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

Root HTC Desire freezes on HTC screen when insering a new 32GB Micro SD card

E

Elumonq

Newbie
Dear fellow forumers,
I bought recently a second hand rooted Desire with 16GB SD Card.
I wanted a bigger storage to add more MP3 music, so I bought a generic 32GB SD Card.
I tried first to insert the new card in the Desire to see if it needs to be formatted by the Desire. But when I turned the Desire, it was stuck on the HTC white lit screen. I waited for hours with no success.
I then tried to format the card using my card reader of my laptop which went smoothly. Then I copied the contents of the HTC Desire original 16GB card to the new 32GB card. This was done without a problem.
But when I wanted to swap the two cards, the Desire was stuck again on the HTC white screen.

I thought the phone did not like the generic card so I bought SanDisk 32GB microSDHC hoping that it will resolve the matter.

The result was the same. The Desire stuck on the HTC white screen.
I thought it is normal because it is maybe formatting the card without asking me if I want to do it. So this time I left it on the HTC white screen all the night. Well in the morning I got up to see that it is still stuck.

Did anybody experience the same problem?

Or is it simply that the Desire does not accept bigger capacity cards?

Thanks for your help.

Wishing you all an excellent week-end.

Elumonq
 
settings > About phone

What ROM are you on? Its possible (Neigh probable) that the ROM you have has a2sd+ scripts that require a partitioned SD card.

Firstly, please tell me what ROM you have installed.
 
Dear SUroot,
Whilst I am a good PC/Windows user, I am a complete beginner in Smart phones.
I bought the Desire rooted and as it is today.
I am now discovering all the aspects of the phone.
In response to our question, I went on Settings, About Phone to get the following info:
Android version: 2.3.5
HTC Sence version: 3.5
Software number: Runny ROM v6.0

If you need other information, you may need to tell me where to look in the phone to find them.

Thanks in advance for your precious help.

Elumonq
 
Nope thats enough thanks.

Runnymede ROMs are far too big to fit where the desire's rom did so that SD card is 100% Definitely partitioned.

Runnymede is a different phone (HTC Sensation XL) and its ROM (Android OS) is much bigger than the Desire's

To make it fit, they have to partition the SD card to give it an EXT partition (1 or 2GB). This partition is home to part of the OS and obviously will not boot without it.

This is not the end of the world though but you have a lot of reading ahead of you.

Basically what you will need to do is:
-Nandroid backup your phone
-Copy all data from SD to PC
-Partition New SD card
-Copy data back to new card
-Nandroid restore your phone.

Now that sounds like nonsense to you. It will do. Now, you must go to the "All Things root guide" sticky thread at the top of this forum.

In there you need to understand root (Read the rooting faq) and learn how to partition an SD card (Read the guide for setting up gparted in a virtual machine)...

It may take a while to absorb, dont worry about that.
 
Thanks for your reply.

I read the Rooting FAQ post.
While it looks a bit abstract for me, I believe when I start putting things in practice, it will be better understood.
In the meanwhile, I tried the following:

To run Nandroid Backup, I understood that I need to start Clockworkmod recovery.
For that I powered off the phone waited few moments that it is completely off and then held the Volume Down and pressed Power. Unluckily, the phone just powered on normally without being entered in the Clockworkmod recovery mode.

I tried also to do the same procedure but by holding the Volume Down and holding the Power few seconds longer. It had the same result ---> phone powered on normally!

Am I doing something wrong?

And by the way, if I am able to do the Nandroid Backup, how will I be able to perform the partitioning of the new SD card if the phone is stuck on the HTC white screen when it will powered on?

Cheers
 
Thanks.
I didn't find Nandroid on my phone but 4EXT. Can I use this one or should I download and install Nandroid?
Cheers
 
4Ext recovery can make nandroid backups - nandroid is just a generic nickname for a backup made from recovery. In fact 4Ext is what we recommend for the Desire.

So just go into the 4Ext recovery and select backup option, and that is your nandroid.
 
Ok, here what I did:
- Copied all data from my old SD to PC
- Ran 4EXT and backuped up my phone.
- Created only one partition of 31.7 GB
- Copied data to my new SD
- Restored my phone with 4EXT.
- Restarted the phone.
- Phone is stuck on HTC white screen.

I wonder whether the problem is related to mounting/unmounting the card which I did not do.
Or, maybe I need to make more than one partition!
In this case, how many do I need and what size do I allocate?

My old SD has 9.5GB of data on it. So, if I have to do more than one partition and as the maximum size I can allocate is 4GB, do I need to split the data of my old SD onto
the two partitions of the new SD which have the sizes, say 4GB and 27.7GB?

Thanks for your help.
 
You need a second partition for that ROM, I would guess 1GB ext4 format. The root memory faq (linked from the All Things Root Guide sticky post) will describe how to do this and what the partition ordering should be.

Then to change cards you need to copy the contents of your current partition to the new card. So put the old card in, take a nandroid backup, copy content of old card (including files and folders whose names start with .) to new card, then put the new card in and restore the nandroid.

Copying the fat32 copies the nandroid. The nandroid backs up the ext partition. Restoring the nandroid fills the partition on the new card (a PC cannot see ext partitions, so you cannot copy directly).

Unless you do this the part of the ROM on the original card's partition is missing when you swap cards, and the phone won't boot.
 
Please tell me you did NOT copy data from your old card BEFORE taking a backup? Your list appears to suggest you did. You need to copy the backup with the REST of the data... in fact that's the whole point of this process
 
Hi SUroot,
No, I just messed up in my list. I definitely made the backup prior than the copy.
Thanks Hadron for your input. Nevertheless, I did what I did before seeing your post.
What I mean is that I struggled to understand the importance and/or the need for the 3 partitions proposed by 4EXT. Also, nothing was mentioned in the FAQ guide about the size of each partition.
That's why when I tried, I chose to create one 2GB EXT3 partition and one 1GB Swap.
Don't ask me why as I do not know at all the purpose of the swap one and the needed size.
Nevertheless, everything went smoothly and my phone is up and running.

Could one of you explain what is the purpose of the Swap partition, if I needed it and if not, how to remove it?

Thanks a lot for your help.

As we say in French: Bon courage pour la semaine...

Cheers,
 
Few if any ROMs need a swap partition, and if there are any that do I would avoid them as anything that does swap will lag. Swapping means switching stuff from RAM to hard storage (sd in this case) and back - if you are familiar with virtual memory then that's what swap space is for. As I say, I have never used a ROM which needs this, so at best it is wasted space.

Unfortunately if you have a swap partition the only way of removing it is to repartition the card again.
 
Thanks Hadron.

I am not sure that at this stage it is worth it to go through all the hassle of re-partitioning to get back my 1GB space. I will leave it for another day.... or another year!

Before closing this thread I take the opportunity to thank you both for you fantastic support and the excellent communication you provided the beginner me.

All the best,

Elumonq
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom