Database Info

What's the point? (Android partitions)

Lately, I've been flashing a bunch of different ROMs, and in each one, they require you to have a certain amount of your memory partitioned. I'm not too experienced in this particular area and I've been wondering what is the point of all the partitioning?
Why can't we just have one partition and run things off of that like with a computer running on windows??
What are the differences between ext2 and ext3 and so on?
So far, I've only been able to find out that the swap partition is for memory extension when the phone is currently using all of its ram, it can convert some of the sd card's memory to use for programs. Can anyone provide more insight on this?

I've asked myself the same questions .... hope someone will explain...

hacker01 said:
Lately, I've been flashing a bunch of different ROMs, and in each one, they require you to have a certain amount of your memory partitioned. I'm not too experienced in this particular area and I've been wondering what is the point of all the partitioning?
Why can't we just have one partition and run things off of that like with a computer running on windows??
What are the differences between ext2 and ext3 and so on?
So far, I've only been able to find out that the swap partition is for memory extension when the phone is currently using all of its ram, it can convert some of the sd card's memory to use for programs. Can anyone provide more insight on this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It would be helpful if you mentioned what phone you're using.
Generally the reason you have a /data and /system partition separately are so that you can either upgrade or reinstall Android without losing your data. If you reflashed whatever ROM you're on right now again, without wiping anything, all of your apps and settings would still be there (although any mods you flashed to modify the ROM itself would need to be flashed again).
System - Holds Android itself and any apps that came with the ROM. Some ROMs (or rather updater scripts inside of ZIP files) will install some apps in the data partition to save space.
Data - Your settings and any applications you installed.
Sometimes you WILL have to wipe everything to go to a different ROM, but for the most part if you're on an official ROM that came with your phone, and your carrier pushes an update, you don't have to.
I'm guessing you have an older phone if you need to make a swap file. A swap file is like RAM in the form of a file; if your phone runs out of usable RAM, it can use the [slower, but useful] swap file, which is like memory you reserve from storage [your MicroSD card]. Windows and other OS's use swap files too, but given how much RAM we have in computers today, we hardly ever use it.
EXT 2 fs - A non-journaling file system. It's quicker than EXT 3 and takes up less space for itself in memory (not for files, just for itself), but it's more susceptible to corruption if you randomly turn off the phone while a file is being accessed.
EXT 3 fs - A journaling file system, which means that it keeps track of any file operations within itself. While it's slower than EXT 2 and takes up more space, it is more reliable and is safer in terms of file integrity.
There's also EXT 4, but only certain phones are compatible with that, mostly Samsung Galaxy S phones.
tl;dr: It keeps everything modular.

Thanks for the explanation. It helped
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA Premium App

Repartition /system

Is there a way, say at the time of flashing the ROM (I flashed back to a stock i9000) or from Recovery console, that the /system mount can be be repartitioned with more space?
Reason being that I need to move a new font in to replace the Fallback font that google includes since all the Chinese characters in it are simplified (annoying if you read mostly Japanese). Problem is my font is like 9mb and theres only 5mb free on system.
Thanks

i was gonna ask about this one, it would be awesome if some space from SD card can be partitioned to the internal memory.

Ok, so I found a way around reparitioning although I think I real need to repartition now or I might run into trougble.
I rolled an update.zip containing the font I wanted to swap in and simply replaced the old one. It took, but now my /system has 0.0mb free. So now I'm thinking I may have to roll my own system.img and reflash my droid with the new font already included in; assuming it is Odin3 that predetermines the partition size and sizes accordingly. This is ROM development question I know, but Where/How are the partition sizes for /system and /data determined? Is there a config file in each flash IMG that states the size it should be or is it like I already mentioned, does Odin3 determine it?
Thanks

[Q] Resize internal partitions

Hi,
This has been asked many times before with no real solution that applies to different devices.
I'm running out of space on my /system partition and can't install any more apps even though I don't have that many installed.
I want a way to re-size the Android partitions manually to whatever size I want. Or just delete all current partitions and create new ones.
How do I do that? Is there any GUI partitioning tools similar to the ones available for Windows?
I don't want to move files from /system to another partition. I want to change the partition size.
My current /system partition:

For what reason are you moving apps to /system? You can't install them there, you have to push/move them there, installs go to /data. So keep them in /data, where they're installed by default. You have tons of space available there.
Partition table (start addresses and sizes) is hard-coded in bootloader, and can be redefined in kernel boot parameters (in this case recovery needs to be recompiled with the same parameters too, otherwise it won't write to the same partitions the kernel will read from). You're welcome to hack any of those. As you could probably understand from this paragraph, I wouldn't expect having GUI tools for that.

