Swap performance for 1 week, thoughts - Droid Incredible General

I created a 32MB linux-swap partition last week on my incredible. I'm running CM6, latest nightly, and a swappiness of 30 (relatively low). Due to the good amount of internal memory I was hoping that this would just come in to play under high loads.
Overall I didn't notice a speed difference, probably due to the low swappiness.
I did have one major issue though. I keep a lot of FLAC music files on the sd card, and when playing these if the swap file would come into play (as probably happened when streaming bluetooth music) I would get massive skips. Thus, the great swap experiment has ended as I use this feature daily. I have a Transcend 8GB class 6 card, and sd card speed test app confirms class 6 speeds.
If anyone wants to play around, just reformat your SD Card with partition 1 being a large FAT32, partition 2 being either an ext3 (for SD-EXT) or linux-swap, and partition 3 being linux-swap, 32MB should be enough. Use swapper2 (free, from the market) to enable swap (or busybox, if you're so inclined).
Be careful, the default partition for the swap partition in swapper 2 is not your sdcard, and you will end up having to repartition your internal memory and RUU if you don't change those settings.
(another advantage of reformatting the sd-card with the SD-EXT partition, even if you don't use it, is you won't see the annoying errors in ROM Manager anymore).

Great info!

Related

app2sd self destruct

My Eris has been running very smoothly for several weeks with ELB 2.7 with JIT enabled and most of my apps relocated to the SD card. But a few days ago, I started experiencing crashes when waking up the phone or answering a call, and then last night I started getting FCs anytime I tried to launch an app located on the SD card.
The FAT partition works fine, and the EXT partition appears intact when I mount it, but nothing located there will launch.
I've resolved the issue (sort of) by reinstalling the apps I need on my phone, and switching off App2SD, but now I'm wondering what the next step should be. Does this indicate that my SD is dying, or should I try repartitioning the card -- either to eliminate the EXT partition entirely or to recreate it?
just try reformatting the card...if you start experiencing it again...then your card is most likely dying... sorry...
Even if you got your Eris on the first day it came out, your card shouldn't be close to "dying" yet. Maybe it was defective to begin with. I'd bet willing to be its not the card. I know a2sd is harder on it, but I just doubt it killed it already.
Copy your apps to PC, reformat SD Card, Copy apps back, and see what happens.
Please report back, I'd be interested to see what happened.
Apps2SD isn't recommended by a lot of the devs for a reason. It causes unnecessary wear on the SD card. SD cards have a limited life span of around 100k cycles. When you access a program on the SD card it doesn't just make 1 cycle (read/write), it makes many during the usage of the program. 100k for picture taking and other standard use is quite a bit, but when an app is accessing the SD card constantly while running 100k is reached very quickly.
I'm going to take a guess and say your card is dying for reasons stated above. Try reformatting as recommended, if that doesn't work, replace the card.
The only time this would be a concern is if you moved dalvik-cache to the SD card (as that is constantly updated). When you put an application on the SD card, the data related to the card is stored in /data/data, which is not moved to the SD card (this is why internal storage continues to decrease after you move apps and dalvik-cache to the SD card).
Also, it's 100,000 cycles per block of memory. Most SD cards have wear-leveling technology that helps with this issue, so it will take a while before the card becomes bad (if it is a good quality card).
I would say he has a failing card. It happens once in a while.
Unheard said:
Apps2SD isn't recommended by a lot of the devs for a reason. It causes unnecessary wear on the SD card. SD cards have a limited life span of around 100k cycles. When you access a program on the SD card it doesn't just make 1 cycle (read/write), it makes many during the usage of the program. 100k for picture taking and other standard use is quite a bit, but when an app is accessing the SD card constantly while running 100k is reached very quickly.
I'm going to take a guess and say your card is dying for reasons stated above. Try reformatting as recommended, if that doesn't work, replace the card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah u gotta be very careful with app2sd
I followed the advice of several people and repartitioned reformatted my sd card. I decided to go without app2sd for awhile so I just did a single fat partition. So far so good...everything is working again.
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Best method of formatting SD card for best Android performance?

