[Q] Strange automated system restore from gingerbread vimicro 7'' - General Questions and Answers

Hello All,
I have a tablet here that I haven't been able to fix (yet!)
It's a mid vimicro vortex vc0882, armv7, grh55 with android 2.3 November 2011 firmware (resistive 7'') 512mb ram, 4 gb sandisk class 4 internal memory.
Although since getting this one, I now have several other much faster ones to choose from, I really like this tablet with it's chunky yet smooth navigation and so far no pc, laptop, netbook or tablet has beaten me!
Some time around early December 2012 this device experienced a system crash (freeze) that left several apps and games crashing on next boot.
This had happened once before. At which time I performed a simple factory reset from settings\privacy menu and all was well. Not the case after this more recent crash!
The device is stuck with all data as of the crash date. It will install and uninstall apps cleanly within the session, it will write to the internal sd card, yet next time the machine is started, everything is back as it was. The external sd card seems fine and unaffected (moving apps to this doesn't improve the situation, as in still not writing current configuration correctly).
ADB will push basic requests incl installation of apps, but that's as far as it goes. Any clockwork mod based tools don't help. Recovery menu has been tried with every combination. Any recovery / update from zip has been rejected due to e signature error. Tried flash tools and nothing has got through. Once the machine restarts, all is back to crash date groundhog day!
The machine is rooted (has been for most of it's life) and this didn't seem to create any problems.
I have contacted the suppliers for any firmware / recovery that they have, no joy there yet.
Sorry about the long post!
As I have root access does anyone have ideas about a system file workaround / mod or a forced clockwork mod to enable update from zip that bypasses the e-signature verification?
Permissions have been checked and system cleaned on a regular basis.
This tablet is very close to the wopad one just different buttons/button locations, with power/menu/home and back buttons.
Thanks for any positive input!
Bob

Update... Anyone out there?
After removing the internal sd card and exploring the fat 32 partition via windows, I deleted a few non essential local files (one or two of them I had to change the permissions to do so). Refreshed the disk (sd card) and the files were back. So it appears that there is an error in the sd card. Based on this idea, I tried to copy the fat 32 + full linux partitions with contents from the original 4gb sandisk to a 4gb kingston card. All appeared correct via linux type explorer software on windows, but it doesn't work for the device. Attached are the details from the partitioning software and another program that questioned the partitioning setup.
Any tips on the best software for the job + which key (possibly hidden elements) need to be included?
Thanks
Bob

3rd time lucky....
In summary, is it realistic to copy an android's internal micro sd card (system) to another blank card including correct formatting of partitions and get it to operate when inserting the copied / cloned internal memory card into the device?
A while back I asked a question regarding a different tablet, which fell on deaf ears, after a bit I sorted it myself.
Considering the nature of this forum, if this one goes "unsuggested" I will be somewhat disappointed.
With a touch of faith?
Bob
bob_mac said:
Update... Anyone out there?
After removing the internal sd card and exploring the fat 32 partition via windows, I deleted a few non essential local files (one or two of them I had to change the permissions to do so). Refreshed the disk (sd card) and the files were back. So it appears that there is an error in the sd card. Based on this idea, I tried to copy the fat 32 + full linux partitions with contents from the original 4gb sandisk to a 4gb kingston card. All appeared correct via linux type explorer software on windows, but it doesn't work for the device. Attached are the details from the partitioning software and another program that questioned the partitioning setup.
Any tips on the best software for the job + which key (possibly hidden elements) need to be included?
Thanks
Bob
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Related

Any way to clone an SD card? (2 gig upgrade to 8 gig)

