I have done wonderful things to my device thanks in large part to this community. Thank you.
I see that the system partition has about 1 GB of free space yet there are only 427 MB of files in there. Do I need that much free space? If not, how can I safely resize it?
Using parted. I've tried doing it though, shrinking my data partition to give more to system but it won't stick for some reason. Either I'm doing it wrong, or it doesn't work
The parted binary for android can be found on Cyanogenmod's github in the android_bootable_recovery repo
@CNexus, thanks. I appreciate that. I'll take a peek at that. Strangely enough I'm looking to shrink my system partition. I've seen others are wanting the opposite.
I've partitioned PC drives before but this appears to be much more involved.
Does anyone know of an optimum allotment for system and cache that I should follow?
You should be fine whatever you do.
Worst case if something goes wrong, just flash the PIT file for your internal storage size in Odin and all should be good
But yes, this will be more involved since it will need to be all command-line
Related
Does anyone know how to make a complete memory dump (RAM) of the XDA, apart from the m? commands. These commands give a memory, hex, text breakdown. What i'm looking for is a command that get's 32MB of data and stores is as 32MB of DATA (the the invoking and storing the dump is obvious, so no tips on those please, i only want the commands get this raw memory dump).
Regards,
René
I just read up on some of the other stuff in here.
Somebody mentioned the XDA has 32MB of RAM "AND!!!" 32MB of flash ROM.
So, is this true? And if so. Does this mean that the organizer data is held in flash ROM allways? (this would in my opinion not be correct with some of the functions of the XDA, but OK). And if so..... How do i make a raw dump of this memory?
Cheears,
René
dumping ram
Hi,
I'm not aware of a means to dump RAM using the bootloader functions. However I'm considering developing something for it. It shouldn't be too hard with a bootloader patch like we developed to get around 5.17 limitations.
What I'm looking for is info on how data is organized in RAM such as the filesystem. The 32 RAM contains semi persistent data while the ROM contains what is needed to reinitialize the device and system binaries. However, as far as I understand, applications you install additionally and any application data is only stored in RAM. Anyone knows how the filesystem works on the lower level? I'm looking to implement a tool that can read such a RAM dump and make sense outof it.
Ok, so i came up with the idea of using the m? functions for dumping the data (what is the difference between those anyway?), into a huge file (you get 80bytes for each 16 bytes of data, so 160MB for a 32MB model and a hellufa lot of time, say 4 hours at 105200), and than parse these back to the original 32MB, based on the hex dump supplied.
As to your question, for which i'd like the answer myself, about the file system: as it's windows, i hope it will be some form of FAT or NTFS, but what i've seen so far, i'm afraid it's the system MS developed for storing their office documents....
Does anyone know if parts of the data are stored encoded/crunched/ encrypted?
Anonymous said:
As to your question, for which i'd like the answer myself, about the file system: as it's windows, i hope it will be some form of FAT or NTFS, but what i've seen so far, i'm afraid it's the system MS developed for storing their office documents....
Does anyone know if parts of the data are stored encoded/crunched/ encrypted?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I doubt if its FAT or NTFS, as it needs to handle having its size limitations changed dynamically as the device manages objectstore<->memory changes.
And its all stored compressed.
..Chuck..
Well, I recently managed to work out what RAM belongs to the file system, and dump that ram only. And within that RAM I've found some files, and their compressed data, and used the BinaryDecompress calls to decompress it and verify the contents.
However I still can't work out the overall structure that provides the pointers/identifiers to the location of the files, I just happened to find certain files by searching on the filename (which is stored uncompressed BTW).
Has anyone else been trying this?
..Chuck..
