Database Info

Misuse of A2SD could damage your SD card!!

I've seen a lot of people complaining about not being able to boot after using A2SD for a while and I think it's definitely necessary to make clear the danger in using A2SD and some ways to prevents them.
Do not move /data/data to SD.
You can safely move /data/app and /data/app-private to SD. Be cautions with /data/dalvik-cache. (See below)
Make sure the ext2 partition are mounted with noatime and nodiratime (rom maker's job)
Do regular file system checks (using Linux)
Back up your ext2 partition and redo them regularly
Here're the theories:
(NAND) Flash memory has two serious limitations when used to store frequently changing data: you cannot do random write unless you erase a whole page first and any bit can only be written a limited number of times (typically a couple millions). When one bit in a page is detected to be faulty, you lose the whole page. (More details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Limitations )
Most mobile os vendors overcome this problem by using special file systems, namely yaffs and jffs, which arrange files according to page size and do write operations only when necessary. They also provide journals so hardware faults could be reliably detected and corrected.
EXT2, which is the file system used in A2SD, DO NOT have these features. It may stupidly allow several pages to be erased hundreds of times of just to write some small files into it. Things are made even worse because some fixed part of the file system (inode table and bitmap) has to be written EVERYTIME a file operation is done. The will accelerate the wearing of those pages and when they become inaccessible, you lose the whole file system.
A2SD would work fine if you only move /data/app to it, because the application files are never modified. It is a completely different story for /data/data because the sqlite databases in there are modified almost every other second!! (And I suspect the OS commit them to disk very often to ensure data integrity.)
In addition, android does not have system check tools for ext2, so it will not be able to detect any problem with the file system until it’s too late.
Edit:
I am not sure how frequent the system updates files in dalvik-cache, but I would say you only move it when you are running out of space in /data.
(Also changed title)

billc.cn said:
I've seen a lot of people complaining about not being able to boot after using A2SD for a while and I think it's definitely necessary to make clear the danger in using A2SD and some ways to prevents them.
Do not move /data/data to SD.
Do regular file system checks (using Linux)
Back up your ext2 parition and redo them regularly
Here're the theories:
(NAND) Flash memory has two serious limitations when used to store frequently changing data: you cannot do random write unless you erase a whole page first and any bit can only be written a limited number of times (typically a couple millions). When one bit in a page is detected to be faulty, you lose the whole page. (More details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Limitations )
Most mobile os vendors overcome this problem by using special file systems, namely yaffs and jffs, which arrange files according to page size and do write operations only when necessary. They also provide journals so hardware faults could be reliably detected and corrected.
EXT2, which is the file system used in A2SD, DO NOT have these features. It may stupidly allow several pages to be erased hundreds of times of just to write some small files into it. Things are made even worse because some fixed part of the file system (inode table and bitmap) has to be written EVERYTIME a file operation is done. The will accelerate the wearing of those pages and when they become inaccessible, you lose the whole file system.
A2SD would work fine if you only move /data/app to it, because the application files are never modified. It is a completely different story for /data/data because the sqlite databases in there are modified almost every other second!! (And I suspect the OS commit them to disk very often to ensure data integrity.)
In addition, android does not have system check tools for ext2, so it will not be able to detect any problem with the file system until it’s too late.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
these are very good points. Actually come to think of it we better mount the ext2 partition with noatime. Because right now every read will wear the flash down. flash storage is really not meant for ext2 filesystem.

knaries2000 said:
these are very good points. Actually come to think of it we better mount the ext2 partition with noatime. Because right now every read will wear the flash down. flash storage is really not meant for ext2 filesystem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In JF1.5 build it is mounted with noatime, i believe:
#mount
/dev/mmcblk0p2 on /system/sd type ext2 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,errors=continue)
But I totally agree with the point of the thread /data/data should not be moved to sd. Not that it's only dangerous (as described), I even don't see any advantages of it.

Dimath said:
In JF1.5 build it is mounted with noatime, i believe:
#mount
/dev/mmcblk0p2 on /system/sd type ext2 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,errors=continue)
But I totally agree with the point of the thread /data/data should not be moved to sd. Not that it's only dangerous (as described), I even don't see any advantages of it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
really. that's good, but I am running haykuro's build right now and it is not mounted with noatime. I will have to change the init script.

