Is it possible to use my Microsd card storage space as system ram? I'm running alot of programs and it always tells me I'm low on memory and that i need to close some programs.
euklid said:
Is it possible to use my Microsd card storage space as system ram? I'm running alot of programs and it always tells me I'm low on memory and that i need to close some programs.
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Well, the long and short of it is no.
I can go into all the technicalities, but I won't (mostly because there are others that can give you better specifics).
Ram
euklid said:
Is it possible to use my Microsd card storage space as system ram? I'm running alot of programs and it always tells me I'm low on memory and that i need to close some programs.
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you wouldn't want something like this to be possible. It would be real slow and your SDMemory-device would become worn out real soon. When it comes to write-cycles, SD-Memory has a very limited livetime compared to DRAM.
Monarch73 said:
you wouldn't want something like this to be possible. It would be real slow and your SDMemory-device would become worn out real soon. When it comes to write-cycles, SD-Memory has a very limited livetime compared to DRAM.
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That is it!
okay i just formatted my sd and i put 1g of memory on the swap and ex2, thats taking up 2g outa my 4g. does anything save on the swap? im just wondering this because i wanna free up as much memory as i can for saving pictures and music.
None of the roms out at the moment use the swap partition.. and the ext2 partition is for apps2sd.. I use 512 ext2 but no one needs that much. And swap you can set at 0 until the roms use it.
Hope this helps.
Redneck101 said:
okay i just formatted my sd and i put 1g of memory on the swap and ex2, thats taking up 2g outa my 4g. does anything save on the swap? im just wondering this because i wanna free up as much memory as i can for saving pictures and music.
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You had no reason to change anything from the defaults. Go back and re-do it.
Redneck101 said:
okay i just formatted my sd and i put 1g of memory on the swap and ex2, thats taking up 2g outa my 4g. does anything save on the swap? im just wondering this because i wanna free up as much memory as i can for saving pictures and music.
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Swap file will not be usable until we get Source code for the kernel. SWAP = Linux version of a page file. = Hard Drive based RAM. Kind useless on a phone. I doubt it will make leaps and bounds of difference when we actually get it. You can set swap to 0 and apps to 512. If you use more than 512 for apps, you are a pack rat and probably cant find anything and don't use what you have IMHO.
Kcarpenter said:
Swap file will not be usable until we get Source code for the kernel.
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Uh. no. Swap works now. There's even an application on the market that will set it up for you, as long as you have the swap partition on your sdcard. Allows you to enable and disable it, and so on. It's not hard to set it up, then adb into the phone and verify it's actually doing something.
SWAP = Linux version of a page file. = Hard Drive based RAM.
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No, not really. Swap is not additive to your real RAM.
Kind useless on a phone. I doubt it will make leaps and bounds of difference when we actually get it.
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Depends. Having swap enhances memory management, as it allows you to page stuff out of *real* RAM when it's not in use, and only bring it back when a page fault forces you to. It can also really beat you up, if memory pressure is forcing so many faults that the kernel spends all its time moving memory around instead of allowing processes to actually run.
You can set swap to 0 and apps to 512. If you use more than 512 for apps, you are a pack rat and probably cant find anything and don't use what you have IMHO.
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Additionally, even applications installed to the sdcard use SOME space in /data. You'll overrun the filesystem in the phone before you overrun a 512 mb partition.
Unless I'm misunderstanding...It's true that mounting your SD card in Froyo with apps installed to the FAT32 partition means that your phone can't access applications on that FAT32 partition right?
Yeah, you're right. That's why Google doesn't support having Widgets, keyboards, and other always running services on the SD card. Its a trade off, but a sensible one I think. Having two volumes on the SD card is likely to confuse inexperienced users. Also they need to decide ahead of time how much space to reserve for apps on the sdcard. Too much and they can run out of room for their other data, not enough and they are right back to the old problem of no room for apps.
Anyway, there's no reason you need all your apps on your sdcard. As long as you can put your big apps like games and Google earth on SD you should have plenty of room for other stuff on internal memory.
No, you're not the only one who likes it.
I sure hope that ROM creators leave the option of using old Apps2SD.
That is the only reason I switched back to 2.1
I've been trying to recover some space on my Nexus one and have been largely successful in doing so with a combination of tricks, but while looking at my partitions and tallying up the numbers something didn't seem to be adding up right; the unit is supposed to have 512MB flash, but I was coming up about 60MB short.
I found this thread which discusses the partition layout of the N1; the sizes they show all seem to match up well with what my device shows. Now, the hex address of the end of the last partion (user data) ends just a couple MB short of 512MB; the start of the first partion (misc) however seems to start over 60MB into the memory space... is there a reason for this, and if so what's occupying those lowest 63.75MB of flash space?
Baseband, AKA "radio", is what you're looking for. Unless you want your Nexus not to boot anymore, it's not advisable to try and repartition baseband space.
Instead of working hard and uselessly wasting effort, use A2SD or any other kind of linking to SD-mounted EXT partition. No matter what you try, Nexus doesn't have nearly enough internal space for any common use.
