[Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] GabryJ84:
Hi,

I'm new to here.

I have a Computer Science Degree so my level of expertise with PC is high, but I'm fairly new to the Smartphones world, so I'm asking for help because there's something I can't manage to get it to work in my Samsung Galaxy SII (nobrand).

Let's begin with some info about the device:

The device was a 3.xx, then upgraded via Kies to 4.03 and succesfully rooted with CF's root. I routed my device since I wanted to have full control over it, but mostly because I wanted to install a firewall (to prevent some application from accessing the internet unless I specifically wanted them to do so) and widen the device's space reserved to install applications since it was over.

Before routing, I tried to pursue the "move to external SD" trick, but that resulted like a pain in the ass. The external sd was loaded discontinuously, so at eath boot up I was finding myself with broken or unaccessible application, frequent reboots, frozen system untill the sd was loaded, forcing me to cold re-boot the phone. That lead to sd burnout since probably at the 100th freeze, I cold-turned-off the phone during a write cycle and ****ed it up.

SO, this is the reason why I don't want to move applications to external sd anymore (here where I live it's said: forgive the first, club the second)

I noticed that there is a new trick that consists in repartitioning part of the internal SD to ext format and bridging it to the phone's memory tricking the phone to think applications are installed into the phone's memory where they are actyally installed into the internal repartitioned sd instead. (with some apps)

So after months of thoughts about resetting the phone and trying this solution, Yesterday I believed the time had come. In the meantime, Android 4.12 was officially released by Samsung, so I decided to take 2 peagions with 1 breadcrumb and did the match.

I first did a hard reset, then I installed everything new via Odin (downloaded the entire 900Mb pack and flashed it over). Everything went ok and I succesfully installed PhilZ Kernel 4.022b +root).

The Phone is now operative and fully working...

BUT

going to re-partition the external SD is a real nightmare I haven't been able to dig through.

I try to access the recovery with VolUp+Home+Power and the recovery loads. Immediately after booting, I receive the following error:

E: failed to Mount exfat /dev/block/mmcblk1p1 /sdcard

"Nevermind I thought...I don't have an external SD card so that might be the problem".

I went to "Advanced" and then "Partition Internal SD Card", I selected the sizes (2048/32), some rapid flashes and menu back to where it was. Consulting the log, the error is the same as before: E: failed to Mount exfat /dev/block/mmcblk1p1 /sdcard

Mhm...maybe I should select "external SD card". Result: Can't Mount SD Card

So we have...the internal sd card trying to Mount to /sdcard...that is the same as external? Something doesn't really work...

So...the card works in phone mode...but not in recovery mode...how strange...

Then i recalled that when I routed the phone, I installed the root via recovery/zip file, so It should actually see the internal sd card. BINGO! when I try to install something, It perfectly loads the internal contents of the card and a quick look to the path, unveils the problem:

THE INTERNAL CARD IS MOUNTED TO /emmc/

So...we have...recovery mounts internal card to /emmc but when he tries to repartition/reformat he tries to Mount...something to something else and fails.

So I'm stuck here. I heared this might be a problem because 4.12 changes mappings to devices and that I should tamper with vold.fstab but before destroying my phone I came here to ask some experts.

I also read that I might bind externalSD to internalSD, but I don't really uderstad what this mean. Is it something temporary? Will I be able to use external sd and internal sd or is it something I have to operate each time I want to use external SD.

Last but not least: Does that apply to my case? Because I saw that there is people applying that method that have problems loading internalsd in phone mode but my case is completely different. The phone works 100%, the only problem is that I can't repartition from recovery.

So CWM problem? PhilZ problem?

Please help me as I'm stuck.

EDIT: I found ICS SD Binder, but has someone any advice on how to map correctly internal & external SD card? Also...the phone when is on, mounts internal card to /sdcard. So where is the point? Should I Mount the internal card manually to /sdcard?