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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Related
I have task killer set to ignore two applications: Battery Widget and Weather Widget (donation version).
I've rooted my phone and am running Cyanogen 4.0.1 with Ted's hero theme. And I've formatted my SD to have FAT32, EXT3, and Linux Swap partitions and have my apps installed to my SD.
However, when I use taskiller to close all my applications I'm usually left with only 28 to 30 M free. Sometimes I'll only have 26 M or all the way up to 33 M left. Is this normal?
How much memory do you guys have left after you kill your tasks? Are my numbers low enough to make you think I've not partitioned my SD correctly or something else?
I feel like my phone should be much much faster than it was before I rooted it, but I don't see the huge improvements many people seem to.
Any help is appreciated.
yeah, I have questioned this too. I use Advanced Task Manager with 2 apps excluded. I usually am at 41 MB when all are ended. Prior to rooting this was in the 50's. I assume it is because the ROM has used some of this memory?
I also seem to have a lot less internal memory than others. I have 54MB when I go review my memory under settings. Not sure how others are in the 70-80 MB range. I clear cache frequently.
Also have 3 partitions 7.5GB/500MB/32MB
to the OP - have you deleted the cache of programs like browser, google maps?
I'm not sure how. I'd love to delete both of those and a few others (voice dialing I will never use you!!). I've gone into the apps manager but it won't let me uninstall them.
Yes, I'm a complete noob at this .
One thing I may have done wrong. I didn't reflash my cyanogen rom after formatting my SD. Could that be a problem?
Nagh, the rom would do it on the next reboot... go to menu... settings... sd card and phone storage. It should show all memory there (including second partition).
To delete cache, go to menu... settings... applications... app manager.
Click on browser, scroll down and delete cache. How much was there?
There wasn't much. It was like 1 to 1.5 megs, but it's gone now. I also set my gmail sync down to 1 day and cleared out it's data. Still though, my phone just feels like it's not getting the big speed upgrades others talk about.
I am hoping someone else will chime in on the low memory reported by task killer/manager in our cases.
How much internal memory were you showing under settings and removing cache?
You can sort the app manager by size too (of course the apps are on your sd card) but the cache is not.
I take it you confirmed your partitions were working?
They seem to be working. I've got 486 MB for my ext3 partition and only 413 available. I'm assuming 73 MB are being used by my programs.
I have 64 MB of internal phone storage available. I don't know what it was before.
I also have 5 desktops with a lot of icons on each one, plus I have a background that is about twice as wide as normal (1067x480 vs 640x480). Still the background is only 70k.
If you want to delete stock apps
Code:
adb remount
adb shell
cd system/app
ls
This will let you see the actual names of apps. From there you can just rm -r them as usual
example
Code:
rm -r VoiceDialer.apk
rm -r com.amazon.mp3.apk
rm -r VoiceSearch.apk
rm -r LatinIME.apk
Don't forget to clear your dalvik-cache after you done nuking stuff!!!
Code:
rm -r system/sd/dalvik-cache
mkdir system/sd/dalvik-cache
You can do all of this from terminal as well but adb make is much easier.
@ OP. I too have only 28-33MB of free ram after closing most of my widgets but I think it's pretty normal as too much free memory means too much wasted memory. And you will not see HUGE improvements in speed neither... there's only so much developers can do. What Cyan is trying to do is to introduce new features (global search, vpn, exchange) without bogging down the system (and doing a great job at it IMHO).
Good luck
^ that is an awesome post. Thank you for that.
Thanks a ton for that. Very helpful post. If I won't see any speed improvements by uninstalling apps I'll just pass on doing that.
Are there any ways I could see speed improvements beyond what Cyanogen already provides?
Limit the amount of desktops, and limit the use of widgets. Power wideget from donut seemed to use a lot of ram and slow things down a little.
why are you people confusing internal storage with system ram?
The information available under settings/sdcard-phone storage/available space reffers to the space available in the /data partition of your phone. Wether you have 1 or 100 (well, 89) mb free in this partition is irrelevant to your phone's performance. All that gets written to this partition is installed apps (not part of the system), dalvik-cache (for ADP or AOSP based roms that don't have their classes pre-compiled), and user data and settings.
People who have 70-89 mb free in that partition are using a2sd, data2sd, and cache to sd, which, imho, is a flippin waste because the internal nand is a lot faster than the bottlenecked bus for the sd card and it's just going to waste if you're not using it. Nothing, i repeat NOTHING is gained by having a free data partition (much like having free space in system which is never going to be used).
Your system has 192 mb of RAM, which is the actual working memory of the device, of those 192, only 90 are available to the dalvik VM, which is the Android part of your phone. This ram can be checked using "free" (if your build has busybox) at the terminal, and this will tell you how much ram is being used by the system, along with how much swap space (if you're using it) is being used. The used ram space fills up fast, and that's a good thing, because unused RAM is wasted RAM. Linux manages things and drops processes as required (to a swap file if available) to free up ram for processes that require it.
