my Icona A500 last Thursday. The table was rooted and I had updated the xpa_supplicant to support ad hoc wifi while on 3.1. I saved that update over to my external SD before accepting the OTA update to Android 3.2 from Acer. I was hoping that Acer had fixed the ad hoc issue but afraid I might have to re-root and reapply the xpa_supplicant after the flash. I stupidly didn't read all the cries for help both on xda and on the Acer sponsored A500 forum prior to taking on the Acer OTA update. Many of the Acer forum post now showing up are from owners who aren't technical, have no idea what rooting is and no idea even that their Android is hosted on Linux but were unhappy with superficial changes the upgrade had done to various parts of the the UI and the effects it was having on some of their apps. My issue was I need ad hoc wifi or my tab is worthless for my business needs if it can tether and travel. Again, I regress and I apologize.
You guys already know the consequences for the OTA 3.2 update from Acer so I won't go into that. I had planned to flash my first ROM this weekend anyway, as I wanted to upgrade to Tabtoony 2.1. But, after realizing that I couldn't root after the OTA 3.2 from Acer, I download the Acer recovery installer and installed thor's CWM recovery v5.0.0.0 rev 1.3.4 and used it to flash the tablet back to Android 3.0.1 via stock 1.141.07_COM_GEN1. 3.0.1 was known to be buggy and won't even keep a wifi connection for longer than 5 minutes so I couldn’t just stay at 3.0.1. So I proceed forward by then following very systematically the directions from drkalo on the xda A500 forum on flashing your first ROM. These are the step that I when through.
1. I download the Tabtoony 2.1 zip via Windows. I ran IZarc test on the zip from Windows to make sure there were no CRC problems in the zip. All files were good and I even unzip it on Windows with no errors or other problems.
2. The tablet was rooted by CWM so I didn’t need to run Gingerbreak or Iconaroot. I connected the tab to Windows via wifi after re-downloading File Manager HD from the market (I like it better than Root Explorer) because it supports network connetion to Window NTFS file system.
3. I copied the upgrade zip using File Manager HD over to my External SD card and to the Internal SD card, still unsure which one it should be on. There are several YouTube video tutorials on Flashing Tabtoony to the A500. In every one, the demonstrator copies the zip to be flashed to the internal SD card but drkalo explicitly says the external SD. I copied it over to both. BTW, my external SDHD is formatted to FAT32 could that be a problem? I know most Linux distributions have built-in support for FAT32 but I realize the core Linux used on the tab is customize and not one of the standard distributions at least as far as I know. So I have no idea what features may or may not have been removed. But the external card was visible and useable in 3.1 after I created a mnt point to it manually.
3. I then booted into recovery mode and CWM came up and I cleared several caches as suggested and I then chose “– choose zip from sdcard”. I immediately got the following of message:
E:Can’t mount /sdcard
I am then returned to the CWM recovery menu
4. I have tried formatting the sdcard from CWM. Although I still don't know which SDcard is being referred to, but I get the following messages:
Formatting /sdcard…
Error mounting /sdcard!
Skipping format….
Done.
Upon rebooting back to 3.0.1 both sdcards still have all their data on them so format truly does fail. So I'm stuck in 3.0.1 and can't get CWM to mount "the" sdcard or format it. So I can’t flash a new customized 3.2. I have gone over drkalo xda post step by step several times to be sure I'm not missing something but the results are always the same. I would be grateful for any advice or new ideas.
Thanks and I apologize for the long post.
Grady
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same problem, my CWM is not mounting my sd card, but it seems to recognize my USB flashdrive as the SD card, im super confused and i havent seen any forms that have talked about it, i never had this problem with my HD2 OR my Samsung Galaxy S

Only for GURU's

I have a droind X running .605
for some reason i cannot access the internal memory
i originaly rooted with z4root on stock rom never did anything with it after that
i updted to .605 and wanted to install ubuntu but i cant seem to be able to access the internal memory. I did not uninstall z4root i simply upgraded 0ta .605 and figured this would unroot my phone and bring it back to stock ota .605. then tried to connect phone in pc charge pc sync and usb storage the only thing is see is my sd card 32 GB I tried mounting sd unmounting plugging phone without sd no go im out of ideas i even rerooted and reflashed still no go. anyone else have this problem and a solution. am i even supposed to see to drives i recall having two drives show up in the past. Anyone isntall backtrack or ubuntu on the droid x? any help is appreciated.

I don't believe the Droid X supports chroot, and booting Ubuntu from internal memory is impossible.
Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

I can also confirm that chroot is not possible on the DX. I've spent a long time on this and was not able to get it to work. If you search around the DX forum you'll see a lot of other people saying the same thing.