I've been wanting to make a larger /data partition on a Droid Incredible. I mean, after all, it comes with a lot of storage. But there is not nearly enough for apps. Sure. I can use my SD card. But unless there is something I'm not aware of, you can only install some apps to the SD and even when you do, pieces of that app still exist in /data. But what's even worse is the fact that I already use my SD card for movies and videos and such and I just don't really use the unclaimed space of which there is plenty, in the phone, for that sort of thing and yet I can't use it to install apps. I haven't found too much on this topic outside of using App2SD. I did find a lot of talk of using parted and even gparted. But this talk is generally about partitioning your SD card. If I were to use parted or gparted to resize the /data partition at the expense of another partition's space and I did it properly, would the Android system not boot because of it? And if this is doable, is there a better, easier way to do it than using parted and adb or gparted? Also, is there a guide for resizing your /data partition? I could probably survive without one if I had to but it would really be helpful just in case there are some big DO NOT DO's that should be avoided that aren't obvious. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
enigmatl said:
I've been wanting to make a larger /data partition on a Droid Incredible. I mean, after all, it comes with a lot of storage. But there is not nearly enough for apps. Sure. I can use my SD card. But unless there is something I'm not aware of, you can only install some apps to the SD and even when you do, pieces of that app still exist in /data. But what's even worse is the fact that I already use my SD card for movies and videos and such and I just don't really use the unclaimed space of which there is plenty, in the phone, for that sort of thing and yet I can't use it to install apps. I haven't found too much on this topic outside of using App2SD. I did find a lot of talk of using parted and even gparted. But this talk is generally about partitioning your SD card. If I were to use parted or gparted to resize the /data partition at the expense of another partition's space and I did it properly, would the Android system not boot because of it? And if this is doable, is there a better, easier way to do it than using parted and adb or gparted? Also, is there a guide for resizing your /data partition? I could probably survive without one if I had to but it would really be helpful just in case there are some big DO NOT DO's that should be avoided that aren't obvious. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
theres around 780mb in there thats not enough?
JoelZ9614 said:
theres around 780mb in there thats not enough?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He's talking about /data/data/ which is like 150mb, I use the NotEnoughSpace app it lets you store data on cache, emmc, sd card, you should check it out.
Well, I messed with notenoughspace too which was my eason for posting. This was the app that made me say enough is enough, can I just resize /data/data?.
-1- So much space on the incredible is going to waste while programs such as these would have me put apps on the SD where I really do want space for my other stuff like music and movies.
-2- Unless I missed a button or option, NotEnoughSpace came off as annoying to me. I would go into apps and wait for a minute for it to scan every time I do it and then I pick an app, for example Beejive. It makes me move it ONE FILE AT A TIME. And even then, there is stuff you can't move. Can I not just move the app, all of it in one click?
But most importantly, I just want more space on /data/data. I want to resize the partition. The phone has what, 8 gigs on it and allows 150 mb for apps in there which is just crazy.
Can I resize the partition where apps are stored (/data/data) by way of parted or gparted? to avoid the annoyance of using my external storage which I want to use for movies and music? There's probably 6 or so gigs on my phone I'll never use for media that should be meant for apps.
Has anybody resized the data partition? Are there consequences to doing it if it's done properly? Is there a guide? What is the easiest way to do this? Any help would be appreciated.
enigmatl said:
Well, I messed with notenoughspace too which was my eason for posting. This was the app that made me say enough is enough, can I just resize /data/data?.
-1- So much space on the incredible is going to waste while programs such as these would have me put apps on the SD where I really do want space for my other stuff like music and movies.
-2- Unless I missed a button or option, NotEnoughSpace came off as annoying to me. I would go into apps and wait for a minute for it to scan every time I do it and then I pick an app, for example Beejive. It makes me move it ONE FILE AT A TIME. And even then, there is stuff you can't move. Can I not just move the app, all of it in one click?
But most importantly, I just want more space on /data/data. I want to resize the partition. The phone has what, 8 gigs on it and allows 150 mb for apps in there which is just crazy.
Can I resize the partition where apps are stored (/data/data) by way of parted or gparted? to avoid the annoyance of using my external storage which I want to use for movies and music? There's probably 6 or so gigs on my phone I'll never use for media that should be meant for apps.
Has anybody resized the data partition? Are there consequences to doing it if it's done properly? Is there a guide? What is the easiest way to do this? Any help would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ask conap hes good with this type of thing
Making progress but still need help.
There's some talk on the net that you can modify the size of the .img files that nandroid makes and simply flash them back to your phone.
Problem is, I can't find a windows way to do it on the net. The closest that I've come is a program called toporesize. This program will let you open files such as data.img from your nandroid backup. But you can't resize them because you get an error box that says this appears to not be an ext* filesystem. Check size file only to resize the file or use other tools. I'm assuming that means it wants you to check a button that says resize file only no resize2fs. In the one guide I found that talks about this app, it says do not check this box. So I'm assuming if you did, it would work and then when you flashed the file back to your phone, it would either not boot or the size would not be changed properly.
