I'm about to format my SD card and want to wipe everything. I've already wiped its partitions by formatting the card in Stock Nook >> Settings >> Format SD Card.
Now when I go to format it on my PC, I'm not sure what I should choose for "Unit allocation size". Is there an optimal size? I get the following options:
16 kb
32 kb
64 kb
2048 b
4096 b
8192 b
I've always wondered about this, thanks for any comments.
Any thoughts on this? Does it even matter?
Depending on how big your SD card is, the smaller the size, the better use of your drive space. But smaller size also means more management. You have to remember, a file that is two bytes in size will still use up the whole allocation unit, so you'd be wasting space with larger unit sizes, but it's easier to manage fewer units. Somewhere in the middle is best.
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This is formating right? When I formated mine I did fat32, don't remember seeing these choices. Wonder if that's why my SD class 10 is not working.
Right, formatting. Windows doesn't give you too many options, but there are some.
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Thanks for the response. I search everywhere and could not find any info on this. I have 2 8GB cards.
Related
I would like to know if there is a consensus on the perfect partitons amounts and sizes. I have read that people are adding a third partititon for swapper. Does swapper even know to use this partition and if so how big should it be? Also I have an 8 gig class 6 that is set with a 3 gig fat32 and a 5 gig ext3. Is this set right or should I have less on the fat32?
i run 500 megs ext2 and the rest fat32 barley even touch filling my ext2 partition yet
WAAAAY too much on the EXT3. You really only need 1gb on the EXT3 partition because apps don't take up any space.
As for swapper I'm not really sure how big the partition needs to be, but swapper automatically locates the partition.
Thanks for the response. I am resizing and going with 500 mb for ext3 and 500 mb for the linux swap, although that is probably too much.
For SWAP use 32MB, setting it higher will put you into problems.
I know this is weird, or it might be just me not knowing much about this stuff, but here's what happened
Yesterday I was looking for a software for maps/navigation and ended up installing a free one (OsmAnd), and then procceeded to create the maps with Mobile Atlas Creator.
So far so good, I created a detailed map for my zone, consisting of around 95k tiles according to the program, which weighted around 440MB.
So I checked the free space on my SD Card and it said that it had 1.5GB free, so I proceeded to copy it. The thing is, it told me that I didn't have enough space. I thought it was an error, so I tried again, but it just wouldn't let me.
So I then went to check my SD Card and erased a lot of things that were there that I wouldn't need anymore, and I freed around 3.8GS worth of space, and tried again. This time, it did copy the files (which by the way, took bloody ages), and after it was finished, I checked the available space on the SD and it said that it had around 150MB free.
I can't help but think that something is awfully wrong, but I also thing this could be related to some sort of compression or something alike (I used both, a Mac with OSX and a PC with Windows 7).
What do you guys know/think about this?
Sorry I can't help with your problem.
But your in Alajuela Costa Rica? If so awesome I am in Jaco
Are you on kolbi? How's it working out for you?
It's probably because of the block size of the sd card. When you copy lots of small files (like you did) they will therefore take up a lot more space.
On 4GB cards I believe that the block size is larger than for instance a 8GB. that's my experience anyway.
Tech_Boy said:
Sorry I can't help with your problem.
But your in Alajuela Costa Rica? If so awesome I am in Jaco
Are you on kolbi? How's it working out for you?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I'm in Alajuela. And Kolbi, for me at least, is working just fine.
I'm getting like 950kbps download and 300kbps upload (which might suck for people outside CR, but it's quite awesome around here)
Metallan said:
Yes, I'm in Alajuela. And Kolbi, for me at least, is working just fine.
I'm getting like 950kbps download and 300kbps upload (which might suck for people outside CR, but it's quite awesome around here)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I am getting 1056kps download and around 300kps upload too; love it! Working great. Except for waiting for my replacement nexus to get here
It depends on the partitioning of the SD card.
If you have it partitioned with big blocks and copying a huge amount of small files - yes, theoretically it's possible. How many files are we talking about?
Jack_R1 said:
It depends on the partitioning of the SD card.
If you have it partitioned with big blocks and copying a huge amount of small files - yes, theoretically it's possible. How many files are we talking about?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Around 95 thousand XD
I guess that's it then.
Is there any way to change that?
I just ordered a new 16GB SD card, but if there's anything I could do to prevent something like this in the future, that would be great.
Only to change file system on the SD card to use smaller blocks (less wasteful, but more reads/writes and less performance), or use packed file format (pack all the small files into one bigger file - using tar/zip/whatever), or use compressing file system (it's going to be troublesome - NTFS supports that, but I'm not sure NTFS-formatted SD card will mount on Android, and it's also performance overhead).
The main trouble is that on 16GB card you're going to have those files take 4 times as much space as they did on 4GB card. Since these are very small files, each file is essentially a block - and the blocks grow in direct proportion to SD card size (using FAT32 and considering big cards). So by moving to 16GB card you're not gaining much.