I'm using JF's 1.5 A2SD build, and I'm pretty certain I moved over /data/data. I didn't really ask myself the question when doing it, but what exactly is stored in /data/data? Is there a command I can run to move it back off the SD card?

Are ext2 and fat the only supported file systems in the android kernel? If not maybe it would be best to move to a wiser file system.

Rekna said:
Are ext2 and fat the only supported file systems in the android kernel? If not maybe it would be best to move to a wiser file system.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, why can't we use yaffs etc?

Dimath said:
Yeah, why can't we use yaffs etc?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i don't think most partitioners support yaffs
i know the partition manager on ubuntu 8.10 doesn't

tubaking182 said:
i don't think most partitioners support yaffs
i know the partition manager on ubuntu 8.10 doesn't
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Indeed, and I'm fairly sure that's why it hasn't been done. But keep in mind several million write cycles is a heck of a lot and apps only really write their data caches occasionally, so it'll likely be a while before anything bad happens(on the scale of years) so this is slight sensationalism. Actually the term "cache" is a slight misnomer here since it's really just storage the apps use for temporary data. If it were used as some kind of extended RAM or a real cache then I could see problems but with what it's used for it should be a non-issue.

billc.cn said:
Here're the theories:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
SD cards are a form of removable flash that have their own write controllers. In most cases, the write controllers also perform wear levelling. This means even if a program writes to the same file on the sd repeatedly, each time it writes, it is not writing the same physical location on the flash. The reason for this is because due to the way flash works, entire blocks have to be erased before they can be rewritten. To make writing faster, the memory controller keeps a list of empty blocks that are ready to use. When a file is changed, the entire file with the new changes is written to a new memory block and then the old block with obsolete data is then reset to zeros (data deleted).
That said, I still think A2SD is a red herring that only contributes to newbies spamming these forums.

jashsu said:
SD cards are a form of removable flash that have their own write controllers. In most cases, the write controllers also perform wear levelling. This means even if a program writes to the same file on the sd repeatedly, each time it writes, it is not writing the same physical location on the flash. The reason for this is because due to the way flash works, entire blocks have to be erased before they can be rewritten. To make writing faster, the memory controller keeps a list of empty blocks that are ready to use. When a file is changed, the entire file with the new changes is written to a new memory block and then the old block with obsolete data is then reset to zeros (data deleted).
That said, I still think A2SD is a red herring that only contributes to newbies spamming these forums.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which is exactly why I made my new method that's able to deal with a lot of user mistakes and can be incorporated into ROMs to make it take almost 0 user effort

Dimath said:
Yeah, why can't we use yaffs etc?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yaffs on SD cards can in some common cases invalidate the wear leveling in hardware that SD cards do, as they so the wear leveling in software.
You are simply understimating ROM makers, SD cards are different from the internal flash in that they do auto wear leveling, that's why you can put common filesystems like FAT which have statically placed allocation tables and writes to the same logical sector will always land on very different places in the card every time.
Yes, noatime will help a lot as it will _reduce_ writes to your SD card.
ext2 is not journalled so it will have less writes too than ext3 or any other journalled filesystem.
So ROM makers are already doing a good job, don't understimate them please.

getting swapfile working on /data partition

Im trying out a theory. I running JAC Hero 2.3 and wanna try running the swapfile on the /data partition. I moved app_s over to /system/sd and used swapper app to create the swapfile but android doesnt seem to use it. when i run free It says Total/used/free are all 0 but the swap file is 34 meg. I tried putting it in a sub folder and chown root.root on the folder before setting up and still no luck. Anyone have any ideas why it wont work on /data or how to get it to work on /data?