HTC HD2 with android

I picked up a phone used online for a good deal as is. When I turned it on it was in a loop on magldr 1.1 I eventually got it to boot after wipping the data on the phone. I've never owned or rooted a phone, but i'm an old school pc guy who has been rooting things like SNES, psx 1,2,3, DC, wii, xbox etc. I know some linux, unix, and of course dos and windows so I'm sure it's not hard to figure this thing out.
I did a search and found out what MGLDR is and found out how that I have hardspl 2.08 already setup.
My question is can I upgrade the MAGLDR and now that the phone does boot I noticed it's saying i'm almost out of drive space?? I also can't get it to connect to my xp computer because it never finds all the drivers so I can't mount a drive.
Can someone point me to a guide that walks me through what was already done and what I need to do to get more space on the phone? I already put in a 2gb sd card, but not sure how to move or remove apps so I don't get the error about low disk space? I would also like to use win 7 if possible and not droid.

LGHT said:
I picked up a phone used online for a good deal as is. When I turned it on it was in a loop on magldr 1.1 I eventually got it to boot after wipping the data on the phone. I've never owned or rooted a phone, but i'm an old school pc guy who has been rooting things like SNES, psx 1,2,3, DC, wii, xbox etc. I know some linux, unix, and of course dos and windows so I'm sure it's not hard to figure this thing out.
I did a search and found out what MGLDR is and found out how that I have hardspl 2.08 already setup.
My question is can I upgrade the MAGLDR and now that the phone does boot I noticed it's saying i'm almost out of drive space?? I also can't get it to connect to my xp computer because it never finds all the drivers so I can't mount a drive.
Can someone point me to a guide that walks me through what was already done and what I need to do to get more space on the phone? I already put in a 2gb sd card, but not sure how to move or remove apps so I don't get the error about low disk space? I would also like to use win 7 if possible and not droid.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well firstly, use task29 to wipe your internal memory. This will erase magldr, your rom, partition etc. Your phones internal memory will be clean. However, it doesnt wipe hspl or radio so your good.
Flash the latest Magldr. And flash CWM. And then your desired rom. If u want to ask something or steps or if there is something you dont understand. Feel free to pm me
Sent from my HTC HD2 using xda app-developers app

try this link
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=25781675#post25781675

Thanks for the tips. adil1508 great suggestion to simply wipe everything and start fresh. Seems like the phone hasn't been used in at least a year, but hey for $50 I can't complain.
What do I need so I can connect the phone to the PC? I have xp and it installed a bunch of drivers, but it still gives me one last prompt for a driver and says can't find driver so I can't see the sd card on my pc.
Also is a 2gb micro sd card big enough or should I plan ahead and pick up a bigger card? What's the biggest card I can use?
mengfei: I looked over your guide quickly and noticed some instructions to upgrading my radio. How do I find out what radio i'm using now?? I would really like to upgrade my radio and loved that post about not bricking so thanks again.

Slow brand new Lenovo yoga plus. Flashing it may help? Advice plz.

I bought myself a new yoga plus LTE yesterday.
I've been working on the big file issue with larger files than 4gb on sdcard.
I fixed that issue by formatting the card as a internal drive and move all apps there.
The thing i dont like is that i lost all the 32GB on ghe original drive as that wont show up anymore as a usable space.
On my friends tab his internal and card got put togheter and he got one large drive containing both the card and the internal storage. (Lenovo tab 3 x50 i believe)
So my tablet seems slow, it hangs on Facebook and messenger and it disconnects wifi etc.
Its buggy...
So, i just recently had a Nvidia shield tablet and it was also slow, so i downloaded the stock rom and adb flashed it with recovery flash and it became superfast again.
I believe after updates some files gets overwritten and it causes problems.
Normal factory reset wont fix it either.
It needs reflashing..
So here is my questions.
I need stock recovery files, and then i also would like to root it so i can get to use my internal drive as internal and to have a Exfat sdcard to be recognized do i also need to know how to get there as well.
Im sure this tablet after full recovery with latest updates, a exfat support will be very nice.
I also maybe need TWRP to flash it with the files needed to get it to read exfat??
I don't wanna return it as i like it but it only needs exfat for me to be perfect​.
Please help me out so i can collect all files with links and to have some tutorials of Wich to do first etc.
I will then make a good thread containing all these so we all can enjoy the best of this nice tablet that really gets killed by not recognizing exfat.
I mean i like to have 4K material and i dont wanna be limited by Lenovo beeing to poor to buy the exfat license.
Its been a Lenovo issue for many years i cant understand why they wont fix it.
My tablet is the YT-X703L
MANY THANKS ALL OF YOU BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE!!