Thanks for the reply.
I'm not trying to move apps to /system. I thought apps are installed there by default because every time I try to install a new app it gives me an error message saying that there is not enough space on /system.
Now I know that apps are not installed in /system.
I just need more space in /system so I can install new apps without any errors.
What can I do to get more space on /system partition? Can I replace the bootloader?
I don't have any Android programming experience. I probably need something that is available out there to do the job.

In stock form, you shouldn't even have write permissions to /system. Nothing should be ever written there, and it can be 99.99999% utilized - there shouldn't be any free space left for anything, it shouldn't normally be used.
If you're getting that error when trying to install an app - you need to check what's reporting the error. It's not a "real" error, it means there's something wrong with your phone.

Try wiping cache partition from recovery...does this make any difference?
Jack is correct.
Swyped from my DesireS

refer to this
if this may help you http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1959691
:highfive:

mayank88288 said:
refer to this
if this may help you http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1959691
:highfive:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Way to bump a year old thread :thumbup:
“I'm bad and I'm going to hell, and I don't care. I'd rather be in hell than anywhere where you are. ”*―*William Faulkner

[Q] BMM partition size

I've always had issues with ROMs when it comes to partition size. If I used system 3 & 4 and put a data partition of 1000M on both, the second ROM I installed would fail to boot after apps were installed. I got around this by making the data partitions 800M instead so now I can run two ROMs. I don't understand why this would be happening though. With 800M data partitions I can't have a third or fourth ROM and by the time I get my apps installed anything under 800M isn't enough space. Is there something I am missing or is this just the way that it is?

nbucko said:
I've always had issues with ROMs when it comes to partition size. If I used system 3 & 4 and put a data partition of 1000M on both, the second ROM I installed would fail to boot after apps were installed. I got around this by making the data partitions 800M instead so now I can run two ROMs. I don't understand why this would be happening though. With 800M data partitions I can't have a third or fourth ROM and by the time I get my apps installed anything under 800M isn't enough space. Is there something I am missing or is this just the way that it is?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How many USER apps do you have installed on system 1? Since bmm creates the additional partitions on the system 1 data partition, that has a lot to do with it.

I also have same query.
Actually after installing Kitkat ROM on my Atrix 2, I prefer to switch runtime to ART and ART consumes lot of space while retaining same number of apps like in dalvik runtime. And the usual 1 GB partition which we create during multiboot setup seems too less in case of ART, though its enough if we keep the runtime to dalvik. It fills up very soon.
Right now my preference is to keep two ROMs apart form stock ICS so total there are three ROMs in my phone.
Is there any way to create data partition of more than 1 GB? BMM refuses to create 2GB partition when there is already one custom ROM in one of the system.
Haven't tried to see if 2 GB is possible if only single custom ROM is installed along with stock ROM. If 2GB is possible in case of only single ROM along with stock then also I can live with it.

Jack Sparrow xda said:
I also have same query.
Actually after installing Kitkat ROM on my Atrix 2, I prefer to switch runtime to ART and ART consumes lot of space while retaining same number of apps like in dalvik runtime. And the usual 1 GB partition which we create during multiboot setup seems too less in case of ART, though its enough if we keep the runtime to dalvik. It fills up very soon.
Right now my preference is to keep two ROMs apart form stock ICS so total there are three ROMs in my phone.
Is there any way to create data partition of more than 1 GB? BMM refuses to create 2GB partition when there is already one custom ROM in one of the system.
Haven't tried to see if 2 GB is possible if only single custom ROM is installed along with stock ROM. If 2GB is possible in case of only single ROM along with stock then also I can live with it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't recall who or where, but someone posted a workaround for creating a 2 GB partition. The good news is that it can be done. The bad news is the info is probably BURIED somewhere here in Q&A.