*I've spent a lot of time searching...all the answers I come up with involve copy and paste the folders...which is what I did...but windows doesn't show me my ext3 partition.*
I recently rooted my G1, formatted my 2 gig SD with a 32mb swap and 500mb ext3 and flashed cyanogen 4.0.1. I quickly realized that a 2 gig card was just not enough (now that I'm left with 1.1 gig...) so I purchased a class 6, 8 gig card
I plugged the phone in to my computer, copied all my files, put cyanogen recovery 1.4 on the 8 gig and booted to console, formatted the card to my 7200, 500 and 32mb partitions. Shut the phone down, stuck the card in my card reader and moved all the files that were on the 2 gig onto the 8 gig. Booted the phone...damn it...no apps!
Took a few minutes of head scratching before I remembered that cyanogen 4.0.1 does the apps to the ext3 partition! all my apps are on the 2 gig! *arg*
Is there a way to clone the 2 gig card to the 8 gig without messing up the partitions? or just copy everything from my ext3 to the new ext3?? I really don't want to go through and download all the apps I had again
I found some SD card clone software (sprite? IIRC) but that looks like its specifically for WM devices.
As I understand your SD are formatted to ext3. Best solution is download any live linux distribution (live = run from cd into ram without installing and changing anything) and copy files normally.
yeah all ubuntu iso's include a live os you can boot up in without it installing anything to your harddisk there you should be able to read ext3
Hadn't considered that...
Thanks for the help
unfortunately, even just sticking the 2gig card back in the phone none of the apps work the phone boots and I get a long list of "xxxxx encountered an error and must force close"
looks like its off to the market for me...
*sigh*
tsiah said:
unfortunately, even just sticking the 2gig card back in the phone none of the apps work the phone boots and I get a long list of "xxxxx encountered an error and must force close"
looks like its off to the market for me...
*sigh*
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just for future reference....how does one go about backing up the ext partition of the SD card so if your current card has an issue you can stick the backup card in and keep running without having to download all your apps again??? I mean...if removing the original card, then turning the phone on with a new card in there caused it to "forget" the location of all the apps when the original card was installed...how does a backup card do you any good??
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=4397141#post4397141
This thread appears to be the answer...If I ever have to get another card, I'll give this a try.
I use HDD Raw Copy, just use a partition manager to resize old partitions
http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/
Greetings
I've used GParted from Live USB Linux (I use PuppyLinux, but any other Live Linux with GParted would do) to copy partitions between sdcards / usb drives / hard disks. It's GUI based, very simple and does the job.
Just plug both the sdcards into your computer before opening GParted,
Once open, GParted would ask option to use only one device or all devices - make sure you select all devices.
After it loads all the devices, you can select the 2GB card, right click each partition, copy and select 8GB card and paste the partition there.
Please follow the partition order so that you don't change the order in the 8GB card.
Once all the partitions are done, you can resize the partition you want to make bigger on the 8GB to fill the card.
After configuring everything, click Apply and wait for GParted to do all the magic!

SD card problems.