Once you run swapper go into the setting and change the location of your swap file from /sdcard/swapfile.swp to /system/sd/swap.swp ( see sxfx post[url]

you don't want to do that. Swapping involves a lot of writing and erasing, it'll wear out your internal chip and you'll start experiencing reduced capacity, write cycles for nand are even less than for flash memory!

jubeh said:
you don't want to do that. Swapping involves a lot of writing and erasing, it'll wear out your internal chip and you'll start experiencing reduced capacity, write cycles for nand are even less than for flash memory!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not to mention, swapon as implemented (on every build i've tried) doesn't work on a swapfile stored on a yaffs2 partition

jubeh said:
you don't want to do that. Swapping involves a lot of writing and erasing, it'll wear out your internal chip and you'll start experiencing reduced capacity, write cycles for nand are even less than for flash memory!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually /sdcard/ is your fat32 portion of your sd card, /system/sd/ is the ext2/3 of your sd card.
Also I have done a bunch of research on this write/read fiasco just because of android.
And even if you set a swap file to your SD sure it will shorten your life of the card but it will still last you at least 2 years.
I have been using USB devices on linux as swap locations forever now and I still have thumb drives that have been used and abused for months and months as a swap place and they are still pulling strong.
As for the internal chip, Im not sure what you mean by that?

Even if you could put swap on the internal flash, its not going to be faster.
Putting swap on the internal flash will make things slower as the internal flash is about 3 to 5 times slower than a class 6 sdcard.

you're comparing using a flash drive for swap in a full blown computer that probably has around 1-4gb of ram, the swap file is hardly ever touched, unless you're running a lot of applications at a time. Dream has only 90 mb available to dalvik, and rosie is a big fat... lady... plus linux/dalvik manage memory in a different way, so files are often dropped to swap and they dont stay there for long (maybe in a 256 swap, but not in a 32 mb one).
the OP also is talking about moving his swap to his internal storage (chip, nand, whatever), as he thinks it's having no effect working from the sd card. Personally, i think that both a2sd and swapper are flawed. They're overcompensating for an os that was not meant to run on that device, and the real work should be in porting (as in developing, not just file-swapping as most "devs" do here) a launcher app that we can feel comfortable with running on a stock android system with stock (or slightly improved) libraries and that we can call comparable to rosie. Just look at ahome or dxtop or openhome, they're good, solid, great looking home replacements that work as well or better than rosie, but they run out of the stock libraries. I wonder why nobody has made a free, open source home replacement app yet

jubeh said:
you're comparing using a flash drive for swap in a full blown computer that probably has around 1-4gb of ram, the swap file is hardly ever touched, unless you're running a lot of applications at a time. Dream has only 90 mb available to dalvik, and rosie is a big fat... lady... plus linux/dalvik manage memory in a different way, so files are often dropped to swap and they dont stay there for long (maybe in a 256 swap, but not in a 32 mb one).
the OP also is talking about moving his swap to his internal storage (chip, nand, whatever), as he thinks it's having no effect working from the sd card. Personally, i think that both a2sd and swapper are flawed. They're overcompensating for an os that was not meant to run on that device, and the real work should be in porting (as in developing, not just file-swapping as most "devs" do here) a launcher app that we can feel comfortable with running on a stock android system with stock (or slightly improved) libraries and that we can call comparable to rosie. Just look at ahome or dxtop or openhome, they're good, solid, great looking home replacements that work as well or better than rosie, but they run out of the stock libraries. I wonder why nobody has made a free, open source home replacement app yet
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You make a very good point about computer having 1-4gigs of ram and not needing a swap file.
Honestly I almost never run a swap file on a computer that has more then 1gig of ram.
Plus90% of the time when I do run a swap file is when Im running a live distro of linux of a cd, but also 90% of the time I run the distro from the flash drive instead of cd cause its much faster.
So now imagine how many reads/writes I abuse that flash drive with by running a full OS on it.
Also I don't understand how a2sd or swapper is flawed? Just because they do their job? I mean it's not really our fault that they made the G1 with a little less memory spaces then we would like it to have.
But that's exactly why we have tools like swapper and a2sd. Plus no one is really forced to run these roms on the G1 phone and those of us that do realize that we have to take extra steps in creating tools to help it.
And that's not only true for the G1 but anywhere in the computer world these days.

dwang said:
Even if you could put swap on the internal flash, its not going to be faster.
Putting swap on the internal flash will make things slower as the internal flash is about 3 to 5 times slower than a class 6 sdcard.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd like to spread swap over the sd and internal storage if possible -- should make paging a lot less evident if priorities are set up properly.

