• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Root [FAQ]ROOT MEMORY: a2sd+ / partitions (updated 10th August 2011)

Please give me a blow by blow account of how you're doing this.

I literally mean at key stroke level. You'll probably need a notepad and to try again because I want everything including what keys you press at key mapping etc. Literally every action you do that interacts with the computer/phone and also what method you're using (cd, usb, vm)

I need as much information as possible please. The only things that should be left out are things like taking a sip of your coffee. If you're not sure if its relevant, write it down anyway. We'll filter it out if needs be
 
Oh wise Sages of AndroidForums, I need a bit of a hand. I've tried every blooming way listed (on here and I followed the XDA "dummy" video guide) to try and get GParted to work so that I can finally a2sp+ my phone but it just refuses to work. Everytime, no matter which method, after I get to the main GParted boot screen and press enter to run GParted Live, then everything goes black with white text, so I plug my phone into the computer, then turn it to disc drive etc but after that nothing happens. The screen goes blank and the USB stick stops running (light stops flashing)/CD stops spinning and the only way I can get it all back, is to hard reset my computer using the power switch

Quite annoying, I think you'll agree
 
Not yet no, that's my next port of call. I just thought it was strange that none of the other options worked, i'd of thought at least 1 of them would

EDIT: I would just like to say that doing GParted in the VM worked a treat :) Couldn't of done it without the guide though, so mega props for that SUroot... Now to find a suitable ROM
<_<
>_>
Might be a while eh haha
 
Just a quick one, plugging the device in too early can stop Gparted booting. Too late Gparted won't pick it up.

I wait until it gets to the language / keyboard mapping, have it already set as mount usb mass storage and then plug it in
 
Maybe it has something to do with that then. When I was doing it the USB way, the text was literally only on screen for about 3 seconds, so trying to plug it in AND turn it to Mass Storage was impossible haha. All sorted now though and im using InsertCoin... I like it. I am getting the feeling that with this "10 days, 10 apps, 10 pence" sale that Google are having, my 4GB SD Card/1GB Partition really isn't going to be big enough!
 
I think you'll find Sir that, that, is called showing off
:(
I want free apps. Or at the very least 10p apps and a bigger SD Card
 
droidzone said:
SUroot, your thread says Data2SD is still in its infancy!
Click to expand...

The data2sd part was written ages ago. You commented and I asked if you would be willing to write something up to put in there but this is the first I've heard about it since!!
 
Twas on xda. Please feel free to write a piece on the current implementation and ill happily in include.

It's been a year since I used it.

If you do write one, sub headings would be great ;)
 
SUroot said:
Twas on xda. Please feel free to write a piece on the current implementation and ill happily in include.

It's been a year since I used it.

If you do write one, sub headings would be great ;)
Click to expand...

Well, the last time I took the time and effort to write a thread on Data2SD, noone participated in the discussion other than you and Rastaman.. ;) I think entry level users are rather prejudiced about Data2SD anyway.
 
droidzone said:
Well, the last time I took the time and effort to write a thread on Data2SD, noone participated in the discussion other than you and Rastaman.. ;) I think entry level users are rather prejudiced about Data2SD anyway.
Click to expand...
possibly but maybe thats due to them not understanding the concepts as much as the a2sd ones. remember a2sd has been around a hell of a long time comparitively
 
When I open my sd card in gparted it shows 2 partitions, an unallocated 4mb one and my fat32 partition. After I resize the fat32 to free up 1gb after it, the unallocated space goes up to 51mb. What is this exactly, why does it happen? Is it safe to apply the changes to my sd?
 
HSBHTC said:
GParted will not see my SD card no matter what I try all it can see are both my HDDs

anyone got any ideas?
Click to expand...

I am getting this exact same problem. I've tried several times to use Gparted to create the partitions needed to get Apps2SD+ to work.

I am booting into GParted using the USB method but the 'devices' tab only recognises the laptop hard drive (/dev/sda) and the USB stick (/dev/sdb).

I connect the phone to the laptop via USB and select "Turn on USB Storage" from the notification bar when the language selection screen comes up. When the phone is connected I get the following error message "Sorry the process android.process.media has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again." and then a script runs on the laptop relating to the phone being connected. After a few seconds and following the guidance steps 7-9 on the following website gparted appears.

TechCredo | Tutorial: How to partition your Android?s SD card for A2SD+ with GParted on a Windows PC (EXT2/3/4)

Does anyone know what I need to do to get gparted to recognise my device? I can't find anyone else on the internet who seems to have the exact same problem.
 