I have several SD card issues that hopefully someone can help me with.
First, I have an 8gb card, but only 7.3 of it is accessable. I have a micro SD card reader, and Gparted. Re-formatted the card a couple of times, and it always comes up as 7.3gigs.
Second, when I rooted my phone, I used the Recovery image Ivanmmj has in the stock 1.5 to root thread here on this forum. Shortly after, I think when I flashed ClockworkMod Recovery, I lost the ability to get into recovery by holding volume up and power. Only volume down and power gets me into a recovery state.
Third, I went into ADB and entered some commands from other places to do stuff to the Sd card, but one command still lingers when I do backup or restores:
E:can't mount /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 No such device.
Either that command is blocking off a section of my SD card, or the card just has a bad sector... Any ideas guys?
Dr.Strange said:
I have several SD card issues that hopefully someone can help me with.
First, I have an 8gb card, but only 7.3 of it is accessable. I have a micro SD card reader, and Gparted. Re-formatted the card a couple of times, and it always comes up as 7.3gigs.
Second, when I rooted my phone, I used the Recovery image Ivanmmj has in the stock 1.5 to root thread here on this forum. Shortly after, I think when I flashed ClockworkMod Recovery, I lost the ability to get into recovery by holding volume up and power. Only volume down and power gets me into a recovery state.
Third, I went into ADB and entered some commands from other places to do stuff to the Sd card, but one command still lingers when I do backup or restores:
E:can't mount /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 No such device.
Either that command is blocking off a section of my SD card, or the card just has a bad sector... Any ideas guys?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
was gonna say card has bad sector, or clockworkmod has a signiture for that file space like a partition, I have read that clockworkmod does this to phones, this is one reason why they brick, and we are told not to use clockwork for this very reason. there are some very nice features in clockwork mod, but for recovery its best to stay with amonra and use the update.zip to change to clockwork if you need to i have included the update.zip
I have never seen an 8gb card with 8gb accessable. It doesn't sound like anything is wrong here as far as the capacity of your card. My 8gb card has only 7.3 accessable as well. It is standard for any storage medium wether it be an sd card or computer hard drive.
As far as the volume up issue, it has always been volume - for both my phone and my girlfriend's phone. I used the Eris Root For Dummies method for my phone and the One Click Universal Root Method for my girlfriend's. Volume + and end never worked for either phone. Don't know why, but I can get there reguardless.
Hope this helps some.
Dr.Strange said:
I have several SD card issues that hopefully someone can help me with.
First, I have an 8gb card, but only 7.3 of it is accessable. I have a micro SD card reader, and Gparted. Re-formatted the card a couple of times, and it always comes up as 7.3gigs.
Second, when I rooted my phone, I used the Recovery image Ivanmmj has in the stock 1.5 to root thread here on this forum. Shortly after, I think when I flashed ClockworkMod Recovery, I lost the ability to get into recovery by holding volume up and power. Only volume down and power gets me into a recovery state.
Third, I went into ADB and entered some commands from other places to do stuff to the Sd card, but one command still lingers when I do backup or restores:
E:can't mount /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 No such device.
Either that command is blocking off a section of my SD card, or the card just has a bad sector... Any ideas guys?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is nothing wrong with your SD card.
Hard drive, SD card, and USB thumbdrive manufacturers typically define megabytes, gigabytes, etc as incrementing by powers of 1000. (so 1GB = 1000MB)
Most operating systems & software define megabytes, gigabytes, etc as incrementing by powers of 1024. (so 1GB = 1024MB)
So according to the manufacturer, your SD card has a capacity of 8GB (8000MB)
According to any operating system (Android, Windows, OSX, Linux, etc), your card has a capacity of 7.8GB (8000MB / 1024)
When you format ANY storage medium (hard drive, SD card, etc), the stated capacity of the device and the available capacity will not be the same.
To make matters worse, some of that 8GB/7.8GB (depending on how you measure) has to be used by the file system to figure out exactly where all of your files are being stored on the card.
I don't know if you ever had to use a card catalog system in a library, but think of it this way.
Let's say you build a library capable of holding a thousand books. However, you're not going to arrange the books according to author's names, titles, or the Dewey Decimal System. You're just going to stick them on shelves in whatever order you get them in.
Whenever you need to find a particular book, you're going to need some way of figuring out exactly where it is in the library. So you'd need a card catalog of sorts. This card catalog is going to take up some of the room in your library, meaning you won't be able to store EXACTLY 1000 books anymore.
Okay, it might not be the best analogy in the world, but it's late here and I hope it gets the point across.
From wikipedia: "A general rule of thumb to quickly convert the manufacturer's hard disk capacity to the standard Microsoft Windows formatted capacity is 0.93*capacity of HDD from manufacturer for HDDs less than a terabyte."
So out of that 7.8GB of space, you're only going to be able to use about 7.3GB of it (7.8 * 0.93).
Oh, and as for
"E:can't mount /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 No such device. "
I'm not too certain about this, but i believe /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 is the mounting point for apps2sd partitions, assuming the ROM supports them, and if you're running a stock ROM, it won't.
Your recovery image does though, so every time you do a nandroid backup/restore, it checks for an existing partition for apps2sd. Since it doesn't exist, it shows that message. Nothing to worry about.
Hopefully someone who knows a bit more about it can explain it better, but I don't believe that's an actual error in this case.
I do know it doesn't have anything to do with your 8GB/7.3GB issue though.
Did you try partitioning it on your phone to 0? That worked when I had a similar problem.
i have phone xperia acro SO-02s..when i put SIM card+SD card,the SD card not detected,but when i take SIM card and put SD card..my SD card is working,,please help me.thanks

[Q] Keep burning out SDs - need advise ....

