yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Fire TV General] xm41907:
Awesome! Where did you put the firmware file for CWM to see it? I can't access the file system on my SSD through CWM. It looks like it is still trying to access the files on the FTV itself, but I don't know how to transfer it to them.
[Fire TV General] grappi:
Yes, CWM can't see the SSD, but the internal data directory is mounted to "/data_fire".

You can push the firmware and MountDataToUSB files to /data_fire/media/0/
[Fire TV General] barbedwiredave:
I've had this running flawlessly for months with a SSD. Just this week XBMC started running slow so I rebooted, now it will not boot past the firetv color splash screen. I imaged the drive, reformatted, plugged it into the fire tv, flashed the script and it booted fine showing the SSD as internal storage. I want to put the image I made on another drive and transfer my old files over. Question is should I just copy all files or should I skip certain one that may be related to boot that could be corrupt?

Thanks

Dave
[Fire TV General] gerikss:
Does anybody know if this will work with pre-rooted 5.2.1.1 on fire tv 1?
[Fire TV General] procter:
I want to ask a related question. Just updated to FOS5 pre-rooted with TWRP recovery, and I think the mounting external usb for internal storage does not work any more (was developed in FOS3 and CWM recovery), so I followed the instruction to move kodi’s data to external usb (fat32). Will there be an update for the script to be used for twrp and fireos 5? [MENTION=2205195]jmandawg[/MENTION]

Thanks so much in advance.
[Fire TV General] t3ch42:
Not sure how that math is working...:confused:

I had 30gb of available space as I used a 32gb card. 30=32 of course in the way that storage is calculated.

I copied over the /data folder which was about 500MB or so after a fresh start and selected app installs.

The original 5.45GB is still available, but you don't have direct access to it. Its hidden down and the storage really doesn't get used to my knowledge...maybe some system stuff, but not for app storage or documents, etc.
[Fire TV General] AQKhanTheOne:
This. Perhaps Imtiaj Meah or Jocala can incorporate this into their fantastic utility applications.
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
I've rolled this into a CWM flashable if anyone wants to test it.
[Fire TV General] rotor00ter:
I'm going to try this on the FTV I'll be setting up in the next day or two. Does it matter which pre-rooted firmware you have installed or should it work on any of them?
[Fire TV General] AQKhanTheOne:
Tried this but no joy yet. I followed the following steps:

After I unlinked all the apps and their associated files that I had moved previously to the USB. stick using Link2SD, I then:

1. Used the MiniTool Partition Wizard to make a single Ext4 partition on a 32gb USB stick and made it primary.

2. Deleted the script that called Link2SD by using Imtiaj Meah's FireTV Utility.

3. Sideloaded your MountSDCARDtoUSB.zip file to the /sdcard directory using the same FireTV Utility.

4. Booted into recovery (currently 6.0.5.1.2, thanks rbox!)

5. Did the "Install Zip" bit and selected and installed the MountSDCARDtoUSB.zip file

6. Backed up to the main menu in CWM and selected "reboot system"

What happens is that eventually the FireTV boots but I get a "checking for updates" screen. Initially I panicked and thought I had somehow lost root and turned off the router to prevent any update from taking place. It turned out that actually I hadn't lost root, but if I turn the router back on, it does get past the "checking for updates"screen and lands me into the Amazon registration dialog. The two choices are "Existing account"and "create New Account". I tried to select the "Existing account" but it won't do anything even when that option is clicked.

I then rebooted into recovery using the FireTV Utility and used the "Revert" zip file to undo the changes. When I do this, and reboot, all goes back to normal except for a few quirks, such as losing rbox's xposed modules that I use to make XBMC the default launcher.

Obviously I'm doing something wrong here since others are saying its working for them. Would doing a factory reset while in the recovery help? I wanted to try and avoid having to re-install and configure XBMC. I've backed up the XBMC installation again using the FireTV utility so I suppose it wouldn't be too much to restore it.

Should I uninstall Link2SD completely? What about Stickmount?

Any help would be much appreciated.
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
It should not, but i've only tested with the latest after a factory reset.
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
Are you sure everything is unlinked and only one usb drive is plugged in?

Can you try reformatting the usb drive as ext4 to erase all the files on it and flashing this (attachment) in CWM then rebooting with the usb drive attached.