Hi all,
I'm planning on a format of my SD card. Before I do so I figured I'd created a new thread here on the subject...
I use Darkstone1337's SuperRAM 1.5 Froyo build which works almost perfectly EXCEPT since changing from a 256mb data.img to a 2gb data.img I'm now getting the 'sleep of death', i.e. phone taking forever to wake from calls and standby often. At first I thought it was down to importing data from my previous data.img so I formatted and started over but I have the same problem with an untouched 2gb build.
So, if anyone has any suggestions on SoD and how I should format my SD card next (allocation unit size, etc.) I'd be interested to know. A couple of threads say Sleep of Death and the SD card may go hand in hand.
I find it very strange that I never experienced the problems on the default 256mb data.img!
Replying to my own post... I found that the Sleep of Death issue was down to my Class 4 MicroSD card, this one: http://www.mymemory.co.uk/Micro-SDHC/MyMemory/MyMemory-16GB-Micro-SD-(SDHC)-Card---Class--4
Write speeds were ridiculous... fluctuating between 0.25mb/sec and a max of 3mb/sec, which is obviously below the minimum standard for a Class 4 card. So likely faulty. I tested the card with h2testw which also confirmed the slow read/write speeds. So I've switched to a Class 2 which is averaging about 5mb/sec which is certainly decent for a Class 2 and best of all it's fixed the SoD problems! SuperRAM 1.5 is running great again, even on the 2gb data.img. I can also boot builds that for god only knows what reason were refusing to boot on the Class 4 card (like Darkstone's SuperRAM Sense 0.1)
Formatted my Class 2 to FAT32 with everything on default in Windows 7. No problems.
SuperRAM now only has a couple of seconds lag max when switching on from standby and perhaps 3-4 secs max when waking during/after a call. These issues are being discussed in another thread though and look to be hardware/kernal related so not an issue of the SD card.
Yes. but we did not know what is the best format for Andriod, I got 2Gbyte SD with my Samsung, it was formated as FAT, a 1.5 mbyte data folder of seesmic twitter client takes 24.8mbyte from actual desk space !, there should be a better format, I wanted to try the Fat32 to minimize cluster size, will check, if you have any details please share, thanks