dwang said:
Even if you could put swap on the internal flash, its not going to be faster.
Putting swap on the internal flash will make things slower as the internal flash is about 3 to 5 times slower than a class 6 sdcard.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
internal memory is faster. class 6 guarantees 6mbs read/write times but doesnt mean the bus can support those times. if you run a test copying something to /system/sd and to /data you will see /data is faster. as for those saying it will degrade the internal memory, that is not the case being the flash memory inside is designed to have much much much more read/write cycles. Think about it in a stock G1, this is where dalvik-cache is writen to as well as email, sms, user settings, cache for browser and uTube. Do not confuse internal flash memory to sd card flash memory

Are you sure about that? This guy has some test results and it indicates that a class 6 sdcard is much faster than the internal flash.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=4059520&postcount=15
MonkySlap said:
internal memory is faster. class 6 guarantees 6mbs read/write times but doesnt mean the bus can support those times. if you run a test copying something to /system/sd and to /data you will see /data is faster. as for those saying it will degrade the internal memory, that is not the case being the flash memory inside is designed to have much much much more read/write cycles. Think about it in a stock G1, this is where dalvik-cache is writen to as well as email, sms, user settings, cache for browser and uTube. Do not confuse internal flash memory to sd card flash memory
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

dwang said:
Are you sure about that? This guy has some test results and it indicates that a class 6 sdcard is much faster than the internal flash.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=4059520&postcount=15
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's interesting. Going to have to try that test out. I just noticed when xfering stuff to /data it was faster then to /system/sd. If it is then touche my friend.....touche

[g1] Partitioning The Ram?

I understand that this probably will get moved and placed elsewhere under some long post but I'd like to make an individual thread and catch the eyes of people who wouldn't go through those threads to find this.
Any who can we partition the Ram like we did the sd card for apps?
Why?
To set and limit core apps and fix force closings [possibly] and making space for third party apps to run smoothly.
I don't know if it is possible but I do think it is a beautiful idea.

No, there's no way to accomplish anything like that(at least nothing I've ever heard of and I'm a software engineer)

I'm glad that you feel your idea is more important than everyone elses.
No, you can't partition RAM.

i don't know about android OS but ram drives can be created in linux
ram drive is important for ssd users and is created with tmpfs in fstab

There already are memory usage limits set for different types of applications. You can see this in init.rc. But it's not practical to "partition" the memory or limit the memory used by backgroud apps. As you can see the default policy is actually biased towards background services, etc.

samygent said:
i don't know about android OS but ram drives can be created in linux
ram drive is important for ssd users and is created with tmpfs in fstab
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, they can be created in Android. That is what compcache uses. But from what I read in the OP, that isn't what he is looking for. Maybe I misunderstood him but it sounded like he wanted to limit certain applications from being able to use too much memory. A RAM drive is available to the OS to manage, right? I don't know of any way to stop a specific application from using a RAM drive.

could he be talking about like how the spl partitions data cache and system?

you mount the ram drive like a normal disk and copy whatever files you want on that partition but sadly everything is lost when you reboot
i would like to try it but i don't want to brick my phone by messing up with my fstab

I think i understand he's question. Would it be possible to use g1 internal memory only for hungry tasks and swap partition for the rest ?
I wish it was but sadly it not possible. I hate it too when some silly task take internal memory space with is way faster then sd swap speed
and now that i think about it , ram drive would'nt really help simply because android applications take very low space on drive

samygent said:
you mount the ram drive like a normal disk and copy whatever files you want on that partition but sadly everything is lost when you reboot
i would like to try it but i don't want to brick my phone by messing up with my fstab
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was trying to do it based on some stuff I googled. I can't get it to work. It may not have support for it by default. It could be that Compcache loads what it needs to so that it can create a Ramdisk.
Post the steps that you would use and I will try it. It won't brick my phone, I'll just have to wipe and reload which is no big deal.

not gonna mess with fstab for the moment but you can try this
create a dir somewhere, mkdir -p /system/ram
and then
mount -t tmpfs -o size=5M,mode=0744 tmpfs /system/ram
you now have a 5mb ram drive
copy something on it to test

samygent said:
not gonna mess with fstab for the moment but you can try this
create a dir somewhere, mkdir -p /system/ram
and then
mount -t tmpfs -o size=5M,mode=0744 tmpfs /system/ram
you now have a 5mb ram drive
copy something on it to test
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It might have to wait until I get off Hero but I will try it.