Please post output of following commands after it boots up (will take a while to boot first time since copying files). by running the following commands (with your fireTV ip address):

adb connect 192.168.1.xxx

adb shell cat /storage/usb/test.txt

adb shell mount

Use the same revert file if necessary. i'm not sure how this could make the exposed module stop working.
[Fire TV General] xokol2lvox:
Very interesting to mount ext4 drive as system. Still a bit foreign to mounting in Linux or android, but could this script just be modified to mount as ntfs drive and bypass stickmount. Problem I notice with stickmount is drive doesn't show free/used space under file manager or xbmc. Forgive me if too far off topic, but seems same principle just different mount point correct?
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
It should work, but you would need the ntfs module. I would not recommend using ntfs on android, ext 4 is a better choice.
[Fire TV General] AFTVnews.com:
I'll be testing this later today with a fresh Fire TV. Is there an updated script to try or should I use the one in the original post?
[Fire TV General] Y314K:
You planning on making/testing a NTFS mod or just EXT4 or both ?? Would love to see a NTFS version of this mod. But would like to know what limitations it might add when compare with EXT4.
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
The only difference between the one in the original post and the newer one posted on page 3 is that in the newer script "/data/data" and "/data/property" are mounted on usb storage instead internal storage.

If your drive is fast i recommend using the newer one on page 3. I've been using it on my portable hard drive and it's been fine so far. My exact steps for a fresh install (will erase all your data) are:

1. format usb drive as ext4

2. boot into CWM flash zip

3. wipe data/factory reset

4. format /data & /media

5 wipe divalak cache

6 plub in usb drive & reboot

The downside is you loose all your stuff, and you have to watch the horrible intro video. Let me know how it works.
[Fire TV General] collindv:
I really want to try this but without a factory reset. Takes much time setting everything back up. Can it be done without a reset? Perhaps if [MENTION=2453972]aft[/MENTION]vnews is going to try it you could check without factory resetting first?
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
I don't think it would work with ntfs. But the script is really simple (57 lines) so anyone could give it a try.
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
Techically it should work but I'd wait for his results. If you already Link2SD some stuff you may run into issues.
[Fire TV General] AQKhanTheOne:
1. Only one USB stick is plugged in formatted to ext4. (No apps are linked by Link2SD).

2. Flashed the new zip you provided.

3. Rebooted, and when the FireTV reboots, I get the same checking for updates screen and then the Amazon registration screen.

4. Reverted with the revert zip and things are back to square one.

* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
connected to 10.0.0.83:5555

C:\FTV>adb shell cat /storage/usb/text.txt
/system/bin/sh: cat: /storage/usb/text.txt: No such file or directory

C:\FTV>adb shell
shell@android:/ $ cat /storage/usb/test.txt
cat /storage/usb/test.txt
waiting up to 30 seconds for sda1...
waiting up to 30 seconds for sda1...
checking if sda1 exists
umounting data
mounting /dev/block/mmcblk0p20 to /data_fire
Mounting sda1 to /data
Binding misc
shell@android:/ $ mount
mount
rootfs / rootfs ro,relatime 0 0
tmpfs /dev tmpfs rw,nosuid,relatime,mode=755 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,relatime,mode=600 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,relatime 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw,relatime 0 0
none /acct cgroup rw,relatime,cpuacct 0 0
tmpfs /mnt/secure tmpfs rw,relatime,mode=700 0 0
tmpfs /mnt/asec tmpfs rw,relatime,mode=755,gid=1000 0 0
tmpfs /mnt/obb tmpfs rw,relatime,mode=755,gid=1000 0 0
none /dev/cpuctl cgroup rw,relatime,cpu 0 0
tmpfs /storage/usb tmpfs rw,relatime,mode=755 0 0
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/system /system ext4 ro,relatime,data=orde
red 0 0
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/persist /persist ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,noa
time,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/cache /cache ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime
,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/modem /firmware vfat ro,relatime,uid=1000
,gid=1000,fmask=0337,dmask=0227,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=low
er,errors=remount-ro 0 0
/dev/block/mmcblk0p20 /data_fire ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/block/sda1 /data ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,nodiratime,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/block/mmcblk0p20 /data/misc ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/fuse /mnt/shell/emulated fuse rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1023,group_i
d=1023,default_permissions,allow_other 0 0
/dev/fuse /storage/emulated/legacy fuse rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1023,gr
oup_id=1023,default_permissions,allow_other 0 0
shell@android:/ $
[Fire TV General] collindv:
I don't currently use link2sd. I have a fat32 thumb drive mounted with foldermount that is just storing my XBMC thumbnails and CWM backups.
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
Strange it looks like it mounted the file system correctly but I don't see any indication that it copied files over to it. Did you reformat your usb drive before you did it a second time so it would copy the files again? It only copies the files if "data" folder does not exists on the usb drive.

