[HOWTO] Link2SD a SanDisk 64GB microSDXC on a T989

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work in progress...

Prerequisite:
- Get a SanDisk 64GB microSDXC details here http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1343164
- Root your phone
- Install Link2SD

you can get Link2SD from our in house local developer http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=919326
all Link2SD related bugs or problems should be reported there

you can also get Link2SD directly from the Android Market
Link2SD
Bulent Akpinar
https://market.android.com/details?i....Link2SD&hl=en

step 1:
prepare your spanking brand new SanDisk 64GB microSDXC,
you can partition it any way you want, i choose to go 50%&50% as i know i'm will be installing a lot of Apps/Games and i know i've maxed out 16GB easily everytime, that's why i'll need at least 32GB to be comfortable (later on you'll know why) in the new sd card
the best tool to partition your new 64GB SD is Gparted (yes Linux), you can get Gparted in a lot of ways, most times included in any Desktop Linux installation, or you can get the Gparted LiveCD from http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
you'll need to create 2x primary partitions, the first partition must be FAT32 (is not really a must, but you'll need that if you want to be able to see your SD card space when mounted as USB storage), the second partition it's highly recommended to use ext4, as Gparted seems to have problem trying to format ext3 on the SanDisk 64GB microSDXC, older phones can use ext2 if the phones are missing the support for ext4 (example Milestone XT720)
if you are not comfortable with Linux, you can easily create 2x FAT32 partitions in your SD card using Disk Management in windows, just make sure both partitions are Primary partitions.



step 2:
once you're done with the disk partitioning and formatting of your brand new SanDisk 64GB microSDXC; it's time to finally launch Link2SD to do its magic
as soon as you run Link2SD you'll be greeted with this screen asking you to choose the disk format of your SD card 2nd partition, which is what we did on step 1
if you formatted your 2nd partition as ext4 then you must choose ext4
if you formatted your 2nd partition as FAT32 then you choose FAT32



step 3:
reboot your phone, when Link2SD prompts you to do so,
you must reboot for the changes to take effect



step 4:
when the phone is back from reboot (should not take more than 30 sec)
run Link2SD again, hit the Menu capacitive button, and select Storage Info then you should see this screen confirming everything was a success!



step 5:
now you can start moving apps 2 sd, which in Link2SD term is known as "Create Link" (it actually does way more than just create links)
this is what you'll see...



anything that says on SD Card are created by the build in AOS App2SD "Move to SD card" feature that was available since Froyo 2.2
anything that says Linked -> SD Card are created by Link2SD after you hit the "Create Link" option button


... an unrelated screen-shoot of the phone memory performance

Benefits:
- Apps on SD remains accessible even when the SD is mounted as USB flash drive
- Apps moved to SD will act & behave as if they were installed in the internal memory
- Apps that are not natively Apps2SD compatible can still be moved to SD without breaking it
- Apps compatible
- Games compatible
- Widgets compatible
- you can now go beyond the 1GB~2GB limit of the reserved internal memory space
- you can better and easily manage apps to go between internal, external (/sdcard/external_sd/), SD (/sdcard/), and Link2SD (hidden ext4)
- if you are familiar with CM7, with Link2SD you can also set the default install path to be internal, external or auto
- you can easily keep separate SD cards with different apps / games, specially those you want to Hide from public (family) & friends access

Cons:
- none?
- if you take out the SD card, any Apps & Widget that ran directly from the SD card will be temporally unavailable until you put the SD card back in

Tips & Tricks

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Gameloft games
There are 3 types of GL games:
- Older GL games will install all into the internal memory, those are easy to deal with with Link2SD
- Recent GL games that are Froyo App2SD aware, will install a small portion in either internal or to SD, but all the extra "DATA" contents usually in the size of 600+ MB are left on SD card (these are not handled by Link2SD), the work around is simple use a Mount script and forward all the
/sdcard/gameloft/ to /sdcard/external_sd/gameloft/
- The a few more recent kind of GL games will let you select where to store the "DATA" chunk to either internal or external sd, for these types you'll choose internal, then Link2SD will do the rest


Some of you have requested this script i'm using

mount -o -bind /sdcard/external_sd/gameloft/ /sdcard/gameloft/
mount -o -bind /sdcard/external_sd/ea/ /sdcard/ea/
mount -o -bind /sdcard/external_sd/glu/ /sdcard/glu/
mount -o -bind /sdcard/external_sd/download/ /sdcard/download/
mount -o -bind /sdcard/external_sd/DCIM/ /sdcard/DCIM/

you can even include more stuff there, just be careful with what you add, to not break your OS

for example you can technically also throw in /sdcard/Android/data/ ... but some apps are required during boot, and it might not work if you have it on the /external_SD so the safe way would be to only add the specific apps you know are not required during boot time, like all the games and stuff like that.

thanks for your efforts.
i have some questions:
have you felt any lag between having all apps stored on internal storage, and apps stored on sd ext?

do you feel a difference in preformance based on how many applications have downloaded?

i ask because i used to do this for my g1 back in the days, and the phone was just so slow twards the end of it's life, that i would feel a lag when using apps 2 SD, or maybe it was a placebo, or maybe the phone was just incompetent, does it matter with this much power in our hands?

also while we're on the subject of memory, has any one ever elaborated on the process by which apps are killed to free up ram in the phone, i'm not an expert so i wouldn't know what it's called, but i heard that our ram is so high, and the memory killer kills the apps way too early, causing unnecessary apps to be killed when we could have them just chilling in the ram waiting to be re-opened.

I know exactly what you mean, and I'm happy to report there's no lag whatsoever with this phone.

I have done it before on my older phones and yes indeed there's that 1 or 2 sec loading lag, but none at all in the T989, I'll attribute that to either the Dual Core CPU or the super fast SD card reader, or perhaps a combination of both.

back then on my other phones using a class 6 as well it was still not fast enough, a class 4 was obviously even longer at loading, and a class 2 was pretty much pointless to do APPS2SD

But in this phone even a class 4 is not bad, barely noticeable

so definitely get a class 6 or class 10 SD card for this sort of operations

Sent from my SGH-T989 using xda premium

@allgamer
Why do you need to create two partitions for this?

Originally Posted by jeffpzy

@allgamer
Why do you need to create two partitions for this?

it's a requirement for the Link2SD App

post #3 updated http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...95&postcount=3

Ooo I want one!!!!!!!!

Current-*Samsung Galaxy S2 (Gingersnap v1.1)*|*Htc Sensation (rooted w/ XE Dr. Dre Beats Technology)*|*Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant (rooted w/ cm7)*|*Mytouch 4g (stock)*|*Mytouch Slide (stock)*|*Htc G1 (stock)

"you can easily create 2x FAT32 partitions in your SD card using Disk Management in windows, just make sure both partitions are Primary partitions"

Is there a tutorial for this. Thanks