To keep your phone running smootly, I'd recomend a reboot every night (when you put your phone to charge). Android is full of memory leaks that have to be fixed, and until they're worked out, the 90 mb ram you have available is all you have to go with (unless you use swap, but one should never really consider that space memory anyway)
The biggest performance difference I've seen has been to shut down my battery widget. After I did that phone's responsiveness has been great.
i'm gonna root my phone tomorrow and i wanted to know i got a 8gb card and i want to keep 2gb for storing apps and games...how do i allocate that space? does it automaticaly become open or do i have to allocate space
you have to partition the sd card once you've finished the root process. most of the current recovery images have the ability to do so built in. by the way, 2gb is a hell of a lot more than you're going to need for apps and games unless you're planning on installing 500+ apps. I have close to 100 apps and 10 or so games on my G1 and I'm using maybe 250mb.
kusotare said:
you have to partition the sd card once you've finished the root process. most of the current recovery images have the ability to do so built in. by the way, 2gb is a hell of a lot more than you're going to need for apps and games unless you're planning on installing 500+ apps. I have close to 100 apps and 10 or so games on my G1 and I'm using maybe 250mb.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
oh ok thanx...i want to keep 2gb space so that my phone doesnt become slow
djteotancolis said:
oh ok thanx...i want to keep 2gb space so that my phone doesnt become slow
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
However something about the way apps2sd is implemented makes the phone slow if you allocate a huge ext2/3/4 partition think absolute Max at about 610mb. Regardless of SD size.
ezterry said:
However something about the way apps2sd is implemented makes the phone slow if you allocate a huge ext2/3/4 partition think absolute Max at about 610mb. Regardless of SD size.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thank you for the information i didnt know that
a large sized partition for apps will not make your phone any faster. depending on what ROM you choose to install, having a third partition for swap will make it faster. however, there are roms out at the moment (like cyanogen's latest) that do not recommend using swap because of how aggressively it will be used if implemented. in other words, some roms swap is bad because it will suck the life out of your sd card like a damn vampire, and not one of the gay sparkly ones from twilight.
Hi again guys...
In Linux we have a SWAP partition for some time if RAM (Random Access Memory) will full OR for speed up applications by buffering in swap partition.
(Recommend Linux SWAP partition size: half of RAM)
so Android is Linux based and have kernel like Linux. Is it work to make a SWAP partition for SGS with swap file system?
You don't want that...
Android doesn't wipe RAM immediately anyway, so apps which are open and shutdown can be restarted again quickly (unless the RAM has been reused).
Also, apps on Android are designed to be shut down whenever free RAM runs out (its in the development guidelines that all applications should expect to be shut down at any time). Since most Android phones use high-speed NAND memory, when properly configured, apps load quicker too
The problem with swap is that it can lead to thrashing and loss of battery life. It's good for computers (because generally, you would rather lose performance and ensure you don't lose work), but on Android, applications should be killable at any time, and should have mechanisms to protect their work anyway.
It's probably possible to create a swap partition/file if you wish (try to swapon), but I foresee some potential side-effects, especially if you don't want to spend a lot of time managing memory manually.
i didn't think about battery life.
Thank you so muchhhhhhhhhh
I was actually exploring this option last night and stumbled that the kernel does allows swapon commands. I remembered trying it earlier on a stock rom but it was not available then.
Why I need the swap was because of the frequent shutdown of my launcher pro due to apps contenting for memory. The live wallpaper and heavy Widgets like pure messenger pro aren't helping much either, after much usage the device just slows down, lags and silently kills the background apps. The "minfree" settings were also tweaked but with much less desirable results was seen...
So I downloaded an app called "swapper2" from market and tested via 2 methods; Swap file and swap partition.
The performance of a swap file that sits in the NAND is not really that great. In fact it kinda lags me when memory is being swapped in and out of it. I think its the same problem with the i/o lag problems with any other rom
Then I tried a swap partition on my class 6 SD card. Although the lifespan of the card would be shortened and the battery life would be impacted, the performance is better compared to the earlier method.
In either method, the amont of apps that can be left opened at the foreground and background had increased and doesn't lag as more apps is being launched. Not bad for me but well, I guess it's all up to the user of the device at the end. Just my 2 cents...
I'll try the swap file method again over at the ext2 partition created by the lagfix and see how it goes next. Not sure if anyone interested though...
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
It seems that using the swap partition doesn't have the lag compared to using the swap file method.
It may be due to the I/O of multiple storage (parallelism ?) is better than a single storage or writing into the raw partition is better in terms of performance than a swap file.
I'm done with my findings, the device still have 60mb free and never lags, I'm sold.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
I was surprised to see my wife's N1 only had 20 MB of internal memory. She is running Enomther's Rom, which runs great.. I don't think the issue is tied to that.
She has hardly any apps on her phone, and rarely does anything other than work emails (Touchdown) and Facebook/Twitter.
Considering how little she has on the phone, and how little she does with it I, was just really shocked that she would have so little internal memory. She called me just now and stated she has a notification that she missed a text message because she did not have enough memory.
