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Root Link2SD and you (a tutorial)

Copy entire sdcard to PC/MAC, create sd-ext partition and copy back everything to the first fat32 sdcard partition. Then restore your apps to the second sd-ext partition. That's it.
 
nijel said:
Copy entire sdcard to PC/MAC, create sd-ext partition and copy back everything to the first fat32 sdcard partition. Then restore your apps to the second sd-ext partition. That's it.
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot! Worked like a charm. I wasn't sure if naming the partitions makes any difference -- I just called one Primary and one Secondary (they're both 1GB since I'm still using the stock SD card) and dragged all the SD files back into Primary. It seems to work fine and it opened up 70-80MB of space after I moved everything I thought was appropriate to the SD with Link2SD (I can finally have Google+ and Google Music on the phone!)

Quick question -- if I ever get a bigger SD card is there a guide about how to migrate the phone and move the apps from the smaller SD to the bigger one (assuming I partitioned the bigger one already)?
 
Use the same way, but this time, copy data from both partitions and then copy it back to both partitions on the new card. No need to install/restore apps back. You need access to ext file system from computer but I guess Mac can do it.
 
Okay, here's the sitch. I just flashed the latest version of BACKside, to replace the one I had from early January. The flash was successful, and went to start up Link2SD I chose the file system partition type and rebooted like it asked. However, I'm now stuck on the boot screen! It loops once or twice before freezing and just staying still.

What can I do?
 
Wait, it can take up to 15 minutes depending how many apps. Next pull the battery and reboot. Did you do the fast reboot in the app?
 
No good. I waited 15 minutes. I waited much longer than that. Pulled the battery out and tried again multiple time. It just hangs frozen on that bootscreen.

And no I did not do the fast reboot from the app. I did a full reboot.

My temporarily solution is reverting back to my backup nandroid. But that's no good... cuz I want to be able to use the latest ROM.
 
You'll need to do a full wipe. I have a picture tutorial on how to do this. It's in my signature or link in the all things root sticky.
 
So before I go an do this with a new 16g sd card let me make sure of a few things:

-first partition is the larger one and should be FAT32 (or FAT? it looks like my stock card is already FAT, should I just keep the new one like that?)
-second partition is smaller (2-3g) and should be ext4 (I'm using the CM 7 Backside IHO rom)?

is this correct?
 
This thread has been a great help. I used Link2Sd on my original 2G SD card an it worked fine for quite a while.

Juggling things around and I've got a problem. I'm using Minitool to copy and resize the contents of my original card to a 4G card, I really don't need a lot of space, but I might want more for pictures and music. I keep getting an error when the second partition is being copied ta the file system is corrupt and to check the file system. However Minitool will not allow me to do that, option is not available. What do I do?

The main partition copied fine. I did a Titanium backup, but will that include the secondary partition? Got about 50-100 apps on the phone, have no desire to reload all of them by hand. Help!
 
Don't copy and resize partitions, copy files from your old card to the new one after creating the fat32 and ext partitions.
 
Hmmm, tried that too. I even put the card back in the phone and cleaned the various partitions, basically everything on the list in Link2SD. The card works in the phone, it's just the second partition that wont copy.
 
You'll need to backup your apps, then do a full wipe and install your Rom again then restore. Fallow my tutorial on using link2sd with a full wipe. When you've done your backup make sure you transfer that to your pc then to your new partitioned card.
 
When I upgraded from an 8gb to a 16gb card I partitioned the uSD as per my tutorial using Minitool. Then I cloned both partitions (I may have only cloned the 2SD partition and just copied the files from the FAT32 partition) using minitool for this as well.

I posted a mini tutorial for it as well, I don't recall if it is in this thread or one of the many others that have popped up since I wrote this. I intended to write a full blown tutorial for it, but I have since stopped using Link2SD and don't have a spare uSD to mess with to write the tutorial.
 
I'm just getting started with Link2SD. It will let me link an app to the sneaky new partition, OR it will let me force an app to be installed on the SD card using the "native" app2sd method when the system normally wouldn't want to do that. Which method is preferred?
 
MacFett said:
Correct. Linking moves virtually all files associated with the app to the new partition and places a shortcut on the internal memory of the mobile to tell the mobile where to look to find the app and everything else.
Click to expand...
I'm discovering that. At first I was just moving stuff that couldn't normally be moved to the card (Google Maps, Facebook, etc.), but then I started experimenting with moving just about EVERYTHING over, and now I have a ridiculous amount of free internal memory: about 100MB.

By the way, I'm still using the card that came with my phone; the new "link" partition is 512MB, and the main /sdcard partition is 1.3 GB. The linked apps are using up about 300MB of the 512MB available to them. I'm pretty happy with this partitioning scheme.
 
I don't know if you've fully read my warnings, do not link the market even though you can. My nandroid of my stock backup has no access to the market because I had linked it. Still working on getting it back on there.
 
Hey MacFett. I noticed that Xionia recovery v1.2518.6 allows you to partition the sd card to 1024MB, 2048MB, and 4096 MB do you know if this would work for Link2SD? Would you have to reformat the uSDcard to FAT32 first? Plus any other question you can think of, I'm asking.
 
Your card is normally formatted to FAT32,. I don't know about using the xionia recovery to partition, but cwm3.2.0.1 and the IHO both will do the job. I've used them both on different cards and both set the ext partition to ext3. Also they offer the same choices for partition size. I find it much easier to do from the recovery than to download a program to your pc, do it all there and reinstall the card. Just remember to backup your card first. The partitioning will erase any data on the card.
 
It would depend how it formats, I'm guessing you'll have the choice of which FAT32, FAT16 or EXT2/3/4. It also has to make them both primary and basically do it the same way you do it with Minitool in the tutorial as far as which is the first and which is the second primary.

But it should work, when I did the tests for you with ROM manager or whatever it was it did everything correctly, just small partitions.
 
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