veralynn said:
I bought myself a new yoga plus LTE yesterday.
I've been working on the big file issue with larger files than 4gb on sdcard.
I fixed that issue by formatting the card as a internal drive and move all apps there.
The thing i dont like is that i lost all the 32GB on ghe original drive as that wont show up anymore as a usable space.
On my friends tab his internal and card got put togheter and he got one large drive containing both the card and the internal storage. (Lenovo tab 3 x50 i believe)
So my tablet seems slow, it hangs on Facebook and messenger and it disconnects wifi etc.
Its buggy...
So, i just recently had a Nvidia shield tablet and it was also slow, so i downloaded the stock rom and adb flashed it with recovery flash and it became superfast again.
I believe after updates some files gets overwritten and it causes problems.
Normal factory reset wont fix it either.
It needs reflashing..
So here is my questions.
I need stock recovery files, and then i also would like to root it so i can get to use my internal drive as internal and to have a Exfat sdcard to be recognized do i also need to know how to get there as well.
Im sure this tablet after full recovery with latest updates, a exfat support will be very nice.
I also maybe need TWRP to flash it with the files needed to get it to read exfat??
I don't wanna return it as i like it but it only needs exfat for me to be perfect​.
Please help me out so i can collect all files with links and to have some tutorials of Wich to do first etc.
I will then make a good thread containing all these so we all can enjoy the best of this nice tablet that really gets killed by not recognizing exfat.
I mean i like to have 4K material and i dont wanna be limited by Lenovo beeing to poor to buy the exfat license.
Its been a Lenovo issue for many years i cant understand why they wont fix it.
My tablet is the YT-X703L
MANY THANKS ALL OF YOU BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Regarding the slow down, flashing an image won't help you there because you will end up with exactly the same system that you have now. This is due to the block based updates. We all have exactly the same system and boot partitions. The only thing you can do is a factory reset
The exfat issue is big annoyance I agree. It's only half Lenovo's fault though. Microsoft is the bad guy here since they conspired to get the exfat file system set as the default file system for large SD cards and want royalties from the OEMs. I don't want Microsoft to get a single dime for something as trivial as a new file system without any special features.
What is Lenovo's fault is giving us old kernel sources that prevent us from easily building custom kernels that include exfat. There were FUSE based solutions for older Lenovo tablets that could potentially be updated to work for us but FUSE isn't ideal since it's slower than a kernel based solution.

Need advice- Samsung Galaxy Tab A- SM-T280

I got my son a tablet on Swappa- but its not really working for our needs- as he can't install very many games or large games on it- since it doesn't treat SD card as internal- and even after moving apps to SD- it doesn't move the whole app- just a small part. So we are always out of room, since its an 8gb internal, and the 64gb SD card doesn't matter.
What is going to be the fastest- easiest way for me to fix this..It is running android 5.1.1 stock- and is not rooted- I assume that to fix this I'm going to have to root, and flash a rom with at least android marshmallow- and then use ADB shell to send command to make it internal. But before I try all that- I wanted to get advice from people on here- because maybe someone knows an easy or faster way to do it.
thanks for helping my son game...

Rooting is the first step,
almost all Samsung devices are very easy to root. When I got my t280, I had it rooted, TWRP, and the special tinker edition ROM, installed with in 15 minutes of taking it out of the box. After you have it rooted, you will need a link to SD app from the play store. From there you will be able to move an app the the SD card, and in the case of the app being larger, you can link it to SD card, which will usually take most, if not all of the data,obb etc, and put it on your SD card, it can take a little bit, but I have a lot of apps on this tablet doing it this way. Hope this helps.
caecusscius said:
I got my son a tablet on Swappa- but its not really working for our needs- as he can't install very many games or large games on it- since it doesn't treat SD card as internal- and even after moving apps to SD- it doesn't move the whole app- just a small part. So we are always out of room, since its an 8gb internal, and the 64gb SD card doesn't matter.
What is going to be the fastest- easiest way for me to fix this..It is running android 5.1.1 stock- and is not rooted- I assume that to fix this I'm going to have to root, and flash a rom with at least android marshmallow- and then use ADB shell to send command to make it internal. But before I try all that- I wanted to get advice from people on here- because maybe someone knows an easy or faster way to do it.
thanks for helping my son game...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

This tool should help: https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-tab-a/how-to/patch-adoptable-storage-enabler-t3507387 once you are rooted