[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] Dark Prinze:
Thanks!!!!

First off,

Thanks a bunch for the post! Effin brilliant.!!

Let me give a small background on how I got here...

> I was on ICSSGS RC5 TeamNyx with a Semaphore kernel, and all was fine until one dreaded day, I got the "Encrytion Unsuccessful" message. Being the noob I was, I hit the "Reset Phone" button.

> Tried tons of solutions, from flashing stock ROM to reflashing custom ROM, formatting all /data and /datadata partitions through CWM, mounting and unmounting all different combinations, all in a lost hope to get my phone to work again. Alas, nothing worked.

> Then, while searching through posts to find out why I got a "E:format_volume: rfs format failed on/dev/block/mmcblk0p2" error in CWM when trying to flash a kernel, I eventually forced myself to accept that my internal memory was gone (forever).

> Having come to that, I purchased a 16GB micro-sd, and used to CWM to partition the damn thing and then tries installing a stock ROM as well as a custom ROM. That din't work either.

> When I eventually found this post, the problem was over 4 months old.

> I then followed the steps given by Regan & Pindagus (and once again, Thanks a TON guys!), but unfortunately was unable to get it as per their exact steps

> This is how I got it to work:

1. Use MiniTool or EaseUS (EaseUS did NOT recognize my micro-sd in any of my PCs, I don't know why) ((AND, MiniTool did not work if the micro-sd was inserted before it was started. Don't ask me, I do not know!)) (((AND, MiniTool did not work all the time. It worked like, 2/10 times that I tried it?)))

2. Anyway, delete/clear all data in your partitions, wipe partitions (with 0s or 1s)

3. And then partition your sd: get your FAT32 partition first, making sure you leave at least 2 GB for the next Ext4 partition (both Primary)

4. Once this is done, insert sd-card into phone and go to Download mode

5. Here, I did it in two different ways, and both worked. Up to you on how you decide to go

5a. Use JW4 as suggested in first post (haven't tried with JW5/JW6 yet) and flash via Odin in PDA (Touch nothing else in Odin)

5b. Use JVU (my favorite, and better to move onto other custom ROMs) and flash via Odin without *.pit (you have to leave out pit here because, pit without repartition causes some random red screen and pit with repartition makes no sense - you just partitioned your sd-card, remember?)

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5.1 My phone still did not work (bootloop), so I took out my sd-card, ran it through my PC again for partition, and re-inserted in my phone

5.2 Flashed via Odin (JW4 or JVU), AGAIN. And now, it booted, successfully after a very very very long time!

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6. Root using Odin and appropriate cf-root kernel (JW4 or JVU)

7. Reboot, and voila, your phone should work as advertised.!

8. Next, get to Google Play, download mount r/w and SManager, run in root (with SU privileges) and make the vold.fstab edits as given in first post and reboot, your external sd storage should be recognized as well

9. That's it!

From almost bricking my phone and giving up on my precious SGS to this was not a journey I thought I'd make! But here I am, and cheers to the xda community for that! :D

---------- Post added at 03:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:02 PM ----------

If I want to flash a custom ROM again, say CM10 for JB, can I do that? Now that I'm running a JVU 2.3 GB on my "EXTERNAL SD-CARD"?

I saw in earlier posts that I should be able to flash a custom ROM as long as I edit the vold.fstab file as given, but I tried this and it did not work.

Meaning, I opened the vold.fstab file in the ZIP file of the custom ROM package, edited it using Notepad in PC, updated the ZIP, copied it to sd-card, and then flashed using CWM. This did not work for CM10.

Anything I'm doing wrong here? Please, any help would be appreciated.!