Replacing stock SD card with larger one

[Hawaii Tom]

I have bought a 16 GB Class 4 SD card to replace the stock 8 GB class 2 my EVO came with. I have copied all the info I can see on my old card to my laptop HD. Is there hidden stuff I need to copy as well? I have read 3 differing techniques for formatting a new card with the EXT, SWAP and FAT partitions, including using a boot disc with GParted on it, but the Linux boot is only seeing my laptop hard drives, not anything connected by USB, like the phone. Is this process actually easier than it seems to be to me right now?

[lkillen]

I just dragged all my files onto the new card, popped it in and continued to march. I did not reformmat it.

That was in early July and I have not have any problems to date.

[Hawaii Tom]

I guess that just uses the FAT side, but I've read there should be a 512 MB Linux EXT4 partition, as well as a 32 MB Linux swap file.

[lkillen]

Where are you getting that information from? I examined the stock card it is Fat and single partition.

[kevmo1965]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2; en-us; Sprint APA9292KT Build/FRF91) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)

Defragment the card and check for errors. I did this with mine and it helped my battery life.

[Hawaii Tom]

Originally Posted by lkillen

Where are you getting that information from? I examined the stock card it is Fat and single partition.

Speed Up and Back Up Your Rooted Android Phone

[cruise350]

That sounds like it is for Cynogens ROMS is that the ROM your running?

[aznmode]

Originally Posted by cruise350

That sounds like it is for Cynogens ROMS is that the ROM your running?

That's what it looks like so it shouldn't apply to stock rom or non AOSP roms (thats mostly every rom).

[bradart]

Originally Posted by aznmode

That's what it looks like so it shouldn't apply to stock rom or non AOSP roms (thats mostly every rom).

The EXT4 and swap partition are for something totally seperate from actual file storage.

There is a script built into most custom ROMs that tricks the phone into thinking that the /data partition of the OS is actually in the EXT partition, if present. This is to force your phone to install ALL apps to the SDcard. This is mainly intended for older android handsets (the Hero for instance) that had an extremely limited capacity for app storage. I find it to be completely unnecessary on the Evo. I have 151 apps and counting with no low memory errors.

The Swap partition essentially lets your phone use a part of your SDcard as spare ram/cache space. In my experience, it has little to no effect and shortens the life of your SDcard by increasing the number of read/writes.

Just make sure the SDcard you got is Fat32 (most of them ship this way because every OS [android, windows, mac, linux, windows mobile, dumbphone] have accepted it as a standard.)

EDIT: I forgot to say, this is by no means in any way related to a ROM being AOSP or stock/sense. Most ROMS (specifically Fresh and Damagecontrol) include this functionality by default due to some vestigial instinct that carried over from the Hero. Froyo is quickly making Darktremor's work on the hacked apps2sd obsolete, though.

[Hawaii Tom]

OK, well it seems like that formatting article by Kevin Purdy I had read in Lifehacker was actually old news, originally written for the limitations of the G1. I'm just moving everything over now from one card to the other using Windows and plain old FAT 32. It's nice when things are easier than you thought they were going to be. I got a good price on a 16 GB Kingston Class 4 card on Amazon. Now I can actually put my entire music collection on my phone... what a concept. And have room for some movies as well! Thanks for all the advice gang!
P.S.- I've already been using App 2 SD and it seems to work well. Also did a complete Titanium Backup and Nandroid Backup.