Main Memory, Partitions, whatever it is Huawei did with 4GB

[Guest MadHatterRyu]

Ola ^_^

I've seen this issue pop up time and again in most reviews.. the 4GB hard disk we've got onboard is partitioned to 2 + 1 + 1GB.. of which only 1GB is available to the user..

and I dont know why nobody's raised this question in the forums before,

Can we do something about the way the phone makes DUMB partitions so that all 4 gigs are available to us? and what are the consequences?

(from Windows Mobile bg, using a droid for the first time)

Currently I've got a Y-300, rooted and modified but still running stock B165 firmware.. battery life is excellent, I've gotten rid of almost all bloatware and I dont have any OTHER qualms with it, but 1GB.. really Huawei???

[Guest jackosterman]

No solutions here, but if you haven't already, you may want to look into creating an ext2 partition on your external memory card for use with an app like Link2SD. RAM issues aside, with a 1GB secondary partition on my SD card I've long forgotten about Huawei‘s partitioning methods.

Edited August 1, 2013 by jackosterman

[Guest MadHatterRyu]

@Jackosterman

No solutions here, but if you haven't already, you may want to look into creating an ext2 partition on your external memory card for use with an app like Link2SD. RAM issues aside, with a 1GB secondary partition on my SD card I've long forgotten about Huawei‘s partitioning methods.

Hello! and thanks for the reply.. I don't want partitions ^_^.. prefer things compact, wish we could use more than the 1GB from the phone's original 4GB that Huawei has allotted to us.. I'm still an android noob but shouldn't all partitioning methods be the same? and does droid not read ext4?

Heres another question I'd like clarified everyone, are there any useful tools to resize "PHONE HARD DISK" partitions like gparted on linux? and how safe is it to play with the various partitions??

I specifically wanna know about the main hard disk... not the SD

[Guest jackosterman]

does droid not read ext4?

Oh, I simply prefer ext2 when it comes to partitioning memory cards. Android itself runs on an ext4 filesystem.

[Guest Frankish]

It's been known to be done on some phones such as ZTE ones but not so much on Huawei phones. If messed with the phone can be left totally dead in some cases as there are hidden partitions too which contain radio software and various other things.

[Guest MadHatterRyu]

It's been known to be done on some phones such as ZTE ones but not so much on Huawei phones. If messed with the phone can be left totally dead in some cases as there are hidden partitions too which contain radio software and various other things.

EEP! :unsure:

Huawei... really.. Y U DO DIS???

either way, I asked because if we need an Ubuntu port or a Tizen port on our phone, we'd be better off with all 4 gigs intact.. has anyone actually tried playing around with the partitions?? if so how'd you do it? what tool did you use?

[Guest joestone]

I have checked the storage on my g510-100. It has total storage of 4G . It includes all partitions .

The system is 1.009 GB (/dev/block/mmcblk0p17 ) it is needed as only 130MB free .

Data 1GB (/dev/block/mmcblk0p18)

Internal sd 1GB (/dev/block/mmcblk0p19)

It takes no sense to swap internal_sd and data as on g300 (2GB and 768MB) , but it is possible to format internal sd as ext4 and mount it as /data/app . This case the storage usable for user installable apps is 1 GB and all other(dalvik-cache , userdata , programdata) has 1 GB as well.

cat /proc/partitions

major minor #blocks name

7 0 5229 loop0

179 0 3817472 mmcblk0

179 1 20 mmcblk0p1

179 2 300 mmcblk0p2

179 3 133120 mmcblk0p3

179 4 1 mmcblk0p4

179 5 12288 mmcblk0p5

179 6 4096 mmcblk0p6

179 7 4096 mmcblk0p7

179 8 3072 mmcblk0p8

179 9 3072 mmcblk0p9

179 10 3072 mmcblk0p10

179 11 4096 mmcblk0p11

179 12 8192 mmcblk0p12

179 13 20480 mmcblk0p13

179 14 4096 mmcblk0p14

179 15 196608 mmcblk0p15

179 16 81920 mmcblk0p16

179 17 1048576 mmcblk0p17

179 18 1179648 mmcblk0p18

179 19 1105920 mmcblk0p19

Edited August 4, 2013 by joestone

[Guest MadHatterRyu]

@joestone is there no way of making all 4 gigs as one unified partition? ok chuck the 1gb for system.. what about the remaining? is it safe to unify them? if so.. how?

[Guest joestone]

@joestone is there no way of making all 4 gigs as one unified partition? ok chuck the 1gb for system.. what about the remaining? is it safe to unify them? if so.. how?

There is no way to unify all partition . There are partitions which are needed for the phone to work . (modem firmware , bootloader , secondary bootloader , etc) If you change these partitions you can brick your phone. The only safe modd is to format the internal_sd as ext4 and mount it as data/app for example.

[Guest zdv80]

It takes no sense to swap internal_sd and data as on g300 (2GB and 768MB) , but it is possible to format internal sd as ext4 and mount it as /data/app . This case the storage usable for user installable apps is 1 GB and all other(dalvik-cache , userdata , programdata) has 1 GB as well.

 

And how does that be done? hehe

[Guest hvdh]

Ola ^_^

I've seen this issue pop up time and again in most reviews.. the 4GB hard disk we've got onboard is partitioned to 2 + 1 + 1GB.. of which only 1GB is available to the user..

and I dont know why nobody's raised this question in the forums before,

Can we do something about the way the phone makes DUMB partitions so that all 4 gigs are available to us? and what are the consequences?

 

Hi. I posted a how-to for repartition Huawei G330. ( http://www.modaco.com/topic/374535-how-to-repartition-g330/ ).

For Y300, it should work as well. The main difference is that g330 comes with 0.5GB /system and Y300 with 1GB /system.

You really should not touch partitions 1-14 (boot loader, recovery, internal stuff), but the others can be resized.

The default 1.1GB for /data and 1.1GB for internal SD can be freely modified (e.g. 2.0GB +0.2GB) without losing data.

Consequences for non-Huawei firmwares: none.

Consequences for Huawei firmware updates: could be that they fail to install. (never tested, not sure there will be any update)

[Guest zdv80]

 

Hi. I posted a how-to for repartition Huawei G330. ( http://www.modaco.com/topic/374535-how-to-repartition-g330/ ).

For Y300, it should work as well. The main difference is that g330 comes with 0.5GB /system and Y300 with 1GB /system.

You really should not touch partitions 1-14 (boot loader, recovery, internal stuff), but the others can be resized.

The default 1.1GB for /data and 1.1GB for internal SD can be freely modified (e.g. 2.0GB +0.2GB) without losing data.

Consequences for non-Huawei firmwares: none.

Consequences for Huawei firmware updates: could be that they fail to install. (never tested, not sure there will be any update)

 

Ok!! Thanks a lot!!!! :)

[Guest shayan4shayan]

is it possible to change device RAM to 700MB or more??? and have less system storage??

[Guest hvdh]

is it possible to change device RAM to 700MB or more??? and have less system storage??

 

No, RAM and flash are different kind of chips.