Can you try looking in the /data folder and see if your files are there. Seems like maybe something is getting missed during the copy or possibly not copying at all. Do you have to re-register your remote when it boots? Can you still not go through the register screen even with keyboard?
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
You can give it a shot with a different usb drive, so you don't lose your stuff on it when you format it as ext4, you may also want to disable foldermount first so it doesn't try to remount the new drive. You can always go back to normal with the revert script.

AQKhanTheOne is having issue with it losing his amazon profile, so it might be best to wait unless you have time to mess around with it.
[Fire TV General] rotor00ter:
I just did this using the script on the first page and it is showing I have 431GB of 458GB available. I formatted a 1TB drive with 500GB EXT4 and 500GB Fat32 (to use for cwm and other fireTV back-ups) Now that I think of it I probably didn't need that much space for that. My installed firmware was the newest pre-rooted (51.1.3.0_513011820) My steps were:

1. Factory reset via cwm recovery version 3

2. reboot

3. push mount zip to /sdcard

4. reboot to recovery and flash mount zip

5. Plug in EXT4/Fat 32 Formatted drive

5. reboot system

**edit** The Fat32 partition is not seen in cwm recovery so I can't back-up onto it. It shows as 2248MB remaining when I try to back-up so its trying to back-up to the FireTV drive. /storage/usbdisk does not show as an option in the back-up restore menu. Not sure if this can be fixed so a dual partitioned drive would work but just wanted to make you aware. Or if there is a way to cwm to backup to the ext4 partition that would work too. I assume with the recovery it only sees the actual fireTV drive space available and not the larger one we set-up using this script?

It went through all the steps again including the painful start up video but after that was done it looks like it has worked. Now I have a few questions? Can you explain more in laymen terms what the benefit of using the script posted on page 3 would be opposed to the one on the first page that I used? I just factory reset so I don't mind resetting agian if having the other script will be better. Any issues with changing to the other script. Would I just run the revert script then reboot and then follow your instructions for the newer script? What happens if I need to change to a different drive for some reason? like run out of space or drive gets corrupted or has other issues? If I need to unplug this FireTV to set up my second one is it safe to just unplug the FireTV and then unplug the drive and then when I want to use it again just have everything plugged in and plug the Fire TV in last? Sorry for all the questions but this is the third or fourth time I have had to redo the set-up on this. I was trying to use stickmount and foldermount and link2SD but the solution you have come up with seems to be the best so far. Thanks for your efforts.
[Fire TV General] Y314K:
Right.. EXT4 on external storage on Android is best if not a must for speed. Guess I can just use the Free Paragon ExtFS for Windows v2.356 to read/write on the EXT4 USBStick on a PC if needed.

I am trying to figure storage out. Seems this EXT4 mod needs at the very least a 8GB USBStick. Anything less (2-4GB USBSticks) would not be enough space for the 5GB's Data in the system. I have only rooted & installed CWM, BusyBox on my FireTV's... Not XBMC or any other app yet. Wanted to figure the storage angle before I start to install things.

So are this breakdowns correct on a FireTV that has only been rooted & nothing else has been installed on...

8GB (Actual 7.46GB) = 7.46GB - 5GB transferred over would leave about 2GB extra room.

16GB (Actual 14.5GB) = 14.5GB - 5GB transferred over would leave about 9GB extra room. Might be a sweet spot for USBDevice size/cost vs Space created.

Also if I understand correctly the 5GB Data in System is still used or fulled when running this script. It's just hidden for safe keeping in case of reverting. The 5GB space is still filled ?? Used up?? What about the rest of the free space in system. Mine says it has about 4.9GB available. I guess I am trying to understand more if it's an either internal system or EXT4 type of setup or what parts it combines.