New SD Card

Has anyone laid out the procedure for what to do with a new SD card and WP7 install? I've noticed many posts about it but no one saying exactly "this is what to do". I think this might be why there are so many posts about SD card failures. So if I have a new SD card and an HD2 and I want WP7, what do I do? Thanks ahead of time... Mod if there is an answer to this, I couldn't find it.
thuddome said:
Has anyone laid out the procedure for what to do with a new SD card and WP7 install? I've noticed many posts about it but no one saying exactly "this is what to do". I think this might be why there are so many posts about SD card failures. So if I have a new SD card and an HD2 and I want WP7, what do I do? Thanks ahead of time... Mod if there is an answer to this, I couldn't find it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you're just planning to run WP7 (so no fancy dualbooting with Android), there's not much to do, besides backing up anything on the card that you would like to keep. Your phone will create the necessary partitions and take care of the formatting on first boot, if I'm not mistaken.
Not really sure what you mean by "SD card failures". I don't recall reading any posts about that, unless you're referring to the random problems people are having with WP7 and some brands/types of SD cards (not really the result of any card failure).
aye what he said, if you have issues such as lag, wifi not working, random reboots etc then its an SD issue, that means you are out of luck with that current card, . Dont believe anyone when they tell you to buy a spacific card, there is no consistancy in the building of these things so where as you might have issues, someone else with the same card may be fine.i personally have had a wee bit of luck by filling my card with more music
the story is, i had no issues at all with my SD card, but one day after dumping some more music on i started getting reboot issues, took the music off and all was well, then i tried slapping more music on, about 200MB more, and that was it, all is ok again.
its a pure guess, well perhaps an educated guess, but i believe that for whatever reason WP7 had issues accessing a portion of my card, by filling it up some more it prevented WP7 from using it, and thus all is ok again, to be clear, the music played fine however!
dazza9075 said:
aye what he said, if you have issues such as lag, wifi not working, random reboots etc then its an SD issue, that means you are out of luck with that current card, . Dont believe anyone when they tell you to buy a spacific card, there is no consistancy in the building of these things so where as you might have issues, someone else with the same card may be fine.i personally have had a wee bit of luck by filling my card with more music
the story is, i had no issues at all with my SD card, but one day after dumping some more music on i started getting reboot issues, took the music off and all was well, then i tried slapping more music on, about 200MB more, and that was it, all is ok again.
its a pure guess, well perhaps an educated guess, but i believe that for whatever reason WP7 had issues accessing a portion of my card, by filling it up some more it prevented WP7 from using it, and thus all is ok again, to be clear, the music played fine however!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's interesting because I have had the same experience. I have been playing around with multiple size cards and brands. I have yet to get one work right. I have also discovered how you format them makes a difference; for example I have a Patriot class 4 16GB card that using EASEUS to format (low level) it worked but had lag at certain times, for example when going through setup on a fresh install of WP7. It was at a dead crawl with the same config with Android. I then formatted it with Minitool and it was unusable (dead dead crawl) with either WP7 and Android. I also tested a Kingston class 4 32GB w/ wp7 and it was about the same as the Patriot w/ EASEUS formatting. No card I have found outperforms (in the phone) the Sandisk Class 2 16GB card that came with the phone. My suspicion is that the cards that came with the phones have had something done to the sectors by the phone manufacturers. I need to hear from someone who really knows the I/O and Cardbus architecture of phones. My point is there should be a way to get all cards working with any phone, might not be to specs of the card but between tweaking formatting and other hacks they all should work.
thuddome said:
That's interesting because I have had the same experience. I have been playing around with multiple size cards and brands. I have yet to get one work right. I have also discovered how you format them makes a difference; for example I have a Patriot class 4 16GB card that using EASEUS to format (low level) it worked but had lag at certain times, for example when going through setup on a fresh install of WP7. It was at a dead crawl with the same config with Android. I then formatted it with Minitool and it was unusable (dead dead crawl) with either WP7 and Android. I also tested a Kingston class 4 32GB w/ wp7 and it was about the same as the Patriot w/ EASEUS formatting. No card I have found outperforms (in the phone) the Sandisk Class 2 16GB card that came with the phone. My suspicion is that the cards that came with the phones have had something done to the sectors by the phone manufacturers. I need to hear from someone who really knows the I/O and Cardbus architecture of phones. My point is there should be a way to get all cards working with any phone, might not be to specs of the card but between tweaking formatting and other hacks they all should work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My phone came with a Sandisk 2GB card and WP7 has offered me a SD Card Failed message regardless of what technique I have used to Format it...
thuddome said:
That's interesting because I have had the same experience. I have been playing around with multiple size cards and brands. I have yet to get one work right. I have also discovered how you format them makes a difference; for example I have a Patriot class 4 16GB card that using EASEUS to format (low level) it worked but had lag at certain times, for example when going through setup on a fresh install of WP7. It was at a dead crawl with the same config with Android. I then formatted it with Minitool and it was unusable (dead dead crawl) with either WP7 and Android. I also tested a Kingston class 4 32GB w/ wp7 and it was about the same as the Patriot w/ EASEUS formatting. No card I have found outperforms (in the phone) the Sandisk Class 2 16GB card that came with the phone. My suspicion is that the cards that came with the phones have had something done to the sectors by the phone manufacturers. I need to hear from someone who really knows the I/O and Cardbus architecture of phones. My point is there should be a way to get all cards working with any phone, might not be to specs of the card but between tweaking formatting and other hacks they all should work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lower class sd-cards have way better random reads/write speeds. This means they are better for storing file-caches, system files, and other rather small/scatered files. A higher class card will have awesome read/write speeds, but they do sacrifice the random speeds (they will preemptively load huge chunks of the file they are writing/reading to/from. So, they will have an overhead when accessing a file, that will be attenuated only if the operations made with that file are long. If u wanna write/read a large chunk of small non-sequential file/s, a class 2 is awesome. Which means that these cards are adequate form OS being run from them. Of course, when syncing with zune, you WILL notice a very decreased speed (since the files are being passed sequencially), but the system per se will operate silky smooth.
Hope this helped. Kudos mate
ei05035 said:
Lower class sd-cards have way better random reads/write speeds. This means they are better for storing file-caches, system files, and other rather small/scatered files. A higher class card will have awesome read/write speeds, but they do sacrifice the random speeds (they will preemptively load huge chunks of the file they are writing/reading to/from. So, they will have an overhead when accessing a file, that will be attenuated only if the operations made with that file are long. If u wanna write/read a large chunk of small non-sequential file/s, a class 2 is awesome. Which means that these cards are adequate form OS being run from them. Of course, when syncing with zune, you WILL notice a very decreased speed (since the files are being passed sequencially), but the system per se will operate silky smooth.
Hope this helped. Kudos mate
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
just about to write all of that myself but you beet me too it!
to add to that, no two cards are alike, make and model makes no difference hence my issue with the "working SD card" thread on here, there is no way to know other than trying it
My wee issue is possibly related to some dodgy parts within the card, it reports perfect but if internal components are not consistant it may explain my rather odd situation
dazza9075 said:
just about to write all of that myself but you beet me too it!
to add to that, no two cards are alike, make and model makes no difference hence my issue with the "working SD card" thread on here, there is no way to know other than trying it
My wee issue is possibly related to some dodgy parts within the card, it reports perfect but if internal components are not consistant it may explain my rather odd situation
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In your situation i'd risk say it might have occured some corruption when transfering those musics. At least, considering that all is well now. It is unlikely that a sector of your card is/was permanently damaged, as repeting the operation worked, aye? Also, since I don't know what the file system is used by WP7, I do not know what maintenance the file system requires (such as defragmentation and whatnot)
perhaps, but it is repeatable, if i remove 400MB of music from my device its fine, if then copy 200 on to the card it reboots randomly, if i then copy the additional 200 back to the card it works fine
Potentially your correct, it may be some sign of wear on the card, but either way the music plays fine, which possibly suggests the random access speeds issue again, if it is sub-par sectors on the card that may explain it

SD card as Internal? Is it really a good thing to do??