I am the following setup on my Charge
Voodoo based kernel; regular and over clock
Sd card read fix patch
EE4 fully stock up to date
CWR 4.x.x.04 - the one without voodoo options
This is my second incident with card going bad. The first time I used it for two weeks and card became unreadable. Tried reformat from the phone and on CWR level without any success.
On second ocasion phone worked also two weeks without any issues - till I suddenly got on power up "bad card" pop up. Tried to reformat - failed.
I booted into CWR and to my surprise I was able to browse the card. I deleted cache, Davlik, boot part, reapplied voodoo and ovclock kernels, reapplied card read error pathch - in all possible sequences without much susccess. I do not have voodoo controls under my version of CWR (too bad) and since I do not have memory card - I cannot download and install 3rd party voodo control to try to enable and disable and see if it makes a difference.
I am without access to my pc for a week so Odin or repartitioning lwith pit file and full stock reflash are not an option for me right now. I tried mount SD on a windows machine - without much success as it sees is un formatted. CWR sees it without issues and let's me reflash kernel and patch zips.
I am sure that I will get it working eventually - but would like to ask our opinion AFAYK what is going on? I hate having to lose my cards with pics and data with is not backed up regularly. This is my first device I lost an SD card.
I am assuming that it is related to the voodoo Linux based file system. do you think running a full stock on a voodoo has anything to do with it?
Thanks in advance
i was under the impression that the "Sd card read fix patch" wasn't needed any more.
You might have a bad device that keeps toasting your cards. Have you tried viewing your card in a Linux machine?
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA App
I have tried both ways - with and without the patch
You said you were able to mount your sd on a windows machine. Any reason you can't use that machine and odin off of it? Its just a quick download away.
I do not have access to a linux box. Factory reset, Odin and options under CWR are the only options that I usually use. Can I test my phone without a Linux box?
I was just thinking Linux might try to force read it since it ignores file permissions etc. Also, you can't format the SD card within CWM.
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA App
It was not my computer - I just wanted to test if i can see sd card on a wintel box. In the long run I do not mind doing the pit file with full stock flash - I just do not want to find myself burning more cards
If you fix it and it does it again i would definitely go to a Verizon store and have it checked out.
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA App
Use a small sd card sufficient enough to do everything you want to. If it happens again take it to verizon fully stock and they should replace the phone and SD.
Just to add more to the puzzle
I have second Charge absolutely the same setup.
When I tried to load SD card that is unreadable on the original Charge on the phone level
- I get the same damaged card error.
CWR on both phones can read it.
Just out of curiosity, are these 32gb cards?
Android has a known issue with 32gb cards getting corrupted if they are not formatted with a 32kb allocation size.
The workaround is to re format the card with your windows PC to FAT32, 32kb allocation size. Do a full format, not the quick format.
The two cards that got damaged are leftover cards from my fascinates. 16GB. One of them was reformatted and the other one was not - just reused it the moving all files from root folder to a folder called "Old" ( while mounted on my pc)
I used to be on an non Voodoo kernel/rom on my fascinates, when I installed voodoo kernel on Charge - file system got converted (per female voice)
Apparently I am not the only one with this problem
I stumbled upon this
http://forums.androidcentral.com/verizon-droid-charge/111200-wiping-sd-card.html#post1179362
Looks like that reusing a 16 GB card from fascinate is the issue in both instances.
I am still eager to learn what is the issue?
@Racer
Is it related to a different block size that is used by Samsung to format SD s on Charge? do you have more details on it? Do you know if I can possibly salvage my cards?
garryo said:
@Racer
Is it related to a different block size that is used by Samsung to format SD s on Charge? do you have more details on it? Do you know if I can possibly salvage my cards?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is a problem with the interaction between android and some firmwares in the sdhc cards. It isn't really something that is Samsung specific.
I did some research on it and it solved my problem (similar to yours) that I had with my PNY 32gb class 10 card.
I would definitely try formatting your cards with a windows pc, full format, fat32, 32kb allocation size before I gave up on them.
here are some links:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1010228
http://www.patriotmemory.com/forums...-LX-Series-MicroSD-Problems-on-Android-phones

[Q] Dual boot with microSD?

