Using multi partition external SD card [solved]

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I am sharing this in this forum. Hope this is the right place.

I have been trying to re-partition my external SD card using one vfat partition and a bigger ext4 partition. Then my intention was to mount ext4 through an init.d script.

Partitioning (with gparted under Linux) was of course not a problem.

However, the system does not recognize the multi partition external SD card.
I am using Leedroid's HC (but I don't think that matter so much).

After system has fully started it says "SD card is damaged", do you want to format it.

So yes ... I formatted it. Then mounted it again under Ubuntu.

Back into gparted ... and ... now there is no partition table any more !

The android formatting has just written a vfat file system over the whole device without using a partition table.

So ... no luck.

Then I looked at the volume manager. In the file /etc/vold.fstab we can see:

dev_mount sdcard /mnt/sdcard 33 /devices/platform/msm_sdcc.2/mmc_host/mmc0
dev_mount sdcard2 /mnt/sdcard/ext_sd auto /devices/platform/msm_sdcc.4/mmc_host/mmc2
dev_mount usb /mnt/sdcard/usb auto /devices/platform/msm_hsusb_host.0

So, I re-formatted the SD card with a vfat and ext4 partition and changed the vold.fstab to:

dev_mount sdcard /mnt/sdcard 33 /devices/platform/msm_sdcc.2/mmc_host/mmc0
dev_mount sdcard2 /mnt/sdcard/ext_sd 1 /devices/platform/msm_sdcc.4/mmc_host/mmc2
dev_mount usb /mnt/sdcard/usb auto /devices/platform/msm_hsusb_host.0

(so I changed "auto" into "1" in the second line)

Well after booting ... no good! System still thinks SD card is damaged and proposed to re-format it.

I am guessing there must be a way tricking the vold daemon into using the first partition (vfat) as file system instead of the whole device block ... but I have not found it yet.

Maybe I am missing something very simple here so any help would be appreciated.

Normally questions go in the Q&A section.
Never really checked into this but I don't think the Android framework has capability to handle more than one partition per device even if you supply the mount points.
On the color nook it works as you described because the primary boot device was the SD card. You might try searching through the Nook forum

Originally Posted by DigitalMD

Normally questions go in the Q&A section.
Never really checked into this but I don't think the Android framework has capability to handle more than one partition per device even if you supply the mount points.
On the color nook it works as you described because the primary boot device was the SD card. You might try searching through the Nook forum

Well, I have multiple partitions on external SD card on my HTC Desire phone. They appear under /dev/block/mmcblkXp1 and /dev/block/mmcblkXp2. However, on the flyer I only see /dev/block/mmcblkYp1 (which is the first partition of the internal memory mounted on /sdcard). There is a different mechanism for the mount of /sdcard2 (external SD card). No entries in /dev/block are created for it.

I will have a look at Nook forum tonight. Thanks for response.

Originally Posted by foobar66

Well, I have multiple partitions on external SD card on my HTC Desire phone. They appear under /dev/block/mmcblkXp1 and /dev/block/mmcblkXp2. However, on the flyer I only see /dev/block/mmcblkYp1 (which is the first partition of the internal memory mounted on /sdcard). There is a different mechanism for the mount of /sdcard2 (external SD card). No entries in /dev/block are created for it.

I will have a look at Nook forum tonight. Thanks for response.

Android system needs first partition of sdcard to be vfat

Sent from my LT15i using XDA App

Originally Posted by DooMLoRD

Android system needs first partition of sdcard to be vfat

Sent from my LT15i using XDA App

Well, OK ... but it does not work if there is a partition table !
So 2 partitions (1 VFAT and 1 ext4 does not work).
It only works when the whole block device just contains a VFAT file system (without partition table).

OK, I figured it out (kinda).

Apparently, when I create 2 partitions (1 VFAT and 1 ext4) via gparted under Ubuntu then the Flyer won't properly recognize the partition table (that is my guess). Don't know why ...

I created 2 partitions via CWM ... and now it is working fine.

So I have:

/dev/block/mmcblk1p1 -> VFAT
/dev/block/mmcblk1p2 -> EXT4