Saturday, March 24, 2012

Increasing G11i Pro and HD7 internal memory

For those that have been following my G11i Pro or HD7 support threads (here and here, respectively), you may have noticed that my latest custom ROMs now support ext2 file system (thanks to casacristo).

That means you can now use Android App2SD scripts and increase your phone's internal memory. I will detail here the step-by-step instructions in order to achieve that.





Okay, let's start:
  • Install my latest custom ROM
  • Partition your SD card (create a FAT or FAT32 partition, an ext2 partition and optionally a swap partition)
This can be done in two different ways (beware to backup the contents of your SD card first as it will be completely erased):
  • Using the feature integrated into my custom recovery (for that you have to reboot into recovery again so that the phone can assume the newly flashed recovery image). Follow the instructions on this guide, on paragraph 8.6.




    Delete the old partition on the SD card:
    Create the first partition, set it to primary and choose FAT if you have a 2GB or smaller card or FAT32 if you have 4GB or greater card:
    Then, create the second partition, set it to primary as well (very important) and choose ext2:
    Optionally, you can create a third partition for swap. In order to finish, click apply so that the partitions are created and card is formatted.
  • Boot your phone for the first time and let all userdata and Dalvik cache be created
  • Optionally, at this point you can restore some of your applications
  • Disable Quick boot (under Settings / Accessibility)


  • Install your preferred app2sd script (you can grab a modified version of ad2sdx from here, which is the script that I actually recommend to be installed)
Copy over the script file into /system/etc/init.d folder:
And make sure that you set the proper permissions to the file:
 
  • Reboot the phone once after the script installation (you may probably notice that SIM cards are not detected but that is perfectly normal)
  • Wait a minute or so and then reboot the phone again

Now, enjoy the increased space for lots of applications and games:


Important notes:

  • Do not try this with a slow SD card or else phone performance will became really sluggish. In order to get a good experience, a class 6 or higher SD card must be used.
  • Set a maximum of 1GB for the size of the ext2 partition. That should be more than enough!

8 comments:

  1. I want this for my Phone can any one help me..??
    my phone doesn't have custom recovery yet... i've got backup of original rom can u help..??

    ReplyDelete
  2. Went through the process, but it stock on HTC booting screen, the line on the bottom doesn't move at all. I have your latest custom rom (V3.2MOD) installed and format the sd card through recovery mode.
    Phone is H7300. Please let me know what I should do.
    Many thanks,

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. After all, I removed the battery, and boot to recovery mode, reset the device, after it boot to the phone properly, I got my internal storage increased to 2G. I have CAS4 speed, it is kind of slow for the operation, will get a CAS10 soon to give it a shot. Many thanks for the instruction.

      Delete
  3. Followed your instructions but it just hangs on the HTC boot screen.
    What am I doing wrong?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I can't move the 40ad2sdx file from the sdcard to the phone, do you know why that might be?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Probably because you haven't mounted /system partition as writeable.

      Delete