That answers my question, thank you.
As I mentioned in my original message, I was successful in freeing enough space on my device; a combination of moving apps and libraries (copy to system/lib and symlink back to original location) into the system partition and clearing out bulky or unnecessary apps has left me with over 60MB of free data space without even having to resort to fancy A2SD business (just normal android move to SD card). I was simply curious about what was filling in the remaining space on the flash chip and the radio pretty much fits the bill.
As someone with pretty average amount of user apps (a bit less than 100) and 700 MB user space taken, I can't see the point in doing what you mentioned for anything but pure fun. But if that suits you - I won't argue.
Well, by my app drawer I'm sitting at ~125 (44 purely in data, 34 moved to SD with standard android method, rest either native system or moved there) apps, and if my "puny" N1 can have 60MB free and not even need ext-style A2SD I'm not quite sure how the N1 doesn't have "nearly enough internal space for any common use". Seems to me the point (not "pure fun" as you dismissively imply) of doing what I've done is to able to keep using a pretty decent phone that still has more than enough storage space if you make the least bit of effort to manage it.
But hey, who am I to judge if you prefer to buy whatever latest phone the carriers tell you you should want every 12 months just so they can cram more bloated apps on it?
I appreciate the answer to my initial question about what's using the lowest block of flash storage (I was simply curious about what was using it - I couldn't find information if it was flash overprovisioning or some other low-level portion of the OS using it), but I don't really appreciate the unnecessary negative attitude and commentary for what was just a simple question. Thanks anyways.
I guess you didn't understand my point(s). I'll elaborate:
First and foremost, my point is this: N1 is a crap of a phone. Having it for over 1 year, and trying to adapt it to my wife for 3 or 4 months later on before giving up on it, taught me that this phone can't be dealt with by anyone who doesn't want to accept its touchscreen limitations. It was so refreshing having the phone (MT4G in my case) just react without fuss and not expecting it to crap out at any given time - not even mentioning the huge speed-up. The price of "upgrade" (selling the N1 and buying any previous-generation phone, like DHD/MT4G/DS/DZ) can be brought down to as low as $50, and the benefits are huge, I already wrote it a couple of times on the forum.
To the storage point (actually, several points):
N1's NAND is painfully slow, compared to anything, even to regular Class 2 SD card. You can try copying any large file from NAND to EXT and back, from NAND to NAND and from EXT to EXT and see what takes more time. You're likely to discover that A2SD actually adds performance instead of hurting it.
My app data (/data/data/*) alone takes roughly the same space as your whole internal /data storage has, so I guess the amount of apps alone isn't that meaningful of a measurement. I still call it a perfectly normal and average data usage - I don't have anything special installed, no heavy games that save 200+ MB of data on internal memory, just apps like Goggles, Flash, iGO and a couple of other big apps that aren't movable by normal means (and tend to crap the system out when they're forced to move). The problem in your approach is not even the one-time amount of work you had to invest to make that space, but the amount of work you'll have to invest to keep the phone running - moving system updates to /system upon every update, clearing browser cache, etc - generally, keeping things in constant check. Free time is something you learn to appreciate when you don't have enough, and more hassle-free setup is always preferred IMHO.
But again, different people have different needs, so while I can post my point of view - I don't argue with yours.
Thank you for elaborating, actually; it clarifies much that was not apparent in your earlier posts. This thread isn't really about the pros and cons of the N1 so all I'll say is that the advantages of the N1 (small size, OLED, build quality, tricolor trackball LED, etc..) still outweigh its manageable downsides for me, even compared to very modern handsets - so I'll stick with it until I can find a suitable upgrade that I'm happy with (is it so hard for HTC to make a <=4" qHD AMOLED? Seriously...).
Your point about the NAND being slow is interesting; this is something I hadn't heard and will have to benchmark; if it pans out it would be a point in favor of A2SD, but not really in favor of replacing the device over it
The upkeep I don't find that bad; Titanium backup makes integrating updated system apps a single touch for the batch, and I've only got a couple libraries symlinked into system that are unlikely to be frequently updated. With the space I've freed I shouldn't need to clear browser caches nearly as often - so it actually saves me time and frustration regularly for the one-time effort.
Thanks again for taking the time to reply and to clarify your points
If a2sd+ doesn't work for you you could do custom mtd partitions like I did using fireats custom mtd if u google it u will find it basically you can shrink ur system partition down to almost half because it is being wasted I mean whatever size u want to define it as. I'm using miui and my system partition that i defined is 120 mb (4 mbs are free just in case) and my cache partition is 15 mb. Now that leaves 301 mbs free for user data. I have 107 user apps installed about 10 games or so and I still have 120 mb free for user data for me that's more than enough. This way ur phone won't be buggy because u will only use the system partition for ur rom again I would suggest miui since it takes minimal space and is very smooth and stable with amazing battery life (I use tiamat kernel). Hope this helped
---------- Post added at 06:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:52 PM ----------
Oh if u use a2sd in conjunction with custom mtd then u can have close to 750 mb of space available for user data given that ur sd ext partition is 512 mb (which was stable for me using 8gb card) that's basically rivaling new phone memory so don't just call the nexus one off just yet it can surprise anyone that knows how to play with it or stuck with it for 2years like me lol.