Since I have 3 FireTV's I don't want to put 1TB USB drives on each one. Just trying to use the USBSticks I already got... And be able to XBMC & install apps & run games without having the low memory on FireTV problems I've read about.

---------- Post added at 04:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:51 PM ----------

Can it be something that needs mounting. If not it might be something that needs to be added to CWM. What is the size for a normal FireTV backup without any extras on it like XBMC or large games ??
[Fire TV General] AFTVnews.com:
I just finished trying this out. It worked for me, but I wouldn't recommend it. The Fire TV feels very sluggish and unstable. I used a fairly fast 64GB Flash Drive for my testing so I imagine my experience is as good as it gets. Navigating around the Fire TV interface is slow. At times I'll scroll down to Settings and wait several seconds before anything shows up. Other times I'll go to Settings, the menu will load on the right, but for whatever reason I can't move to the right. Apps in general load much slower. XBMC especially.

My test procedure:

Freshly installed latest ClockworkMod and latest Pre-Rooted ROM (Fire TV was running stock 51.1.0.1 prior), then wiped /data and /cache

Installed 1 game from Amazon

Installed XBMC and added a small movie folder on my SMB network

Transferred the second script file (not the one in the original post) to /sdcard/

Plugged in a 64GB flash drive formatted with one ext4 partition

Rebooted into recovery and ran the script zip file

Rebooted normally

XBMC and the game from Amazon seem to have transferred over to the USB drive just fine, so it doesn't seem like a Factory reset is necessary. When I rebooted after running the script, the Fire TV stayed on the white Amazon logo for a bit then the screen became a pixelated static mess for quite a while. The pixelated static screen was quite disconcerting, but I just left it alone and it eventually booted. Also, I've stopped using the Fire TV for several minutes now and the activity LED on my flash drive has hardly stopped blinking for more than a couple seconds at a time. I would be very weary using a spinning drive.

Let me know if anyone wants me to try anything.
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
Only the files that are used in the old 5GB partition are copied, so if you used 2GB of the 5GB only 2 GB would be copied to the new partition. The old 5GB partition is mounted to /data_fire so if you need to copy over zips to install in CWM either adb push them in CWM, sideload them in CWM or copy them to the /data_fire/media/0/ partition which should be the sdcard location in CWM.

CWM does not know about any of these partitions, it only knows about /dev/block/mmcblk0p20 (the default system partition) see previous answer. rbox would have to change his CWM to do anything different than what it does now. My script just remount partitions.

original script mounts /data/properties and /data/data to the internal storage locations in theory it should run faster, but /data/data could fill up. Script on page 3 maps everything to USB storage except for /data/misc. I'm using the one from page 3 and have not noticed a difference so maybe the one on page 3 is better. If you want to flash the one on page 3, you may want to just flash it on top and do a factory reset again because /data/data may be out of sync with the copy on the usb drive.

copy all files from current drive to new ext4 formatted drive and plug it in.

I would reboot into recovery and then remove the drive/and or unplug the fireTv to be safe. Yes drive must be plugged in before plugging in fireTV.
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
Did you use the script on first page or page 3? The one on first page "should" perform faster and not access the disk as much, but your right running from external usb will always be slower than running from internal storage.
[Fire TV General] AFTVnews.com:
Could you explain precisely the difference between the two scripts and why there are two? Also, should I run the revert script before trying the page 1 script, or can I just run the page 1 script "over" the page 3 script?
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
page one script mounts /data/data to the internal storage. The page 3 script mount /data/data on the external usb drive, you should be able to just flash it directly over unless you've installed any new apps since you flashed the first one. I think a lot of the built in amazon apps live inside /data/data so moving them to usb drive makes them slow down.

Maybe I should change the script to only mount /sdcard and /media to the usb drive... I'm open to suggetions if anyone knows the file system well.
[Fire TV General] cd2022:
It works for me, albeit a little sluggish at times with xbmc.

Hardware: pre-rooted with 51.1.3.0_user_513011820, cwm 6.0.5.1.2. An hp USB 2.0 32G formatted ext4, single active primary partition. Software: There's nothing installed prior to the mount process.

