Can't access internal SD card

[samaruf]

Guys,
I need some help as I can't get anyone to help me with this issue at XDA. I was able to update the S7 with the Indonesian Froyo and everything was working fine. Then I had the bright idea of removing the partitions in the internal sd card which I had made to get Link2SD working. I used MiniTool partition wizard to remove the partitions and then formatted(FAT32) the whole storage to get the 8GB back. Unfortunately, I didn't change "Logical" to "primary" partition, and now the S7 doesn't see the storage and can't mount it.

I have the android sdk installed, so I got adb shell. I also have rooted the tablet but don't have a recovery yet. I hope one of you can guide me to get the internal storage back as many apps look for sdcard and not the 16GB external sdcard2 that I have on this device.

Appreciate any suggestions or solutions.

 

[shackeh]

I had this exact issue last week. You need to blow away the mbr. I used shell and did "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/block/mmcblk0" It did not finish running but after 20 minutes or so I rebooted and was able to reformat the drive thru the android menu. Then I still had to run fixmbr on before I could add an ext2 partition for apps2sd but if you are not looking to do that you may be able to skip it. Good luck!

 

[samaruf]

I had this exact issue last week. You need to blow away the mbr. I used shell and did "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/block/mmcblk0" It did not finish running but after 20 minutes or so I rebooted and was able to reformat the drive thru the android menu. Then I still had to run fixmbr on before I could add an ext2 partition for apps2sd but if you are not looking to do that you may be able to skip it. Good luck!

I tried this "adb shell dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/block/mmcblk0" but get cannot open for writeermission Denied.

 

[shackeh]

I tried this "adb shell dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/block/mmcblk0" but get cannot open for writeermission Denied.

Did you do 'su'? I actually used terminal on the device itself (with su first).

 

[samaruf]

Here's a quirk, if I do adb shell su, I get the superuser prompt in the S7 and # in the cmd window. After this I cannot type anything in the cmd window.

 

[shackeh]

Here's a quirk, if I do adb shell su, I get the superuser prompt in the S7 and # in the cmd window. After this I cannot type anything in the cmd window.

Can't help there... I had my own issues with adb and gave up on it after awhile. If you don't have a terminal emulator, go download one from the Market and give it a try.

 

[samaruf]

Downloaded Terminal Emulator and typed in the command. It was a pain because the android keyboard would capitalize every letter even though I turned off all auto settings. Anyway, was able to issue the command, and now it's just sitting there. You said it wasn't done even after 20 mins. I will wait 30 and follow the rest of your steps. Since I do want Apps2SD, how do you execute the fixmbr?

 

[shackeh]

Downloaded Terminal Emulator and typed in the command. It was a pain because the android keyboard would capitalize every letter even though I turned off all auto settings. Anyway, was able to issue the command, and now it's just sitting there. You said it wasn't done even after 20 mins. I will wait 30 and follow the rest of your steps. Since I do want Apps2SD, how do you execute the fixmbr?

After you have it reformatted, mount it in windows.
You can download the tool at http://www.sysint.no/Nedlasting/MbrFix.zip (windows used to come with it - or a version of it, but not any more). Then you identify which drive is the one that needs fixing with this:
MbrFix /drive <num> listpartitions
unless you already know. If you don't know, just iterate through starting with 0 until you get to the output that matches. If you only have a single hard disk and the tablet it will probably be drive 1. Double check though and you may want to remove the external card to prevent an accidental erasing. Once you are sure, you execute
MbrFix /drive <num> fixmbr
Then restart your tablet and you should be able to repartition as you please. For more on mbrfix, go to MBR Fix - Fix MBR problems.

 

[samaruf]

After you have it reformatted, mount it in windows.
You can download the tool at http://www.sysint.no/Nedlasting/MbrFix.zip (windows used to come with it - or a version of it, but not any more). Then you identify which drive is the one that needs fixing with this:
MbrFix /drive <num> listpartitions
unless you already know. If you don't know, just iterate through starting with 0 until you get to the output that matches. If you only have a single hard disk and the tablet it will probably be drive 1. Double check though and you may want to remove the external card to prevent an accidental erasing. Once you are sure, you execute
MbrFix /drive <num> fixmbr
Then restart your tablet and you should be able to repartition as you please. For more on mbrfix, go to MBR Fix - Fix MBR problems.

Thanks for all the hand holding. I actually waited 15 mins after which I rebooted and exactly as you mentioned, the internal storage was back. I was able to mount and reformat it and got the 8GB back. The Osama news then flooded in and I lost concentration. I will try the mbr fix and see where that goes.

Do you know why apps2sd does not work with the internal storage in this tablet? I thought it was built into Froyo and we didn't need to do all kinds of hacks to get it working. I didn't have to do anything on my EVO 4G to get it working.

 

[shackeh]

It does work... sorta. When you go into the manage applications section of the settings, the applications that can be moved will have a "move to sd card" button enabled. It will move a lot of the files for an app to the card but definitely not all of them. This is where my lack of Linux knowledge bites me but there are certain types it can move and certain types it can't. I am actually using Link2SD which seems to move nearly everything and am really liking it. I have installed a ton of apps and still have about 95 MB free. That 95 MB will still fill with application cache periodically but that is manageable. When I used the "move to sd card" functionality that came in froyo, I filled up internal storage way before now - but still was able to install way more than when I ran unrooted in Eclair.

 

[zxhian]

im also experiencing this problem atm giving it a try

 

[elvis56]

I had this exact issue last week. You need to blow away the mbr. I used shell and did "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/block/mmcblk0" It did not finish running but after 20 minutes or so I rebooted and was able to reformat the drive thru the android menu. Then I still had to run fixmbr on before I could add an ext2 partition for apps2sd but if you are not looking to do that you may be able to skip it. Good luck!

I registered to say thanks for this great piece of information. I got my huawei S7 today(very good deal I think, 100euro/$145), installed the indonesian rom, rooted with gingerbreak and all was great. Then tried to repartition for app2sd/link2sd under windows using minitool partition wizard and that was the end of my internal SD. Until I read your post that is. I installed SSHDROID from the market, then connected through Putty and executed dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/block/mmcblk0. I let it run for a few minutes, rebooted and I was able to reformat the internal SD again. Thank you so much!

Anyone have any idea why this is happening? I got 2 different errors, when i formatted the ext2 partition as primary i got the message the sdcard is damaged(and device was still recognized in windows), when i formatted the EXT2 partition as logical 2 drive letters showed in windows but no way to access the partitions.

This is the output i got after canceling the command with CTRL+C:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/block/mmcblk0
^C1360385+0 records in
1360384+0 records out
696516608 bytes transferred in 255.131 secs (2730035 bytes/sec)


Staying away from EXT2 for now.