I've already been using root access with shell and titanium backup to move apps and libraries into the system partition without resizing it, so I'm already using the available space there. The only major difference is you've dramatically shrunk your cache partition from the default of (IIRC) 100MB down to 15MB; this seems like a pretty huge reduction, and I feel this would have performance implications, especially when running larger apps...
Other than that, if I find my current space as set up proves to be inadequate in the future (it seems just fine for now) then a2sd appears to be the best option for those who need even more additional space on a nexus one.
15 mb is more than enough for cache partition unless u plan to download huge 3d games and as we all know gaming isn't the reason that we have held on to nexus one for so long I haven't seen any app large enough to not install due to my partition size. I messed around with that too first I had it set at 5 mb but that made market force close every time then I set it at 10 was stable but large apps couldn't download and then I tried 15 and hasn't given me a single problem. Otherwise all that space is wasted so why not dedicate it to user data? With 20 mb partition u can download almost all games that can function on nexus one but since I'm not a big mobile gamer I stuck with 15 mb cache.
Most normal programs don't use /cache.
To fix your cache market issue:
Code:
su
busybox mv /cache/download /sd-ext/download
ln -s /sd-ext/download /cache/download
If you don't have a sd-ext you could use /sdcard/download instead. The directory will already exist if you've downloaded anything from the browser, so I just remove /cache/download before linking. I used to get package file invalid errors from this setup though...
Ti backup will also let you move stuff to /system and re-odex your rom instead of shrinking /system. Sure, everytime system stuff updates you need to click a few times, but unless space is real tight, it works fine. The re-odex-ed rom seems to boot faster for me than with external dalvik-cache, too, but that could just be me pretending. I've never busted out the stop-watch.
I like to keep apks on a2sd and put dalvik-cache on internal memory. It's kinda like raiding the two interfaces together to get the sum of the bandwidths of both when launching a program.
siberx: I'm sticking with the N1 until I find a decent phone that has been designed to fit in my pocket instead of sitting in a purse or on the bar too... I considered the glacier for a while, but, near as I can tell, the only benefits of going there are better touch screen and gpu.
I used firerat's mtd patch to rejigger my girlfriend's desire paritions to something more sensible (something like a 230mb system partition stock? ridiculous!) and that worked smashingly; the same trick against my N1 didn't go so well though. Seems like my Nexus with CM6.1 on it is still using the cache partition for dalvik at least partially, and I think shrinking it down to 20mb made it too small to boot right. Not a big deal anyways; I've got enough space to work with as is
I tried to do some benchmarks on my internal flash for comparsion, but the only decent benchmark I could find (without getting manual about it on command line) was Passmark's mobile benchmark; problem is they wan't 90MB free to run the internal memory benchmark, so my 60MB isn't cutting it for that
Anybody know of a decent benchmark that will bench both internal and SD read/write speeds that doesn't need such a huge chunk of free space?
ezdi: I considered for awhile buying a G2 for the faster CPU/GPU and improved touchscreen, but ultimately decided against it due to the extra weight and thickness (combined with the nexus' other advantages like OLED and tricolour LED). Eventually some manufacturer will figure out there's a still a market for compact high-end phones...
ezdi said:
siberx: I'm sticking with the N1 until I find a decent phone that has been designed to fit in my pocket instead of sitting in a purse or on the bar too... I considered the glacier for a while, but, near as I can tell, the only benefits of going there are better touch screen and gpu.
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Better touch screen is a reason enough by itself.
GPU, much faster and bigger internal memory (both system and data), much faster and bigger RAM, and most of all - 90% HW-compatibility to one of the most popular devices in the world (DHD) - means staying updated and speedy with ROMs that fly where they crawl on Nexus (if they exist at all). Plus - all ROMs besides ICS are 100% functional, CM, MIUI, Sense 3/3.5, you name it. And if it's not enough, 20% hassle-free overclock is standard.
From quite satisfied Glacier owner.
I have the Project Fi version of the X4 and I have not found any way to move apps from internal memory to the memory card that I put in the phone. Am I missing something? I even enabled the Developer options and switched on the "Force allow apps on external", but it didn't make any difference...
Force encrypt makes all apps stay on internal memory. Once we can remove encryption, it should be possible.
You need more than 32GB for apps? I know the system takes up almost half of it, but you still need 16GB of apps? What are you running?
crazyates said:
You need more than 32GB for apps? I know the system takes up almost half of it, but you still need 16GB of apps? What are you running?
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I wondered the same thing. Unless the apps load faster from a high speed sdcard. That many apps is going to have so much stuff running in background it would be crazy.
souleman said:
I wondered the same thing. Unless the apps load faster from a high speed sdcard. That many apps is going to have so much stuff running in background it would be crazy.
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I have the same question. I want to put some of my 600+ audible audio books and I also want to put movies on sd card via the playon cloud app. Seems crazy to me to clutter up internal memory with stuff like that.