i'm using hero
funny thing is , i created a 100 mb ram drive, copy something on it and umount it. swap is almost full and 35mb free on internal ram
then tried to start hero browser and it started in about less then 2 secs

samygent said:
i'm using hero
funny thing is , i created a 100 mb ram drive, copy something on it and umount it. swap is almost full and 35mb free on internal ram
then tried to start hero browser and it started in about less then 2 secs
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting. Try setting it as a swap device. Are you sure it created it from RAM? Is there really 100Mb of RAM free?

yup my hero is a lot faster now
create ram partition, copy big ass file ( 80 mb hero file ) phone is very slow
ram and swap are used up to 100%
umount the ram partition , 50 mb free on internal ram and 50 mb used on swap partition
internal ram goes down to 1-2 mb free space after a few seconds but phone is very damn fast and swap is still filled up to 50 mb

samygent said:
yup my hero is a lot faster now
create ram partition, copy big ass file ( 80 mb hero file ) phone is very slow
ram and swap are used up to 100%
umount the ram partition , 50 mb free on internal ram and 50 mb used on swap partition
internal ram goes down to 1-2 mb free space after a few seconds but phone is very damn fast and swap is still filled up to 50 mb
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are basically just forcing the phone to use all swap instead of RAM. Some people set their swapiness to 100, which makes the phone use swap whenver possible. It's strange that swap would perform better than internal RAM. I have some ideas for making Hero run better but I can't get Compcache running on JACxHEROski. Which Hero are you running?

miketaylor00 said:
You are basically just forcing the phone to use all swap instead of RAM. Some people set their swapiness to 100, which makes the phone use swap whenver possible. It's strange that swap would perform better than internal RAM. I have some ideas for making Hero run better but I can't get Compcache running on JACxHEROski. Which Hero are you running?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You need to do it via rzstool

And her I thought I was an idiot for not being able to get get compcache running thru the userinit....

I'm sorry to hear that this seams like it can't be done currently but I'm glad I at least created some good conversation amongst everyone.
My whole idea for this was to partition the core apps and limit them/section them to only a certain amount of space to avoid them from force closing since they could have an appropriate amount of dedicated ram to keep them going clean and strong then after all that was taken care of third party apps could have a little space left to run a lot better.
I guess I'm more so just thinking about sectioning off the ram to apps then third party apps.

First off, don't get compcache running through userint.sh edit the user.conf file.

Weird issue regarding app storage

Just wondered if anyone could help clear this up for me. I currently have 3 systems via BMM. System 1,3, & 4, all built the same way. 500mb, 1000mb, 500mb with system/data/cache partitions respectively. However system system 1 is reporting insufficient space to install/update any apps now. Is there a glitch with android disk space reporting? I've followed every tip I've found on the "insufficient space' error to no avail.
Sent from my MB865 using XDA Premium HD app

I've had this issue numerous times...gets to point where I need to wipe from 1-4. IMHO and my experiences I've found that system 2, keep blank and just ACTIVATE it. Then proceed to 3-4 setting up both those systems, 500 system, 1000 data and 300 cache. And I'm able to have system one (stock for me) 2 (blank) 3 and 4 now 1,3, and 4 all have the same amount of apps I get and seems much but no errors since using the system I've set. Hope this helps a little bit. Maybe cache was set too high try 300 for each. Would only max out 3 systems though with 2 being blank. You should be fine if you do this.
Sent from my MB865 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

I'm thinking it is just some sort of glitch with the android system. I started uninstalling apps, had up to 700MB free on data partition and was still receiving the error. Gave up and started getting creative, moved all the low usage apps to the SD card and the rest integrated into the ROM (/system) via Titanium.
It would help if I knew a little more about how BMM utilized space. I mean are all the systems held in /data partition of System 1 (which would include /system(3) /data(3) /cache(3) /system(4) /data(4) /cache(4) etc etc? In which case System 1 is the only with dedicated /system and /cache partitions?