I also noted that there's a thread or two that has posted some custom sized data.img files for download. I would do this as a last resort but would prefer to resize my own data.img for a more precise choice of how large I want it.
The error mentions other tools. Are there other tools or programs for Windows users?
Does anybody have any insight on resizing the /data/data partition either by this method, by using parted/gparted, or any other method that works effectively?
I would avoid trying to alter the size of the partitions on your phone. That is how you end up with a brick. There are other ways including finding out which apps are taking up all of your space. 150 MB does not sound like a lot, but it is considering what is stored there.
Go into Manage Applications and click on the All tab. Then press the menu key and sort by size. Click on the apps near the top with anything higher than 3 or 4 MB. Look at the details in the storage section for each app. You will see a Data line item. If it is really high in proportion of the size of the Application, you should clear it. That will save you a lot of space.
In the case of the Mail app or other social networking apps like Facebook or Twitter, you can go into the settings and restrict how much data is stored on the phone. They can really eat up space by downloading a month of emails, etc ...
ihtfp69 said:
I would avoid trying to alter the size of the partitions on your phone. That is how you end up with a brick. There are other ways including finding out which apps are taking up all of your space. 150 MB does not sound like a lot, but it is considering what is stored there.
Go into Manage Applications and click on the All tab. Then press the menu key and sort by size. Click on the apps near the top with anything higher than 3 or 4 MB. Look at the details in the storage section for each app. You will see a Data line item. If it is really high in proportion of the size of the Application, you should clear it. That will save you a lot of space.
In the case of the Mail app or other social networking apps like Facebook or Twitter, you can go into the settings and restrict how much data is stored on the phone. They can really eat up space by downloading a month of emails, etc ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This request is meant with respect and NOT as a flame but I have to make this request so others don't follow and potentially change the thread into a debate on whether to resize or not resize the partition.
Please let's not start talking about whether this is a good idea or not nor if doing this can make our phone into a brick. Now that it's been said, those lurking and considering this for themselves can make up their own minds. But there are a lot of things talked about throughout XDA that can make your phone into a brick yet things are done in the name of making our devices better.
And yes. We can take action to reduce the amount of data that apps are taking up. To tell you the truth, I would do that even if I had a 1GB partition. I think always saving space when space can be saved is a good idea.
But just in principle, I and probably others want to reclaim that space on our phones that will never be used by anything. Maybe HTC allocated the space as it's allocated because some users won't use an SD card and will then use that space for their media and other miscellaneous stuff.
But once you have an SD card that's way bigger than the extra space on your phone, it becomes pointless to use that space on your phone for media. So I want it available for data.
So both sides of whether to do this or not have now been posed. I ask can we please get back to the topic of how to though I do thank you for your input.
That said, again, does anybody know how to resize your data partition whether by doing it live with parted or gparted or by editing the data.img file that nandroid via clockwork mod puts out? I would really appreciate it.
I tried making a nandroid backup of the phone through clockworkmod, sending the data.img file to my computer, using toporesize to resize it. And by the way, I was forced to check the resize file only no resize2fs button as not doing this generated an error. I then used md5sum to get an md5sum for the new data.img. I then inserted the md5sum in clockwork/nandroid's nandroid.md5 file (with a linux file compatable text editor). I then sent the entire backup back to the phone in a different clockworkmod/backup folder, used rom manager to restore, selected the new resized backup.
After the flashing was complete, I went into my phone only to find that the data partition still had the same amount free (give or take a few K). I wondered if that's because I had to shrink the system file? I was thinking before I started that it's probable that I would have to shrink another partition that had free space so I chose system. I attempted to repeat the above steps from the beginning this time with the plan of shrinking system.img.
No go. toporesize will not shrink it properly. Errors are reported in the process though when I reload it into toporesize, it looks like it has the size I want. Knowing it would probably fail, I tried to continue anyway. Even with the correct md5sum, nandroid won't even start the recovery of that set. You get a status bar for a second and then, the phone just reboots.
So for now, I'm at a loss but I know this can be done.
Whether using this method or another, does anybody know how to properly change the size of the data partition using WINDOWS?
