You MUST have an ext3 partition on the SD Card BEFORE installing MIUI
Our preferred method is using gParted or Parted Magic - gParted instructions follow.
- If you are using RA Recovery, it provides an easier method (see the bottom of the page)
- DO NOT use the ClockWorkMod partitioning features – they are flaky as hell and cause no end of trouble!!!
- Make a Gparted liveCD (Download the Latest Stable .iso version of gparted-live-stable from here and burn it as an image to a CD). Intructions for burning an image under Windows are here
Note: DON’T use the big green Download button. Scroll down the page to gparted-live-stable and remember, you want the.iso version. Some people have had problems using versions later than the Stable version so stick with the gparted-live-stable releases. Alternatively you might want to try Parted Magic- Set your Desire to have a Default connection of Disk Drive (Settings > Connect to PC > Default connection type > Disk drive > Done
- Untick Ask me
- Plug in your Desire into the (Powered Down) PC via the cable supplied with it
- Run Gparted (ie set your PC to boot from CD and boot up the Gparted CD). If you can’t get the LiveCD to boot its probably because you burnt the .iso as a file rather than as an image. Try reading this.
- Normally just hit Enter on every prompt until you get the graphical display of Gparted.
- In Gparted, refresh the view (Gparted > Refresh Devices or Ctrl+R)
- There will be a box or two below the menu toolbar representing the partitions on the selected hard drive. They will be labelled /dev/hda1 xx.xx GiB (or more) for IDE hard drives or /dev/sda1 (or maybe /dev/sdn1) for SATA and USB drives. Make sure you can select the (/dev/sdxx) drive corresponding to your SD Card (its fat32) If you can’t see the USB drive select Gparted > Devices > /dev/sda
- Work on the right hand side of the partition (the white bit) when resizing as this only has to shrink the empty space without moving too many files.
- Click on the fat32 partition, click on Resize/Move and shrink the fat32 partition by 512Mb to 2Gb – 1Gb recommended but do not exceed 2Gb (this will not affect files in the fat32 partition if you have plenty of free space on the card)
- Once you are happy with the size select the Resize/Move button.
- Don’t worry, nothing has been changed yet.
- You’ll now see what the new set-up will look like.
- A new section is now shown at the bottom of the screen. This is the pending job. If you are un-happy with what you have arranged & wish to undo it simply select Undo in the toolbar.
- You can now add another job here as well, such as formatting the free space as ext3, or you can do this as a separate step. When creating the ext3 patition make it a primary partition.
- If you want to proceed, select Apply, this is when your SD Card actually gets modified.
- Once you have finished, double click the Red Exit button to shut down the PC
- You can also run gParted from a bootable USB by following the instructions here
UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux distributions without burning a CD. It runs on both Windows and Linux. You can either let UNetbootin download one of the many distributions supported out-of-the-box for you, or supply your own Linux .iso file if you’ve already downloaded one or your preferred distribution isn’t on the list.
Requirements
* Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7, or Linux.
* Internet access for downloading a distribution to install, or a pre-downloaded ISO file
Features
UNetbootin can create a bootable Live USB drive, or it can make a “frugal install” on your local hard disk if you don’t have a USB drive. It loads distributions either by downloading a ISO (CD image) files for you, or by using an ISO file you’ve already downloaded. - Using RA Recovery image
- Boot to Recovery
- Partition SD: fat32 then 1Gb Ext (FAT partition MUST be BEFORE the EXT partition)
- Wipe all data
- Turn of verification
- Flash from zip > Radio image
- Reboot
- Flash from zip > MIUI_Au
- Reboot and wait
Hmm, I am still confused about the order of the partitions. I followed exactly the steps in the video but my windows (7) does not recognize any partition on the card except for the first one and asks to format it since it cant do anything with a linux swap partitition.
From talbess’s post above, I gather that the reason for this problem might be the order of the partitions.
So I am wondering: If that is the case, why are you telling us to start with SWAP, then EXT2, and then FAT32?
Hi there,
I’ve just installed MIUI-AU v2.1.13, and everything is working fine, except for A2SD+
When I look at the A2SD+ settings, Capacity and Available are both 0.00B.
I have a 1GB ext3 partition on my SD card which I created prior to the ROM installation, using your MIUI installation instructions.
I have also moved all apps that were stored on the SD card back to phone memory.
I tried using the terminal emulator, but when I type a2sd commands, nothing happens.
I installed Quick System to check the ext3 partition… only thing I see is A2SD storage which is only 23.35MB!
My Desire is running out of memory… HELP!
Came here looking to ask the question Arun has posted. Same situation, everything seems to work though I see files are in the wrong place in some instances. Is this related? Happy New Year btw.
Hi guys. I already have MIUI installed without ext3 partition. How can I get it done now as I should have done the position before installing the ROM. I’m also going to be getting a new sd card. Please forgive me and thank you in advance for your help guys
So what is the disadvantage of using ext2 vs. ext3?
