Using SD card idea

[ldimick]

This is a semi-noob question so flame away if you must as long as you have an intelligent REAL answer.

Is there any reason we cannot mount the ENTIRE APP directory on a rooted Droid to point to a partition on the SD card and thus expand the 256MB limitr for app installations? believe it or not after rooting my Droid I have had to delete some apps because of this low ceiling.

 

[bastosero]

That would be a nice idea. I'd love to find out if there is a way to do that also.

 

[ldimick]

APP2SD will do something like this.

I would like to divide my SD card into a 4 and 12 GB partition. Set a symbolic link from \SYSTEM\APP to the 4GB partition. I can see that it would be a problem if the bootloader needed access to that directory before the link loaded but I doubt that it would. It would also be a problem if the SD card failed. But in that case I would have no problem at all carrying an imaged one. Or even a stripped down SD card. I am sure that I am missing something here because this sounds too simple to have not been tried and used.

 

[christim]

The apps need to run on the device for security reasons.

You can save some space by using Astro to back up all your apps to the card. That makes a copy of the apk files on the card. Then you can uninstall everything on your phone using Astro. Then you can install from the APKs on the card via Astro. This reinstalls everything on your phone but the size of all the APKs is left on the card.

With folks making roms I'm sure someone might be able to change this so we can run apps from the card rather than just store data there that apps might use.

After all, there are only so many 33mb Google Earth type apps that will fit on our phones!

 

[strobez395]

Now if Apps were on the SD card you wouldn't be able to use many things on your phone while your droid is mounted...correct?

 

[ldimick]

Now if Apps were on the SD card you wouldn't be able to use many things on your phone while your droid is mounted...correct?

That is true. but there are not many things I need to use when it is mounted anyway.