Is it possible on the surface pro? Im a developer/student. Windows 8 is great for in class stuff but when it comes to developing, linux takes the win. I'd love to be able to install linux on a microSD card and boot to that (yeah, I know it will be slow but it can be left in the surface without protruding too much). Anyway is this possible? I can't find anything on this beyond removing win 8 and loading linux on it.
Meh, kids these days... when I was in college, I tri-booted on a 60GB hard disk.
But, if the internal storage isn't good enough for you, yes of course you can install Linux to the microSD card. You'll need to disable Secure Boot as usual for installing Linux at all. Beyond that, it's the same as any other Linux install except instead of reformatting the system partition, you reformat the microSD card and install there. People have been installing Linux to removable storage for years; it's no different on the Surface Pro and a microSD card than on a desktop with an external HDD or a laptop with a flashdrive or ... you get the idea.
Great, Thanks. I was just unsure since no one has seemed to do it (or at least posted it on the internet).
And don't get me wrong, I remember installing linux/windows on my first laptop with 20GB. These days, however, files are larger than CD's and the remaing space on the pro just does not cut it anymore, unless I want to delete all my downloads after using them.
Thanks again!
YOu need to go into charms > settings > Change PC Settings > General > Advanced startup to be able to boot from a usb or sd
can I install MAC OS? if I can I will order right away
seesunmoon said:
can I install MAC OS? if I can I will order right away
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you asked the wrong question here.
Honestly, it does not matter if you can install MAC OS on the Pro.
The question you need answered is: Are there MAC OS Drivers for the Pro's Hardware? If not, then there is no point in seeing if the OS installs.
right, right, i guess apple will make something like surface pro, tablet with full max os
If history is any indication, they will do so 5-10 years after somebody else (typically Microsoft) has a similar OS/device, call it "revolutionary" and "innovative", and people will think they invented it...
Seriously though, I'm sure you could Hackintosh the Surface Pro, but hardware support may be lacking. The basic stuff (video, storage, sound, probably USB) and possibly some other things like WiFi and webcam will probably work. Touch and stylus are highly questionable. Normally I'd say that there's no chance of the covers working, but apparently they're fine under Linux so maybe they use an electrically standard interface through that funny docking connector.
There's something very weird about buying a (primarily) software company's hardware to put a (primarily) hardware company's software on it, though...
I have no doubt the Hackintosh guys will be all over this once a few of them get an S-Pro, I had an XE700 and there were people running it on them so I cant see the Pro taking much time for them to jump on to it.
Cool Dude
GoodDayToDie said:
Meh, kids these days... when I was in college, I tri-booted on a 60GB hard disk.
But, if the internal storage isn't good enough for you, yes of course you can install Linux to the microSD card. You'll need to disable Secure Boot as usual for installing Linux at all. Beyond that, it's the same as any other Linux install except instead of reformatting the system partition, you reformat the microSD card and install there. People have been installing Linux to removable storage for years; it's no different on the Surface Pro and a microSD card than on a desktop with an external HDD or a laptop with a flashdrive or ... you get the idea.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This does really answer the question at hand,
I haven't yet been able to boot from an MicroSD card I have used a USB drive to boot into Ubuntu 14 Trusty Thar, using instructions that are all over the web, however I haven't found any documentation of successfully boot from a MicroSD card. I will be trying this afternoon and will post what I find. Installing linux to the microSD card I'm sure will be straight forward, its the booting that will be an issue I'm sure.
Follow up coming soon
n4m4st3 said:
This does really answer the question at hand,
I haven't yet been able to boot from an MicroSD card I have used a USB drive to boot into Ubuntu 14 Trusty Thar, using instructions that are all over the web, however I haven't found any documentation of successfully boot from a MicroSD card. I will be trying this afternoon and will post what I find. Installing linux to the microSD card I'm sure will be straight forward, its the booting that will be an issue I'm sure.
Follow up coming soon
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I got this to work. You need to use:
rufus.akeo.ie
And then just choose USB boot from the menu advanced start up options menu. Which is funny because it doesn't actually show the micro sd as an option to boot, but it automatically finds it somehow.
Pretty sure the uSD slot is attached via USB, so it's basically just "boot from USB external storage".
Another way you could have done it is to install the Linux bootloader (GRUB stage 1) to the internal storage, and then have that chainload to the uSD card. That should work even if for some reason the firmware doesn't want to boot off uSD normally.