Post # 348 & onwards in the said thread, have detailed the same discussion as your query, read the same for insights. Bottomline apparently seems, live with a max of 2 addon rom's leaving 2 slots besides slot 2 free to avoid low internal memory issue. When I first joined Atrix 2 forum I was majorly advised against installing programs to ext sd card and to top it I have a class 10 32gb but till date i run the same card and practically most of my programs are installed to ext sd card. I avoid installing the grey x marked apps to sd as indicated by apps2sd.

You must have a larger /data partition as mine is only 4.5GB and I only have 2 additional systems. I did change all of the cache partitions to 300MB though. Fortunately for me I don't tend to stay in system 1, I use system 3 as more of a daily driver.
EDIT: Interesting I found an additional 200MB but deleting several 'cache.img' files found in /data/media/0 is several recursive folder structures. I rebooted and only one of them repopulated themselves. Oddly enough 2 of them were 300MB and 1 of them was 500MB. However as noted, I only regained around 200MB of space according to android system.

unsivil_audio said:
You must have a larger /data partition as mine is only 4.5GB and I only have 2 additional systems. I did change all of the cache partitions to 350MB though. Fortunately for me I don't tend to stay in system 1, I use system 3 as more of a daily driver.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The hardware of all A2's are the same, just that stock JB allots the webtop space (or something on those lines). Reason why I asked you to head over to that thread was to learn more about the duplication of virtual folders & the subsequent discussion I had which would provide some inputs for your query, as mine was the same as well.

We'll I've done it now, System 1 is toast. Tried moving all my apps back to internal storage (thinking I'd freed up enough addition space), and completed successfully, however shortly there after started hot booting. Rebooted into recovery cleared cache and dalvik cache, and now its stuck at 'Starting apps....'. Not sure how to get back my System 1 without tanking my other 2 installs (since 'wipe data/factory reset' formats /data where they are held).

Insufficient storage available - HTC one S

Hi everyone,
When I try to install new apps or try to update an existing app, I'll receive the error message that I don't have enough storage on my device. In my storage settings I can clearly see, that I have more than 250MB left (of 2,34GB). At the moment I can't even install something that is below 1 MB.
For a long time I was running standard Android 4.1 on this HTC one S and lived with this error... Last week I tried to get to the cause of that issue, because it annoys me every day a little more. I rooted my device and flashed Cyanogenmod 12.1, hoping that this could fix my issue. But it didn't. After installing some apps I'm again facing that annoying issue.
In my storage options I do have the possibility to move apps to "SD". Even though the HTC one S doesn't have an SD slot, I guess this is moving the apps to another partition of the flash. Unfortunately they are not copied completely to the other partition. In some cases only a few MB or sometimes only a few KB are moved to that "SD", according to my storage settings.
I already wiped my cache, but unfortunately that didn' t change anything. Is someone of you running into the same issues or even has a solution for me? If you need more informations or tests, just let me know.
Thank you guys in advance!

I have the same problem and it is just absolutely out of control. I can't understand why this garbage is allowed to happen. I have very few apps, with the biggest being GApps' updated versions. But the phone's storage only seems to be 2GB - which is unusable.
It seems like modern phones use a "dynamic /data" arrangement, where /sdcard is really a virtual path to /data/media (so the sdcard contents actually exist in the /data partition, hence can't be mounted as USB storage or FAT). I'm constantly running into the "insufficient storage" problem with >200MB free - which is hardly enough to even work with anyway.
The problem is made significantly worse by dalvik-cache storing a second copy of the app - so that instead of a 20MB app only taking 20 MB of storage, it really takes about 40MB (or more, depending on extra uncompressed data). Like keeping a copy of the installer along side the actual program, for every program you use on your computer.
I have no need for any "/sdcard" storage, as almost all my data is cloud-based (Dropbox photos, Tidal, Slacker, Spotify music, etc), so I hope to find some way to repartition the internal storage to split it up into 8GB /data with the rest as /sdcard (possibly as low as 4GB), and minimize the /cache partition which is generally unused anyway. It's a damn shame that this isn't given more priority among the people trying to squeeze more /sdcard space (to use with what apps?!). :/