Don't come crying when you brick it.
ihtfp69 said:
Don't come crying when you brick it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have no intentions of such. -1- I will quite likely never brick it as nandroid pretty much has me covered. But if I do, -2- I don't plan on having this phone forever. It's not new any more. There are already several models that are better than the droid incredible that I'm looking at. If I were to brick this phone, yay. Good excuse to buy a new phone. But, odds are, i'll never brick it and come November or December, I'll buy something else anyhow.
So please, this isn't about the risks, of course you can brick your phone trying this or many other things on XDA.
Does anyone know how to resize the data partition using any method that can be done with the help of a Windows machine?
This is a fundamental change to a very sensitive area you have
276 mb for the system rom and 748mb for user apps.Many rom devs seem to be straining to keep the rom below 200mb and it is amazingly easy to fill up 748 mb with little apps.
I would think if it were possible to do this it would have been done by the rom devs first thing. I would love to see a rom dev bump this to 500mb and 1024mb.
Chances are to re partition the partitions on the phones memory is not possible with out a hboot flash or something of a custom bootloader...
I find removing these help... Also i use handcent and gmail.app instead of the stock apps...
friendstream
peep
twitter
flicker
stocks app
facebook
748 mb? I only have 150 available in /data/data. How do you get 748?
enigmatl said:
748 mb? I only have 150 available in /data/data. How do you get 748?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
748mb is the size of the entire /data partition what us devs are doing with the new roms is symlinking things to the /system from /data i've managed to do it without symlinking but it bring the /system to its limits and thats usually not good to do
enigmatl said:
748 mb? I only have 150 available in /data/data. How do you get 748?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my /data/data i have 95.96 MB free
rom 35MB free
app space 212 MB free
internal 6.44GB free
Also /data/data is a different partition than /data so the 150 is not included as part of the 748.
Resize /data/data partition - Update?
Did you ever find a solution to resizing the HTC Incredible's partitions?
I too am fed up with having to constantly clear caches and uninstalled apps, just because the tiny 150MB partition fills up. It's been a problem since my wife and I bought our phones.
I expect it would have to be done by a custom bootloader, but thought I would check and see if you had any success.
If nandroid recreates the partition tables based on the sizes of the .img partition backups, then they could probably be resized by mounting the .IMG files directly under Linux and using Linux tools to resize each one - or - creating a new .img partition of the new size(s), mount the backups and copy everything over to the new one, unmount it and go from there?
Steve
Have you used the Ext4 mod created by Tiny and Jermaine151?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1623038
...and the following is the original thread which has the details of what exactly the mod does:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1315372
If I'm reading this (outdated) thread correctly, this mod is what you're looking for in regards to partitioning /data/data. The second link is provided in the OP of my first link.
SlimSnoopOS said:
Have you used the Ext4 mod created by Tiny and Jermaine151?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1623038
...and the following is the original thread which has the details of what exactly the mod does:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1315372
If I'm reading this (outdated) thread correctly, this mod is what you're looking for in regards to partitioning /data/data. The second link is provided in the OP of my first link.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What he said ^^^^
Just do it.
SO basically im trying something out and i need to add a partition to my android device thats about 100mb big. Is this possible? the Sdcard wont work as a partition
I've seen it done, but for some reason the OS will repartition it back to what it was before you edited it.
Best route would be to dump your current PIT file (partition table and other info is included in there) and modify it to fit your needs if possible. There are probably other threads on this if you search up "modifying PIT file"
CNexus said:
I've seen it done, but for some reason the OS will repartition it back to what it was before you edited it.
Best route would be to dump your current PIT file (partition table and other info is included in there) and modify it to fit your needs if possible. There are probably other threads on this if you search up "modifying PIT file"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
will modifying that file be able create an extra 100mb partition so when i hook it into my comp two partitions show up?
That file can be used to repartition the phone. If you modify it correctly you should be able to resize other partitions and use that extra space to create your own XXX mb partition.
CNexus said:
That file can be used to repartition the phone. If you modify it correctly you should be able to resize other partitions and use that extra space to create your own XXX mb partition.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Alright thanks im looking into it know do you know how to dump one from a phone? as google is not bringing up anything besides info on what it is
You need to use heimdall but there are existing ones out there depending on what size your internal storage is
16 gb or 32?