I just got a Surface Pro 2 and started playing with the idea of booting Linux off the SD card. I haven't done an actual installation yet, but I was just playing with the idea of making a bootable USB device preferably without having to change the internal SSD. (Especially since I have the 64GB base model and that's really barely enough for a comfortable use of Windows. I also wanted to leave the recovery partition intact as a good just-in-case.)
So first I made a bootable generic USB flash drive using UNetbootin and a stock Ubuntu 14.04 desktop installation image. Works as expected, can go into the "Advanced Startup" screen and boot from USB device. Nothing special, was able to launch the live session.
Then I used UNetbootin again, this time on an 8GB microSD I had laying around. The Surface would NOT boot off the microSD card through "Advanced Startup."
Then I tried it using the Rufus tool linked above -- this worked. You can go through "Advanced Startup" or hold volume down when powering on the Surface. Either way will launch the Live session. Very cool.
So then I went back and tried to figure out what was different. Same card, same base ISO... what I noticed was that Rufus was setting the "lba" flag on the SD card's FAT32 partition. So I formatted and recreated the card with UNetbootin again, verified it was unbootable, then used gparted to set the "lba" flag. After that, it booted. So this is something to note.
I'll have to actually try installing to the card and seeing if the Surface will boot from it or not. But this is something at least.
EDIT:
It seems like Surface will never boot the SD card if it isn't exactly a single FAT32 partition consuming the entire microSD card.
I'll just wrap up my last bit of contribution to this for now. I used a virtual machine with an EFI install of Windows 8 to stage this at first...
So the short end is, it seems the Surface Pro's firmware is strict about what it will boot from USB, and it seems to be a device that must be a single FAT32 partition with the "boot" and "lba" flags set, or else it won't work. If anyone knows of another combination, great, but this is what I determined through my limited experimentation.
Basically the most minimally invasive Ubuntu (or other Linux) install I could think to do that generally leaves the Surface a Surface and a Linux device second was this procedure (using Ubuntu 14.04):
Create an Ubuntu USB install device (use the aforementioned Rufus tool for best results or else be aware of the partitioning specifics.)
Use "Advanced Startup" or "Vol -" at power on to boot the USB key
When installing and prompted about disk installation, do "Something Else" (Careful! Very easy to obliterate the internal Windows or reduce space on less-equipped Surfaces to useless levels!)
Use "/dev/sda" as the place to install the boot loader (GRUB)
Resize the Surface's main Windows partition back by a small amount (e.g. 512MB)
Create an ext4 partition in this space and set this as the "/boot" mount point (exercise to the reader to look up making a /boot partition for GRUB and deciding on the amount they want to allocate)
Partition your SD Card in the Surface however you like, but you'll need some kind of ext4 partition for the Ubuntu installation, of course! (e.g. I split mine into NTFS, ext4, and swap space, but you can do whatever suits you)
Set your root mount point on the SD Card's ext4 partition.
And that's pretty much it -- the Ubuntu installer is smart enough to take care of the rest.
Major point here, regarding step 4 -- you CAN have the "/boot" on your SD card if you like, but what will happen is that you will be unable to properly boot from GRUB if you don't have that specific SD card inserted. If you never plan to remove your SD card, you can avoid changing the internal memory partitions at all.
Installing GRUB to the SD card through the Ubuntu installer will do no good since, again, the Surface seems adamant about only booting a device with a single FAT32 partition occupying the full space. Obviously the installer USB device you make IS a bootable Linux image on a FAT32 partition, so you CAN pull it off if you have all the know-how -- i.e. setting up GRUB and booting an ".img" file from the FAT32 partition -- pretty sure the Ubuntu installer doesn't support this in a straightforward manner.
In any case, I'm happy with GRUB and "/boot" being on /dev/sda. I can remove the card and simply be unable to boot Ubuntu, but still use Windows. If you follow this installation, I highly recommend setting GRUB to boot Windows by default just in case you do remove the SD card and don't have your touch cover connected. Further, I recommend setting up GRUB so that it always times out (on the default Windows selection) even if the previous boot failed (which, by Ubuntu default, GRUB will not timeout on a failed boot.) But of course this is all user preference and what kind of situations you expect yourself to be in.
Hopefully this is at least one adequate answer to the OP, even though it is over a year old.
Footnote: Haven't gotten the built-in WiFi / Bluetooth working, even with putting the firmware in place. (The mwiflex driver is complaining about a command timeout as soon as it loads and does not progress.) Tried a newer kernel, still doesn't work. I'm mostly interested in the WiFi, but as yet, still no good. But that's beyond what the OP was strictly asking.