Un-Partition via TWRP

I just finished installing the latest ROM (YOG4PAS1N0) from here:
[ROM][YOG4PAS1N0] Cyanogen OS 12.1 [Rooted][TWRP flashable][NEW OTA]
http://forum.xda-developers.com/oneplus-one/development/rom-cyanogen-os-12-1-t3186593/page10
and it works amazing!!! No issues so far...while I was doing it I decided to use TWRP 2.8.6.0 to do a back up. I know that the following is a very "old school" way of backing my data but what I used to do is just save all the files in the exact same way my OPO is shown via the windows file system, and so I used to cut and copy .....place in a folder and done.... I have every single picture I have EVER taken since I owned a camera phone in 2007 but thats besides the point,,,I backup up my data via TWRP and I noticed that it created a 10GB partition. I am ok with it cause I keep a pretty clean phone...I have 10 apps at most and some pictures and videos.
I was wondering in the interest of recuperating that 10GB is there a way to unpartition it? my back up is 2.67 GB large and as you guessed it, I saved it on my PC....so I could do with out it on my phone. BY the way I didn't do a system or data wipe when I installed the ROM...flash and dalvik and cache wipe....I figured if I screwed up, I could do a FULL FORMAT and copy paste the files I wanted. But the update worked flawlessly ..except for the 10GB "missing"....
This is not an emergency, I can live without the 10GB I was just curious.........I have 54GB out of which I am only using 9GB...plenty left
Thanks for any help and for taking the time and reading this...
I did search for the answer but most users have other partition issues such as not loading or not finding it....I also google TWRP partitions and I got a lot of "how to use it" stuff...but nothing on how to "un partition"

seco007 said:
I just finished installing the latest ROM (YOG4PAS1N0) from here:
[ROM][YOG4PAS1N0] Cyanogen OS 12.1 [Rooted][TWRP flashable][NEW OTA]
http://forum.xda-developers.com/oneplus-one/development/rom-cyanogen-os-12-1-t3186593/page10
and it works amazing!!! No issues so far...while I was doing it I decided to use TWRP 2.8.6.0 to do a back up. I know that the following is a very "old school" way of backing my data but what I used to do is just save all the files in the exact same way my OPO is shown via the windows file system, and so I used to cut and copy .....place in a folder and done.... I have every single picture I have EVER taken since I owned a camera phone in 2007 but thats besides the point,,,I backup up my data via TWRP and I noticed that it created a 10GB partition. I am ok with it cause I keep a pretty clean phone...I have 10 apps at most and some pictures and videos.
I was wondering in the interest of recuperating that 10GB is there a way to unpartition it? my back up is 2.67 GB large and as you guessed it, I saved it on my PC....so I could do with out it on my phone. BY the way I didn't do a system or data wipe when I installed the ROM...flash and dalvik and cache wipe....I figured if I screwed up, I could do a FULL FORMAT and copy paste the files I wanted. But the update worked flawlessly ..except for the 10GB "missing"....
This is not an emergency, I can live without the 10GB I was just curious.........I have 54GB out of which I am only using 9GB...plenty left
Thanks for any help and for taking the time and reading this...
I did search for the answer but most users have other partition issues such as not loading or not finding it....I also google TWRP partitions and I got a lot of "how to use it" stuff...but nothing on how to "un partition"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What do you mean when you say it created a 10gb partition? TWRP doesn't create a partition when it makes a backup so I'm confused as to what you mean by that.