CNexus said:
You need to use heimdall but there are existing ones out there depending on what size your internal storage is
16 gb or 32?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
its a 16gb lph 710 ill look into heimdall thanks
What's your current bootloader version? If not known, run
Code:
getprop ro.bootloader
In a shell on your device/terminal emulator app
And then post the last three alphanumeric characters
Sorry I realized the bios of a comp doesn't recognize the android phone as a peripheral or a mountable boot device which ruins my plans as of now I'm going to try to find a way to at least get the bios to pickup the SDcard if I can I'm doubtful though
Hi there
Im having trouble with my find 7 recently-when Im trying to install an app its says the device has insufficient memory while the free space on the phone is 22gb. so right now I cant install anything
how can this be resolved?
thanks
Unfortunately, the free space available for media and other documents is not the same space available for installing apps in the system.
Basically, there are two different partitions: The System one (which the system can only use) and the User one (the one that you can use). Most phones have a unified partition, so that the system and the user partitions vary as needed.
Oppo thought it would be a good idea to set a limit on how big the system partition could be instead of using the much better unified layout, and this is where your problem lies: All the System space has been used up, and because of that limit, you're free space is inconsequential.
Oppo has promised a fix, but we'll see how long that takes.. In the meantime, check out LVM Repartitioning. It works really well!
BG64 said:
Unfortunately, the free space available for media and other documents is not the same space available for installing apps in the system.
Basically, there are two different partitions: The System one (which the system can only use) and the User one (the one that you can use). Most phones have a unified partition, so that the system and the user partitions vary as needed.
Oppo thought it would be a good idea to set a limit on how big the system partition could be instead of using the much better unified layout, and this is where your problem lies: All the System space has been used up, and because of that limit, you're free space is inconsequential.
Oppo has promised a fix, but we'll see how long that takes.. In the meantime, check out LVM Repartitioning. It works really well!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what is exactly the LVM Repartitioning and how do I solve the problem with it ?not so familiar with it
thanks again
Hi,
after removing all the bloatware and some apps I will never use there is a little over 1G of free space in my system_root partition. Since both system a/b and userdata partitions are on sda I assume it is the same physical device. So in theory it should be possible to shrink the systems partitions and grow the userdata. Has anybody tried to do this? Does anybody know what type of encryption is used on userdata - it doesn't seem to be luks. I have a linux background and am quite surprised how much android differs from what I am used to...
Cheers
Paul
alpinista82 said:
Hi,
after removing all the bloatware and some apps I will never use there is a little over 1G of free space in my system_root partition. Since both system a/b and userdata partitions are on sda I assume it is the same physical device. So in theory it should be possible to shrink the systems partitions and grow the userdata. Has anybody tried to do this? Does anybody know what type of encryption is used on userdata - it doesn't seem to be luks. I have a linux background and am quite surprised how much android differs from what I am used to...
Cheers
Paul
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In theory it's possible. But in practice it's extremely difficult, especially with all the partitions on todays devices. Changing a partition effects all partitions after it and they all need to be recreated. It's also extremely dangerous if you don't really know what your doing. I successfully did it on an old skyrocket just for fun. But I wouldn't want to try it on the pixel. I'm not even sure what the dual slots would entail.
Sent from my [device_name] using XDA-Developers Legacy app
alpinista82 said:
Hi,
after removing all the bloatware and some apps I will never use there is a little over 1G of free space in my system_root partition. Since both system a/b and userdata partitions are on sda I assume it is the same physical device. So in theory it should be possible to shrink the systems partitions and grow the userdata. Has anybody tried to do this? Does anybody know what type of encryption is used on userdata - it doesn't seem to be luks. I have a linux background and am quite surprised how much android differs from what I am used to...
Cheers
Paul
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What bloatware did you remove?
airmaxx23 said:
What bloatware did you remove?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Everything that is not related to basic phone functionality or camera. Like two dozen apps. arcore, vrcore, all the carrier and e-sim stuff, play music/video, and a lot of other unnecessary stuff.
This is an answer to jd1609, I hit the wrong button:
Yeah, I thought so. Android has evolved quite a bit since cm14 (Android 7.1). I am just starting to understand whats going on with a/b partitions. I still don't quite understand why they had to go with sparse images instead of just raw images. Most probably to confuse me a bit more ....
But thanks a lot for sharing your experiences.
Cheers
Paul