Android Enthusiasts Stack Exchange
Android Enthusiasts Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [partitions]

A partition is a division of either your internal storage or your sdcard.

Internal storage of Android devices is devided into several partitions, each dedicated to a special "task". Some of the more important ones include:

  • /system: This is where the Android system and the pre-installed apps reside. It usually is mounted read-only, so on non-rooted devices you cannot write here (with the exception of applying a system update, e.g. OTA, or flashing a new ROM)
  • /data: Here the downloaded apps and all app's data are located. Additionally, some system settings are stored here, log files, and more

Your sdcard usually has a single partition only -- but also could be split into multiple partitions. The latter is mostly done for things like App2SD+ or Link2SD, which provide extended features for moving apps, data and caches from the internal storage to sdcard.

For more details on partitions, you might want to visit Wikipedia.

Further Readings

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Do most Android device use GPT as their partitioning scheme?

There is much talk of Android partitions that can be found with Google. Sometimes I can find references to GPT in documentation for mobile processors or on XDA Developers (where I have learned that certain devices do use GPT as their scheme). Aside…
Melab
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Resizing the /data partition (rooted)

My app market (Google Play) has a problem. I can't install any apps on my phone (Lenovo, rooted) because of "There isn't enough space in the disk", but actually there is. After asking a friend, I moved apps to the SD card. After more tries, I…
Yagel
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Purpose of the "persist" partition

There are a lot of posts on the internet on how to fix or restore, but not many about what it is for or what is stored on it. What gets stored on it? Does the SIM unlock code go there? Or are values related to cellular functionality stored there…
Melab
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What are the /firmware and /efs partitions on Samsung devices

This is specifically the Galaxy s3. Out of curiosity what are these partitions exactly. Are they part of the android OS or something lower level than that? If I were to delete everything in these partitions will I brick the phone even after a…
user974896
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Repartitioning Nexus 7 2012 (grouper) parted unrecognized disk label

I need to repartition my 2012 Nexus 7 (grouper) to create a bigger system partition so that I can install Lineage OS. Here is the current partition table. Unfortunately parted can't print the partition table because unrecognized disk…
Richard Barraclough
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Messed up my partition table on nexus 7

OK some background here. I was running CM 11 nightly on Nexus 7 (2013) and had encrypted my device. Today i decided to flash my device to CM12 and hence went into recovery. When I tried to do a clean wipe it gave me errors because my data is…
user3574816
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Implementing Dynamic Partitions instead AB systems

Is there an easy way to implement dynamic partitions for the oneplus 7 or any other phone built in with AB partitions system I want to support super.img to be able to test CGI images without the need for full wipe
Mohamed A'esam
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Android product partition vs. vendor partition

What's the difference between product partition and vendor partition? After flashing a GSI image, product partition is missing but vendor partition is there. I am confused about where should my application be installed. In recent releases, more…
lucky1928
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AParted partion re-do?

Can I re-size or adjust the size of the partitions that I made? Or do I need to just start over from scratch? I went through the process correctly several months back and now I would like to adjust the sizes of the partitions that I allocated. …
David
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How to see which partitions are mounted?

I want to see if every partition is mounted correctly on my devices; in particular I want to see if the /proc gets auto-mounted. How can I see this?
matt95
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Android Device Partitions

I understand how partitions work on a harddisk, also how to use programs to create, change, delete these partitions. I am using also Android for quite some time - but never really tried to go very deep regarding the system itself. I would really…
NilsB
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Why is there a userdata partition in my /dev/block/mapper/ (which seems to mean that userdata is a dynamic partition)?

https://source.android.com/docs/core/ota/dynamic_partitions/implement The supported dynamic partitions are: System Vendor Product System Ext ODM Note: Avoid placing userdata or any other permanent read-write partition inside super. According to…
hrdom
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Qualcomm / others NAND partition table layout

For a new Android board, who defines the partition table layout? Is it the SOC vendor or the customer of the board? Which tools are used to make the partition in the QC board? Is it QPST? In the AOSP code, is there a mapping file for the partition…
bengaltiger
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obtain partition size without root access

On my device, I can obtain a list of existing partitions by executing ls -al /dev/block/bootdevice/by-name via ADB. But I found no way to obtain the size of each partition without root powers: cat /proc/partitions, blockdev --getsize64 , cat…
Izzy
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lpmake complaining about not having enough space

I am trying, following this tutorial, to re-package a super.img file, but am confused by lpmake. I am trying to package the following 3…
Clément
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