Thanks for the answer.
The problem is mainly due to the fact that my current SD Card is only 4GB, and it's class 2, so I guess changing the partition for smaller blocks would indeed affect the performance.
Perhaps when I get my new 16GB Class 6 one that one will be a better choice.
I'll wait and see then.
UPDATE: Just saw you updated your post, so I'll update mine too.
I searched a little bit more on the dev's page and they warn about that behavior too. But they also indicate a way of creating a different type of file that the app also recognizes, that is like putting all the 95k files in one only file.
It's a bit bigger than the actual size of the 95k tiles (tiles were like 75MB, and the file is like 91MB), but I guess that this will alleviate the issue of it the file size skyrocketing when transferred to the SD Card.
Thank you very much for your explanation, it really helped me, at least it encouraged me to do some more research and find a solution to my problem.
Format with smaller allocation unit size...
( HTC Desire Android 2.2 )
I had the same problem with my card getting full because of the big
allocation size. 500MB of files, took all my space on the 2GB SD-card.
I copied the whole card to my computers harddisk, where it used 3.44GB
of space. (because of larger allocation size)
I formatted my 2GB SD-card to FAT32 with an allocation unit size of 512
bytes. I moved all files back to my SD-card, and I now have all my space
back, and my almost 2GB total filesize (before formatting), is down to 500MB.
I don`t notice any difference in the phones performance. I use a sea-map
app. that stores the maps on the SD-card, and it works perfect.
You might want to try a higher allocation unit size than I did, I just don`t
want to waste any more time copying to find out what size is ideal.
Exact numbers now:
52.362 files, 136 folders
Size: 500MB
Size on disk: 516MB
Total capacity: 1,86GB
Free space: 1,36GB
Backup size on PC: 3,44GB
Hope this helps!
Post your feedback and findings
What are the advantages of using an ext partition to store apps/cache/data on an android phone. I have been using an unpartitioned sd card with no problems, but I've seen a lot of people with ext.
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Using EXT allows you to put Root apps, and protected apps automatically onto the SD card. With the FAT i was still filling up my internal storage. I can also still use my apps when i have the fat partition mounted on the computer.
Makes sense, thats actually a bigger advantage then what I was expecting. What about widget functionality? I know most widgets won't work if they are stored on a sd card. Does ext fix that problem?
Also, what is preferable, ext3 or ext4?
So just to make it clear, your SD card is not ntfs, ever.....
And the advantage of Apps2Ext is so that ALL apps can install to the SD card, apps that run 24/7, widgets, and no special coding etc...
Froyo Apsp2SD only moves some apps, and as you mention, moving apps with widgets or that run all the time are going to eventually stop working correctly, especially if you ever mount the SD card over USB.
If your ROM supports Apps2Ext, use it unless you only have a handful of apps installed and you don't need the space..
so the system treats the ext partition like a part of the internal memory? haven't heard about this option ever. sound very interesting since I'm always out of memory.
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Yeah it moves the entire app to the card, unlike the stock froyo version that only moves the binary part of the app I believe. Making a 1 gb partition is literally just like having 1 gb of internal storage just like The nexus s etc.
Is making 4gb ext good?
It doesn't do it by default - default allows to move only the app (no app data) and Dalvik cache to SD. But that's enough for vast majority of people - allows to have equal of ~600 MB of app space before you run out of internal phone space.
There is an option to move the data to SD too, but that's not trivial and not part of any stable DT Apps2SD release, AFAIK.
There is no point in EXT anywhere above 1GB, just for that reason.
Tiberx said:
Is making 4gb ext good?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As long as you are willing to give up teh space on your SD card. I only made a 512mb partition, and that has fixed any and all storage issues i had.
1GB it's enough... even with ~120 apps
can someone link a tutorial? search doesn't work properly on my phone!
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In my signature. No need to search.
can't see that either in the xda app... mind posting the link?
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http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=715940
I'm going to be using a 16GB SD card and want to make sure I have a lot of space for apps. I've seen many mentions of increasing the size of the 4th partition, namely the SD Card partition. But would it do any harm to increase the size of the Data partition (partition 3) which I believe is where the installed apps live? I really don't need a ton of SD card space since I won't be storing a lot of media on it or anything.
I have Just flashed a new custom rom with factory reset, etc.
After that I have checked the Settings -> Storage and 7.99GB are shown as allocated.
I understand, that 32GB is marketing and reald it is ~30GB, but is this normal? How are the minimal "Other" allocation on your devices?
Use the app disk usage
Sent from my HTC Sensation using xda app-developers app
Disk usage shows 26206 MiB capacity minus 2872 MiB system data leaving 23334 MiB available to be used.
my "other" takes up 15.5 GB
Going back to the question it is normal. The 32gb has 25.29gb free. No different from all handsets. Take the new S4. 16gb with 8.92gb free.
download terminal emulator
install it
open it
type "df"
paste the result here
I'll explain to you what is/are using your storage capacity.