UPDATE: Firmware update fixed WiFi. (Info from https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64111) -- Basically clone git git://git.marvell.com/mwifiex-firmware.git and copy /mwifiex-firmware/mrvl/usb8797_uapsta.bin to /lib/firmware/mrvl and reboot. Not sure if newer kernel needed. Was running kernel 3.15.0-999-generic from Ubuntu's mainline.
why install grub? the only reason is if you want to default boot into windows
since you're installing a second os on the microsd, you can access it directly with power+vol down
anyways, i was brought here because i was thinking of getting an sd card with a fully independent os for my surface pro
if i burn a ubuntu iso onto the microsd, you wouldnt actually be installing the os onto the sd card right? every time you boot, it would be the live-cd ubuntu
is there a way to install the full os onto the microsd?
anonxlg said:
why install grub? the only reason is if you want to default boot into windows
since you're installing a second os on the microsd, you can access it directly with power+vol down
anyways, i was brought here because i was thinking of getting an sd card with a fully independent os for my surface pro
if i burn a ubuntu iso onto the microsd, you wouldnt actually be installing the os onto the sd card right? every time you boot, it would be the live-cd ubuntu
is there a way to install the full os onto the microsd?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just install ubuntu onto the microsd...
anonxlg said:
why install grub? the only reason is if you want to default boot into windows
since you're installing a second os on the microsd, you can access it directly with power+vol down
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With power+vol down, I was only able to boot a USB device or microSD that was partitioned exactly as a single FAT32 partition occupying the entire device, which is also what you get from making a bootable Ubuntu key using tools usually. Even if all I did was shortchange the FAT32 partition, the Surface would no longer try to boot from it. It would not boot an SD card I installed Ubuntu to, and I tried it as a non-EFI and EFI install. If you have different results, go ahead and post about it. It seems to me that the firmware was being extremely particular about what kind of drive it was booting from. I'm not sure why Microsoft would make it so particular except to perhaps limit was sort of "recovery" devices you might be trying to load. Logically speaking, it only needs to boot a FAT32 partitioned device since that's the only thing generated by the recovery software in Windows 8, so they have no reason to support anything else.
Thank you southbird! Works great on my Surface Pro 2, BUT ....
Partitioned my micro SD (using gparted) as your instructions: two partitions - first partition ext4 and the other NTFS. Added small partition on internal HDD for /boot. I installed kubuntu 14.01. Made Windows the default boot, and everything works except Windows 8.1 will not recognize the partition for data (the partition that is formatted NTFS). It "sees" it as a broken drive and wants to format the whole micro SD card and I know it will delete the ext4 part (where / resides) because it doesn't "see" the card as being partitioned. Your instructions sound like you got the data partition to work (it is "seen" and usable in kubuntu). Did you do something else to get Windows to "see" it as a separate data partition? :fingers-crossed::fingers-crossed:
southbird said:
I'll just wrap up my last bit of contribution to this for now. I used a virtual machine with an EFI install of Windows 8 to stage this at first...
So the short end is, it seems the Surface Pro's firmware is strict about what it will boot from USB, and it seems to be a device that must be a single FAT32 partition with the "boot" and "lba" flags set, or else it won't work. If anyone knows of another combination, great, but this is what I determined through my limited experimentation.
Basically the most minimally invasive Ubuntu (or other Linux) install I could think to do that generally leaves the Surface a Surface and a Linux device second was this procedure (using Ubuntu 14.04):
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello Guys!
I have another question to add here!
Next week i'll get my Surface Pro 2 with 256GB
The last days my mind played with some ideas to have a dualboot option in the surface.
Is it possible to install Android Lollipop (or Kitkat) x86 on the micro sd (64GB) and boot from it?
I have read the whole thread but its a lil bit complicated.
Would be nice if anyons can show this in a step by step process, or guide me to a tutorial.
thanks!!
Methisfaction said:
Hello Guys!
I have another question to add here!
Next week i'll get my Surface Pro 2 with 256GB
The last days my mind played with some ideas to have a dualboot option in the surface.
Is it possible to install Android Lollipop (or Kitkat) x86 on the micro sd (64GB) and boot from it?
I have read the whole thread but its a lil bit complicated.
Would be nice if anyons can show this in a step by step process, or guide me to a tutorial.
thanks!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Indeed you can, however:
1. The microSD will need to be formatted with GPT partition scheme, and the boot partition must be FAT32;
2. The January 2015 UEFI update removes ability to boot from microSD. Skip that and you're golden!