You need to be mounting the usb drive whilst booted into recovery. Don't trust android to manage this.

It does actually say boot into recovery in the step by step I wrote in post 1 of this thread.

Also I would add that I don't particularly think Gparted on usb always works so well with other usb devices. Please try the VMWare method
 
Big thanks to SUroot for all the guides and the help in this thread! Very useful for a noob like me.

I've got a Desire GSM running CMR 2.5.0.7 and CyanogenMod 7.1.0. I'm trying to enable A2SD+ while moving to a new SD card (keeping the old one as a backup).

I moved all apps off my SD card before starting (i.e. all apps are stored on the phone itself). I then (I think) successfully created a 1GB ext4 partition on the new SD card using GParted, and copied across all the data from the FAT partition of the old SD card to the FAT partition of the new SD card (the ext4 partition is still empty).

I was hoping that at this point the phone would boot and I'd be able to use simple2ext to make use of the ext4 partition.

What actually happens is that the phone won't boot with the new SD card in. It will boot to recovery but if I try to do a normal boot to Cyanogen it hangs indefinitely at the pink circle (not animated). (If I put the old SD card back in, it works fine... but obviously still no A2SD+.)

I've tried a couple of variations on this:
1. Leave the SD card totally blank (in case I've corrupted the FAT data somehow).
- Result: My phone still fails to boot with the new (blank) SD card in.
2. Restore a backup from the new SD card.
- Result: The restore process works but it makes no difference to the behaviour with either the new or old SD cards.
3. Try all of the above options with a different SD card.
- Result: Same story each time.

I read something on another forum suggesting that the OS knows about partitions so I'd have better luck using ClockworkMod itself to partition. But I don't have that option in my version of ClockWorkMod, and if I try to use ROM Manager (against the advice on this forum... but I was already getting desperate :-) o kick ClockworkMod into a partiion operation that doesn't work either.

I suspect I'm trying to do something that's not supported for reasons I've missed, or that I've deeply misunderstood something or have missed a crucial step. But I've re-read the guide and I haven't spotted my error - can anyone help me out?

Thanks in advance.
 
If it won't boot with a different sd (your test 3) then it stands to reason that there is something the OS is looking for on the sd.

So with the original sd take a titanium and a nandroid backup, ensure windows or whatever has hidden files showing and copy everything off the sd.

Then do a complete wipe. Copy everything to the partitioned sd, boot and titanium restore (if it boots which I.think it will)

Whoever talks about clockwork mod being better at partitioning has no idea what they're talking bout. Plus 2.5.0.7 doesn't have a partitioning menu. Only if you use manager, which we advise against
 
Thanks for the quick response.

I have already tried taking and restoring a Nandroid backup as you describe (that's what I meant by bullet 2 above). The Titanium backup is presumably irrelevant if I can't boot.

I haven't yet tried reflashing Cyanogen when the new SD is in the phone, but from what little I understand it's unlikely to make any difference.

Another piece of info I missed is that the phone boots fine with no SD card in! So it appears to be the presence of an ext4 partition that stops it booting. This made me think that the ext4 partition is in some way broken, so I took another look in GParted and it's showing errors that it didn't complain about when I created the partition initially (see first image in linked album).

Carrying out a check of the partition says it's successful but on closer inspection I can see some worrying e2fsck output (second image).

A *second consecutive* check operation succeeds without any error, but then after disconnecting everything the card still doesn't boot, and when I go back into Gparted there are errors again, SOmetimes the partition appears as 'unknown' rather than ext3, ext4 etc.

Photo Album - Imgur

It's not obvious whether or not these errors exist even *before* I try to boot with the SD card in, and it's not obvious whether I'm seeing the same thing on both of the SD cards I'm trying - but surely I don't have *two* broken cards (they are both new, and from different vendors) so I'm guessing this is user error during the partitioning process.

I'll try to dig further but if you have any suggestions as to what I could be doing wrong or what other checks I could do of the SD cards, I'd love to hear them!

Thanks again.
 
I would remove all partitions, format to fat. Download h2testw.exe and check the full volume for errors. If none found, start again
 
Sorted now.

h2testw.exe showed that one of the SD cards was absolutely screwed.

The other was fine, and the ext4 partition was stable on that, but I still couldn't boot. A reflash of Cyanogen fixed that for some reason that I don't understand.

Thanks again for your help!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom