Changing SDCard

[Guest Olatho]

Yesterday I got a new MicroSDcard for my Hero, running MCR3.1.

I searched a bit to find out how to change to the new card with the least amount of trouble, but found nothing, so I just tested.

What I did:

• Mounted the phone via USB
  
• Copied all the content from both the FAT and the Ext3-partition on the old SD-card to my computer running Linux ("cp -a" to preserve permissions and ownership of the files)
  
• Shut down the phone
  
• Switched to the new SDCard
  
• Rebooted into AmonRAs recovery image
  
• Formatted SDcard (fat/ext2/swap - default settings)
  
• Upgraded ext2 to ext3 and ext3 to ext4
  
• Did a nandroid backup
  
• Mounted the SDcard on my computer (while still in recovery)
  
• Copied all the files back to the new SDcard
  
• Rebooted
  
  What happened:
  
  • Most basic things worked fine (phone booted, Sense started)
    
  • Many apps forceclosed - including google maps.
    
  • A few apps started fine, but had other problems - "Swift" started but could not connect to twitter, "CalWidget" started, but was filled with red text with an error about a permission-problem
    
  • Some apps seemed to work just fine
    

  How I fixed the problems

  [*]All apps installed from market were fixed by removing and re-installing them, and they worked fine after that.

  [*]Google Maps is not available from the market here, but I extracted the apk from the latest MCR.zip and installed it manually (copy to SDCard and install from Linda File Manager)

  Now everything seems to be working as expected.

  Since both "app" and "app-private" was copied, preserving permission and ownership, from the old to the new SDCard, this pusseled me a bit.

  The new partition has a new UUID (ofcourse), but that should theoretically be the only thing that changed (except from the size of the partition and file-system change from ext3 to ext4)

  Are there better (and easier) ways to do this kind of upgrade?

  What did I miss, since the apps FCed and had permission-issues?

  As I said, everything is fine now, so this is not a call for help, more of a HowTo to help others who are getting new memory cards, or need to format the cards they already use for A2SD.

[Guest kendon]

i suggest the following procedure for this:

make nandroid backup, copy contents of fat partition to pc, swap cards, partition new card, copy fat contents from pc, restore nandroid backup. this way you don't have to deal with permissions or anything on the ext filesystem. no idea what went wrong for you, i'd guess the cp command isn't good enough...

[Guest phillevy]

i suggest the following procedure for this:

make nandroid backup, copy contents of fat partition to pc, swap cards, partition new card, copy fat contents from pc, restore nandroid backup. this way you don't have to deal with permissions or anything on the ext filesystem. no idea what went wrong for you, i'd guess the cp command isn't good enough...

Are you saying that a basic Nandroid restore will restore apps to the new cards ext filesystem - I assumed it would not?

Edited January 14, 2010 by phillevy

[Guest Carl_Brummy]

Are you saying that a basic Nandroid restore will restore apps to the new cards ext filesystem - I assumed it would not?

AFAIK, it creates a tar file containing all the ext partition contents, which is duly restored (this is Nandroid + ext) that is available now. It should also retain permissions, folder structure etc.. The other areas are saved as .img files which are simply restored back as image files over the relevant areas.

Carl.

[Guest shenshang]

Ok, they all force closed because they couldnt run. the apps are stored in the EXT partition on your SD card. the best way is to use nandroid or BART, it restores all the apps into the new sd cards ext partition.

[Guest kazuni]

Ok, they all force closed because they couldnt run. the apps are stored in the EXT partition on your SD card. the best way is to use nandroid or BART, it restores all the apps into the new sd cards ext partition.

just an idea, can't we simply do a dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0 of=y command in console ?

p.s. nevermind, i kinda figured out that there is no place to put of=y....

[Guest clifhanger_uk]

On a similar subject. If the MCR isnt currently running from the SD and I want to change my card for my nice shiny new 16GB one that I'll partition and run from :) I assume I'll need to flash the MCR again? (i.e. the apps are installed on SD when the ROM is installed? not when it boots)

<sorry for the basic question just wanted to check>

Also, any one know the cmd is for listing of partitions on the sd? I tried df but that just shows me the file system sizes, not the disk.

Thanks

Edited January 22, 2010 by clifhanger_uk

[Guest Xtiro]

I have a partitioning question too :)

What're the benefits of switching to Ext3/4?

[Guest kendon]

I have a partitioning question too :)

What're the benefits of switching to Ext3/4?

none that you would notice. i ran my sdcard on ext4 for a while, have switched back to ext2. never had a problem, ext4 is said to wear down your card faster.