Adopting internal storage results in corrupt storage

I have recently got a Shield Tablet and I have attempted to add a 128GB to the internal storage but every time I go through the adoption process to bring it into internal, it formats it and results in it being corrupted? The sdcard is brand new.
Tablet is on Marshmallow.
HeroXx said:
I have recently got a Shield Tablet and I have attempted to add a 128GB to the internal storage but every time I go through the adoption process to bring it into internal, it formats it and results in it being corrupted? The sdcard is brand new.
Tablet is on Marshmallow.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am having the same issue with the Shield tablet and a 128g sd card. I can use as portable, but trying to adopt as internal storage always returns the "damaged" partition after formatting and starting the moving process. I have tried formatting as ext4 in a PC first as recommended by others to no avail. If anyone is able to get this working please post your fix.
Found the below "Notes" on Nvidia's site. Looks like you'll have to format NTFS on your PC. Some PCs will not allow you that option out of the box, but you can easily change Windows' built-in formatter's options to allow it to format NTFS. The settings are somewhat hidden. To enable it, open up Device Manager and find your micro-SD card, go to the Properties -> Policies tab and then choose "Optimize for performance". Once you've done this, you'll see the NTFS option in the format dialog. Just make sure you "Eject" the card properly, as it seems it's more easily corrupted if not ejected properly.
NOTES:
The ability to move data to SD card is variable for select*apps*and games. Onlyapps*that developers have opted in as moveable to external storage can be moved.
The SHIELD tablet K1 only supports writing to FAT32 and NTFS formatted cards.
64*GB*(or higher) microSD cards – Android does not support the exFAT file system out-of-the-box. Because the standard FAT32 file system does NOT support partitions greater than 32*GB*by default, 64*GB*cards come pre-formatted as exFAT. If you want to use a 64*GB*microSD with the SHIELD tablet K1, it has to be converted to a file system format that is supported by stock Android, which in this case is NTFS. This can be done using a PC.
Android KitKat significantly changes the way applications are allowed to use SD cards. If you use SD Card to store data, please read here for further details."
Hey, I have a similar problem but wanted some opinions.
Received my new K1 and updated to MM and everything is cool. Installed PNY 64GB (10 class) and chose the integrated storage option. The K1 sees the storage and I'm able to move apps to it. My problem is that new apps cannot download due to no storage. The message "whatever app cannot be downloaded. Install a SD CARD......something, something" (sorry, I'm at work).
Will formatting my sd card to FAT32 or NTFS fix this or is there something else wrong? I haven't seen any messages or errors regarding corruption and the sd card is working.
Thanks for any helpful suggestions!
When my 64Gb card was formatted exFat as it came stock, i had the same issue. I'm on LP. I had an almost empty card inserted, other than some mp3 files, and kept getting the message that my storage was full and that i need to delete some apps. I've since formatted it NTFS but i have not checked to see if items are being sent to the external SD. Don't have my tablet with me right now to check, but i wanted to reply to you that you were not alone in seeing the out of room message.
Sent from my LG-E980 using XDA Free mobile app
I had my PNY 64GB formatted with exFAT and it worked ok. I've switched to adopted storage and that worked too. But I saw other glitches with internal storage, such as MTP not seeing all files/folders even after reboot. I think "adopted storage" is buggy in general currently. It's also quite slow. Not impressed.
I prefer the Move to SD of Lollipop and Kitkat.
Do we already have a fix/workaround for this? I have a K1 (with the latest OTA 1.2) and 64GV Samsung Evo, formatting the sd card as adoptive storage still says corrupted. I already tried formatting it as Fat32/NTFS but to no avail.
I also couldn't get adopted storage to work.
The best fix for me is not using adopted storage
Instead I use an app called FolderMount which simply creates a symbolic link (is this the correcton term?) on the device's internal storage for whatever folder/file you like. It integrates moving data and managing it as well making the process as easy as it gets though you can of course do the same thing manually as it's using linux operations to do these things.
After you make the symbolic link when apps look for the data in the usual place on internal storage they "see" it but the data is actually whereever the symbolic link points to ie. on your external SD card.
Not found any real workaround for this it makes the tablet a bit of a dud
Sent from my SHIELD Tablet K1 using XDA-Developers mobile app
diji1 said:
I also couldn't get adopted storage to work.
The best fix for me is not using adopted storage
Instead I use an app called FolderMount which simply creates a symbolic link (is this the correcton term?) on the device's internal storage for whatever folder/file you like. It integrates moving data and managing it as well making the process as easy as it gets though you can of course do the same thing manually as it's using linux operations to do these things.
After you make the symbolic link when apps look for the data in the usual place on internal storage they "see" it but the data is actually whereever the symbolic link points to ie. on your external SD card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've read about the FolderMount app before but I thought that it works only for lollipop. I'll give this a try. Thanks!
NinjaCoool said:
I've read about the FolderMount app before but I thought that it works only for lollipop. I'll give this a try. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Caveats: I actually haven't tried it on Marshmallow since I went back to LP however I cannot see any reason that FolderMount will not work as it's using underlying Linux operations to do all the work. But YMMV.
I like this approach since you can move any folder from internal storage to microSD which makes it very flexible. For example you could move:
/Download
/Images/DCIM
/Android/obb
/Android/data
/where you store recorded videos/
and never worry about internal storage again (until you run out of microSD of course lel)
Or whatever you wanted.
diji1 said:
Caveats: I actually haven't tried it on Marshmallow since I went back to LP however I cannot see any reason that FolderMount will not work as it's using underlying Linux operations to do all the work. But YMMV.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
FolderMount from the Play Store is not working on MM due to security changes.
There is a beta version that fixes it for some devices. Best to read the official thread here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2192122
Sent from my SGH-I337M using XDA Free mobile app
There's a problem with cards 64GB and up. I managed to format as internal storage a 32GB one, had no succes with 64 and 128 ones
I couldn't get portable storage to work on the stock MM RoW LTE rom. It works perfectly fine on all the custom roms I've tried (Bliss, Temasek, RR, etc) but none of those have LTE so for me it's either or if I want to use a MM rom. Otherwise, I'd have to use a LP rom for both to work...
I've hit this issue using the RR rom with my 128gb SD. But then if I keep the card in portable mode, I have those permission issues with my emulators. Has anyone got any suggestions or recommendations?
I've so far tried xInternalSD, SDFix and FolderMount with no success and I don't want to do that solution where I have to adjust the permission xml of all my apps. Its micromanagement I don't want.
I just have to use fat32 to get my 128gb card to work.
gqukyo said:
I just have to use fat32 to get my 128gb card to work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To work as adopted storage or portable storage? Because mine is working in portable mode, just has write to SD permissions issues for any apps not updated to deal with MM's new OTT security requirements on External SD's (which is most apps to be honest).
Adopted storage, I only tried it once but didn't like it so using portable.
gqukyo said:
Adopted storage, I only tried it once but didn't like it so using portable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Being Fat32 initially shouldn't have made a difference, because the card is reformatted to ext4 when its made into adopted storage and the tablet just seems incapable of reading an ext4 encrypted SD Card, so it comes up as corrupted.
What brand and model is your 128gb micro sd? And was it the stock rom you did it on? I'm using a Sandisk Ultra myself, and this definately does not work.
It's been awhile so I don't recall all the things I've tried nor the roms. All I know is I got it to it to work once. Think I have a SanDisk something. Just wasn't worth it in the end to me. If you're trying to get it to work, doesn't hurt to try. Stranger things have worked to fix issues in android.

Categories

Resources