Even though I got 32gb internal and having Samsung 32gb sd card, I selected the option to make 'Sd as Internal' (I thought that in future I'm gonna install huge games and there would be internal memory lack).
But after doing this I can't see my internal Storage and same time Im sensing that my 32gb internal will be not fully used. And I know(as I have some android knowledge) apps in internal(system) will run smoothly than in sd card. And class 10 sd card is good for media not for system contact. Now I have to dump my data(songs&movies) in the same storage where system treating it as 'Internal'. So I may not put huge data in my sd card at where as my internal will be some what unused much.
If you have 32gb internal(this is almost enough to run apps without lags) and 32gb sd(more songs&stuff) I suggest you "Don't make your Sd as Internal".
This is my opinion. What's yours? Am I correct or You want to change my mind throwing some light?
yeah I did the same thing!! 32 gb is enough for apps
ReX-Hell2heAven said:
If you have 32gb internal(this is almost enough to run apps without lags) and 32gb sd(more songs&stuff) I suggest you "Don't make your Sd as Internal".
This is my opinion. What's yours? Am I correct or You want to change my mind throwing some light?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree. With Android 6 the 'external' storage (microsd card) can no longer be used for moving apps to. It's data storage only. When you have a phone with limited memory (say 8 GB) and want more to store your apps, you can use the SD as internal. This will format (and encrypt?) the SD and replace the internal storage.
As SD is generally slower, I would advice against it. When in a couple of years we're at Android Z and the 32 GB is indeed a bit small, you can opt to go to the 128 GB SD, but until then I would use it for data only. (I have my Titanium and TWRP backups on it, next to some media, nothing more)
32 GB (23~25 usable) is more than enough for apps and few games..and I don't recommend to use SD card as internal..unless your device has only 8gb memory then use a high end SD card..such as Samsung evo+ or pro. (Correct me if I am wrong but I think Google introduced this feature for their low end Android one phones..)
Don't do it , formatting sd card as internal will reduce its performance and also it will be encrypted. So you can't use the data with in it without the same phone you have formated it with. Since g4 plus have 32 gb internal it's totally unnecessary

Base System RAM shortage?

When I bought this phone the operating system allowed the Base 4Gb RAM to be augmented with the inserted 16GB SD Card. This meant that the phone could use more than the 4Gb for the System. For some reason - I suspect one of the previous firmware updates - this doesn't appear to work any more. It's become evident because the phone only has a couple of Apps loaded and keeps complaining about being low on memory. 4.4Gb of 4.6Gb used. All the photos and videos are on the SD Card, the few that are on there anyway. Most have been deleted in the desperate search for where the memory has been used. Can anyone tell me if my suspicion about the firmward upgrade removing the SD Card RAM is correct please?
As far as I know ... you can use a external sd card of 128 GB if you want to. The internal sd-card is small (considering what is left) so don't use too much space by apps, images, backup etc.... and place all what is possible on the external sd-card.
Your RAM is 1.5 GB Your system almost 3.6 GB ....so I think that in your case the total is 24 GB and only 3 GB left on the internal card .... this is normal.
Don't confuse memory with Ram.
https://www.lehigh.edu/~inimr/computer-basics-tutorial/ramvsdiskspacehtm.
xabu said:
As far as I know ... you can use a external sd card of 128 GB if you want to. The internal sd-card is small (considering what is left) so don't use too much space by apps, images, backup etc.... and place all what is possible on the external sd-card.
Your RAM is 1.5 GB Your system almost 3.6 GB ....so I think that in your case the total is 24 GB and only 3 GB left on the internal card .... this is normal.
Don't confuse memory with Ram.
https://www.lehigh.edu/~inimr/computer-basics-tutorial/ramvsdiskspacehtm.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's funny, RAM stands for Random Access Memory. It is Memory. (I built my first computer in 1977). Thanks for your response but what I was asking about is the manufacturers firmware versions and which one stopped making the SD Card memory available to use as System RAM.

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