seco007 said:
I just finished installing the latest ROM (YOG4PAS1N0) from here:
[ROM][YOG4PAS1N0] Cyanogen OS 12.1 [Rooted][TWRP flashable][NEW OTA]
http://forum.xda-developers.com/oneplus-one/development/rom-cyanogen-os-12-1-t3186593/page10
and it works amazing!!! No issues so far...while I was doing it I decided to use TWRP 2.8.6.0 to do a back up. I know that the following is a very "old school" way of backing my data but what I used to do is just save all the files in the exact same way my OPO is shown via the windows file system, and so I used to cut and copy .....place in a folder and done.... I have every single picture I have EVER taken since I owned a camera phone in 2007 but thats besides the point,,,I backup up my data via TWRP and I noticed that it created a 10GB partition. I am ok with it cause I keep a pretty clean phone...I have 10 apps at most and some pictures and videos.
I was wondering in the interest of recuperating that 10GB is there a way to unpartition it? my back up is 2.67 GB large and as you guessed it, I saved it on my PC....so I could do with out it on my phone. BY the way I didn't do a system or data wipe when I installed the ROM...flash and dalvik and cache wipe....I figured if I screwed up, I could do a FULL FORMAT and copy paste the files I wanted. But the update worked flawlessly ..except for the 10GB "missing"....
This is not an emergency, I can live without the 10GB I was just curious.........I have 54GB out of which I am only using 9GB...plenty left
Thanks for any help and for taking the time and reading this...
I did search for the answer but most users have other partition issues such as not loading or not finding it....I also google TWRP partitions and I got a lot of "how to use it" stuff...but nothing on how to "un partition"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is no 10GB partition. When a device says that there is 64 GB of storage, a bit of it is lost in formatting. It does not mean that when you plug in your phone you will get 64GB of storage. Additionally, there are several partitions, including data and system that are not visible to the user without root (or in recovery). These partitions also take up space on your phone (adding up to around 10GB of lost space), and are not visible when you plug in your phone. This is why your phone only shows 54 out of 64GB in the storage menu in settings, mine does as well. If you did have a 10GB partition on your phone, your phone would show 44GB when plugged in. I believe you can make the system partitions smaller, but its not recommended. This is simply off my memory so if I misunderstood the question or said anything wrong please be welcome to correct me.

f41lbl0g said:
There is no 10GB partition. When a device says that there is 64 GB of storage, a bit of it is lost in formatting. It does not mean that when you plug in your phone you will get 64GB of storage. Additionally, there are several partitions, including data and system that are not visible to the user without root (or in recovery). These partitions also take up space on your phone (adding up to around 10GB of lost space), and are not visible when you plug in your phone. This is why your phone only shows 54 out of 64GB in the storage menu in settings, mine does as well. If you did have a 10GB partition on your phone, your phone would show 44GB when plugged in. I believe you can make the system partitions smaller, but its not recommended. This is simply off my memory so if I misunderstood the question or said anything wrong please be welcome to correct me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I figured it was a 10GB partition because I was 10GB short (64GB out of the box vs 54GB) what I have, even though I now that OS and apps take up space. So what is the actual partition size that is created when TWRP creates a back up? The size of said back up? ....my mistake...
your explanation cleared it up. If I remove the back up from my phone will I recover that HDD space? or is it already saved for future back ups?

seco007 said:
I figured it was a 10GB partition because I was 10GB short (64GB out of the box vs 54GB) what I have, even though I now that OS and apps take up space. So what is the actual partition size that is created when TWRP creates a back up? The size of said back up? ....my mistake...
your explanation cleared it up. If I remove the back up from my phone will I recover that HDD space? or is it already saved for future back ups?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your backups are created on the visible portion of the data partition, in a folder called TWRP. No partition is created during a backup. You will not gain more than the available space on your phone by deleting the backup.

seco007 said:
I figured it was a 10GB partition because I was 10GB short (64GB out of the box vs 54GB) what I have, even though I now that OS and apps take up space. So what is the actual partition size that is created when TWRP creates a back up? The size of said back up? ....my mistake...
your explanation cleared it up. If I remove the back up from my phone will I recover that HDD space? or is it already saved for future back ups?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
TWRP doesn't create a partition, it simply creates a folder in your internal storage to place your backups in. That folder will only ever be the size of your backup(s). The moment you delete/move a backup you have that space free again, they're just like any other file that consumes space on a drive (it only consumes space while it's actually there).

f41lbl0g said:
Your backups are created on the visible portion of the data partition, in a folder called TWRP. No partition is created during a backup. You will not gain more than the available space on your phone by deleting the backup.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ok So it works like any other file / folder...erase and you have the HDD space again....Thanks for clearing that up