Mate, if you want to use ext2 – go right ahead
dammit, I couldn’t edit.
interesting article here
http://simply-android.com/discussion/570/a2sd-roms-ext2ext3-is-the-choice-for-sdcards/p1
In general I agree with that article. I have done a lot of testing with EXT3 v EXT4 and there is very little performance benefit in EXT4. BTW EXT4 can be configured without journalling and for best performance this is the way I recommend that it be done. Another important point is that CWM always puts the partitions back to EXT3 when you wipe. This is becaise wiping is done by reformatting and CWM doesn’t support EXT4. If you are going to use EXT4 you should change your recovery to 4EXTR as this recovery has been built to properly preserve EXT4 partitions when wiping.
More info on ext4 without journalling here: http://www.roms-au.com/howtos/ext3/updating-to-ext4/
More info on 4EXTR here: http://www.roms-au.com/installation/extras/updating-clockworkmod/
I think the main (and probably only) reason why anyone should use ext4 is if your using a data2ext type setup and are worried about having problems, because journaling reduces the risk of data corruption, at the cost of performance. Common sense is the best form of protection though – don’t pull the battery while the os is running, and don’t let it go flat, and that reduces the risk to nearly nothing anyway.
hi there all..
i just installed this ROM.. very nice and fast
i just curious about the partition..
i created using clockworkmod 3.2 (latest i believe) which is not recommended here..
i created 1 GB ext and FAT32 the rest (no swap)
it seems alright (no issue this time) but should i re-installed this ROM with “correct” SD card partition as information above?
“Partition SD: 32mb swap, 512MB ext, Remainder fat32″
i believe having 1 GB ext is okay, but the swap partition?
CWM is up to version 5 or so, so definitely not the latest. I do recommend 4Ext though (google it on xda), its much better.
That tutorial needs to be updated I believe. Nothing uses a swap partition in MIUI_Au (to my knowledge).
I have a 15gb fat32 partition, followed by a 1gb ext3 partition, and it works with all a2sd or data2sd setups that Ive tried.
Lennox is correct, I believe. No ROM I know of uses a swap partition. I updated the tutorial to remove that advice. I have never used Amon_ra so I don’t know if the instructions for it are correct or not.
thanks Lennox and talbess..
yes, i have seen 4EXT recovery and it looks better..
but i think i stick on CWM because i’ve nandroid-ed some ROMs using CWM.
may be i will restore it later.
my understanding is if i change the recovery to 4EXT, then the Nandroid i created with CWM can’t be restored.
It should be compatible, as 4ext is based on cwm. I don’t know for sure though. You can always flash cwm back in fastboot if 4ext turns out to be unable to restore your backup, but i know it’s easier to stick with what you know.
So what’s the verdict? The article warns against using CWM’s partitioning features – how about 4EXT? While it’s based on CMW has it improved partitioning features? I only asked because I have used 4EXT to partition before reading this tutorial.
4EXT is fine for partitioning
Hi there, I have partitioned my SD ext 3 to 1GB but I have lost all my photo’s which I backed up.is there a way to get them back ?
If you backed them up, just restore them to the SD card?
Two questions I’m sure alot of noobies would be thinking:
why do i need an ext3 partition? and do I have to? I mean will miui not work without ext3 on SD.
I personally have installed miui.us from rom manager without ext3 on SD, itis running awesome but now I want to try miui.au(Aussie Aussie Aussie) and above questions apply.
The HTC desire was built with not enough internal memory and it runs out of memory very easily once you start installing apps. ext3 is a way around this.
The ROM should work without an ext3 partition, but is much better with one.
If you read this it will explain in detail. http://www.miui-au.com/faq/a2sd/
PS: newer phones (Desire S, Sensation) have much more internal memory and do not need an ext partition.
was it okay that i made a partition ext 4 instead of 3?
But the guy in the Video Tutorial creates:
/dev/sda1……..Swap
/dev/sda2…….ext2 (not ext3??)
/dev/sda3…….fat32
Mettcat seems to be correct, surely this is most important, is Video Tutorial correct?
It seems not, as verified by Mettcat
It appears as if the SWAP should be last.
Just skip the swap step (swap isn’t really needed anymore anyway).
By the way, you don’t mean me when you say ‘that guy in the video’, do you?
hmm if you skip the swap do I really need to make sure the ext partition is the second partition?
I’ve checked the A2SD scripts and it mounts the second partition (/dev/block/mmcblk0p2).
If you make the EXT partition first Windows does not recognise the card, so you can never put the card in a Windows Laptop and directly transfer files to the FAT32 partition. Putting the EXT first is the most common cause of problems with those new users installing an alternate ROM, so we always recommend to put the EXT last. Swap is not required.