I used the script on first page, followed your steps to the letters. I experienced no pixelate after reboot. Installed and restored spmc without issue.

Many thanks for your works.
[Fire TV General] Y314K:
Only sluggish with XBMC. Not with the Amazon launcher. Or do you have XBMC setup as your launcher. How bad of a lag or how sluggish was it. Deal breaker. Please report back after a few days of testing it.

RBox mention the following...

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=56185372&postcount=195
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
My goal was to have more space to install ulimited apps and games but unfortunately it comes at the price of speed. After doing some research it looks like the apps get installed to /data/app /data/data /data/app-lib so i think my best solution is to just mount the entire /data on the external USB drive with the exception of /data/dalvik-cache /data/misc /data/resource-cache.

This will probably be it unless someone has a better idea. I'll update the OP.
[Fire TV General] AQKhanTheOne:
Well, I tried the script on page 3 (after formatting the USB stick) and got the pixelated screen like others have. This time instead of doing anything I let it alone and eventually it did finish the process and landed me back into XBMC. As people have reported, XMBC and the Amazon launcher do run somewhat slower than before. I'm probably imagining it but it seems to me to be slower than when I used Link2SD. That could be because with Link2SD I did not link any system type apps and thus those would've stayed in internal memory (I presume).

With this method does everything get copied/moved over to the USB drive? Perhaps thats why it seems sluggish?

In any case, thanks for your work on this and the help!
[Fire TV General] Y314K:
Good feedback.. But wait there is more... :cyclops:

There is a new and maybe final version for you to try... "MountSDCARDtoUSB_mnt_NEW.zip " can be found on the #1 post... Please report back how that goes...
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
Yes everything gets copied with the version on page 3 (v2). Just stick with that version, it's not worth updating to the latest, i don't notice any performance difference between them. Yes system apps are running off usb now that is why it is slower.
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
Don't bother performace of the new version seems the same as the version posted on page 3 (v2)... problem is the systems apps run off the same mount point.
[Fire TV General] Y314K:
So is the main problem that unlike Class10 MicroSD's on phones USB 2.0 sticks/ports are snails ??? I remember running multiple Android installs off a Class 6 MicroSD card on a HD2. :o Guess maybe if the USB port would of been USB 3.0 it might of made a difference. :confused:

Or can something be cooked into a kernel or FW to make it more viable... :good:

Thanks a lot for your handwork on it. It is still the most complete solution so far. But the FireTV has a need.... A need for speed...:silly:
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
Here is my internal storage speeds (1GB file):

write: 20.3MB/s

read: 83.4MB/s

USB storage speed (cosair 16GB flash drive):

write: 15.1MB/s

read: 63.6MB/s

So it's around 25% slower which is quite a bit. USB 3.0 and gigabit would have been nice.

Hopefully some new kernels come soon now that rbox opened pandora's rbox wit the new CWM.
[Fire TV General] Y314K:
Yeah.. Under the hood modding for the FireTV is in it's infancy. Hope it matures quickly. Maybe there is a cache trick we are missing or something. Here is hoping....

Any chance that any of the other flavored scripts might be a better fit for the FTV system ?
[Fire TV General] rotor00ter:
I haven't noticed any slowdowns or glitches with XBMC or with the FireTV menus or any apps since I installed this script. I'm pretty sure I installed the second one that mounts everything but I was trying a bunch of stuff so I don't remember for sure. How can I confirm which script is installed? I am using a 1TB Western Digital MY Passport drive. I'll do some more testing with installing a few games and other apps and see what happens but so far so good.
[Fire TV General] jmandawg:
To know which version you are running just type in the following shell command to see where internal storage is mounted:

mount | grep mmcblk0p20

If only /data_fire and /data/msic show up then you are on v2.

I just loaded up my portable WD usb 3.0 1TB hard drive with the v2 script and you are right, there is really no noticeable lag. It definitely runs alot better than from usb stick.
[Fire TV General] Y314K:
I think those WD My Passports are USB 3.0 devices (at least the one I own is). Not saying it's running @ USB 3.0 but I wonder if those specs is what is making a difference. Maybe folks should test a USB 3.0 USBStick to see if it makes a difference. Let us know how it continues.