What the heck could be taking up so much memory?
What's the fix? There isn't really anything to delete (that I'm aware of)....
Search seemed helpess with "internal" and "memory" there were WAY too many posts. Please help if you can!
Browser cache might be huge, if she has many sites opened in many browser windows.
Her "not many" apps might be "many" enough for a phone with limited internal memory like Nexus - having ~200MB for apps, data and cache together.
There are exactly 3 solutions:
1) Keep browser in check. It's always a good practice.
2) Use native Froyo method and move apps to SD.
3) Use Apps2EXT method and move apps to SD. You can also move Dalvik-cache to /cache.
Hmm, she has MAYBE 10 apps?
I downloaded a cache cleaner and ran that, it removed maybe 8 MBs? That was this past weekend, and she got that message about low memory today. I doubt she has even opened the browser since then to be honest. Very light user.
I sent enomther a tweet, his reply was:
RT @enomther @CallipH need to implement either dalvik-cache-2-/cache or apps2ext in SpareParts (DataStorage options) ... sysdc-2-/cache is default on cm6
okay, so option 1 is to move dalvik cache to sd, which I think you do in Advanced > Amon's recovery, right? Any ill effects from doing this if I switch roms?..
Option 2, apps2ext... she does not have an ext partition and frankly surprised this is needed... is the nexus that low on memory? My Vibrant has 1.6 GBs. same question, any ill effects if moving to another rom with the apps on the ext? I did that a lot back in the day with the G1. I remember having some issues and having to do fix permissions a lot.
Thanks for all the help man.
Check, what's using the memory. Just go over the apps.
You can't do Dalvik-to-SD, because it requires EXT partition, which you don't have. You can do Dalvik-to-Cache.
There is no hassle in having apps on EXT whatsoever. The only hassle is getting them there.
ROM has nothing to do with application data usage either.
Have you tried wiping the Dalvik cache? Worth ago in case there's some built up crap I spose.
^^ thanks.
^ I did before flashing the rom. Will do it again.
I know it's relative, but how much internal memory would you expect someone to have when they just have about 10 apps?
Depends on the apps. I can count 2 - Google Earth and Motonav, for example - that take together 50MB of space without even counting the cache part. Another 4 apps like that, and you're out of memory (if you don't move them to SD using Froyo's method or old Apps2SD-EXT method).
There's also numerous games that are > 10MB, can easily add up.
I'm curious if Touchdown (Exchzange work email) is doing something funky... I know the apps on her phone and they are all very small. Thank you guys all for the posts.
I think I may format her card and partition it and move the cache to the ext partition and see what her memory looks like after that.
Any issues you guys can think of with that, or other ideas?
Download DiskUsage, and it will give you a good idea of what the problem is...
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Hello there! now that we have custom kernel, I want to share with you this Little trick I used in my old Motorola z6 when I used to develop xD
Due to the fact that memory cards have sometimes low data transfer rates, swapping on our devices sometimes is a Little bit slow... to solve the issue, I used to place a swapfile in the internal storage of the phone, wich has pretty fast data transfer rates... so I did this once again with my milestone, and the peformance is amazing!! I'm currently using CM7.2.4 with a 48mb swapfile placed inside /data...
Just wanted to share this with all the people of this community, I also modded the script written by FuFu, so the script insted of creating the swapfile in the sd-card, it creates it in /data
I won't post the modded script because I want FuFu himself to decide if the mod is OK, and make his own reléase! Just a matter of respect...
So that's it, try it out people, you're gonna be amazed....
no Problem, you can post your modded script here
i also tryed to use a swapfile on /data, but for me it wont work, if i try to use swapon on /data it sayes:
invalide argument
but i will take a look at your modded script and also i will include it in future updates
i think it may be very interesting for all users to get some extra performance
I'm not sure it is as good idea as it sounds first.
Memories based on flash technology are degrading when writing on it. (I know they are degrading anyway.)
Swapping means a lot of writing and reading and while you can easily buy a new SD-Card you cannot change your phone's internal memory.
Maybe my fears are baseless, but i don't wanna risk.
May someone with better knowledge correct me.
Plus, it is not possible to enable swap on yaffs filesystem "out-of-the-box" as they are incompatible.
I have CM7.2.4 now and three primary partitions on SD Card: Fat32, Ext2 and Linux Swap.
I installed 98swaponv5 after CM7.2.4 rom with OpenRecovery. Does 98swaponv5 have some settings or how I can know it's working?
Well it seems that I can multitask and change from Facebook to other apps and back and it doesn't reload, so I guess the swap is working.
But the default browser always reloads the page when I switch to the browser. Looks like all the other apps work great with the swap except the browser, I wonder why?
EDIT: Right now the browser doesn't reload anymore when I switch to it. I have rebooted and installed some apps, killed some apps. Looks like the Milestone just keeps getting better.
If you have Terminal Emulator installed, you can type free and it will show you the amount of total/used/free memory and in the row "Swap" the informations about swap.