[HD2 Android NAND Development] Yank555:
Hi,

You've already been given the most important infos from boomboomer.

I'd just like to give you insight on my path to NAND, maybe it will help you make up your mind ;)

Maybe a short debrief on what is what :

MAGLDR

Bootloader (as would be LILO, GRUB ... under Linux) which allows you to boot a system (NAND, SD, Recovery...)

ClockWorkMod

Installation, Backup, Recovery ... tool which resides on it's own (NAND) partition and can be booted, it's a standalone OS if you want.

Hence your Android OS won't be running when in CWM, which gives you the possibility to make a full dump, a "disk level" backup (aka. NANDROID backup) of the Android partition in a coherent state to the SD card.

I've done lots of backups / restores, it has NEVER failed me !!

A2SD, DATA2SD ...

The idea is at all cost to increase the space allocated to installing apps, which reside in /data on the Android file-system (internal space is around 200Mb only !).

There are several ways to do this, APP2SD will "move" your APPS to the SD card, but your device or apps will know of it.

I believe dtapp2sd will move your apps the the second partition of your SD card (ext4 filesystem, others are possible), hence the apps won't be on the "visible" partition of the SD card. Not sure about this, though, never tried it.

I don't like any of those, as you never really see in your settings how much space your apps take up, as they are first installed on the NAND "data" (which is the only space on which you will see usage infos), than "by magic" they are automatically moved away to free up internal space again.

I've decided to use DATA2SD, which will use the second partition (called sd-ext, also backup up by CWM by the way !) and mount it to "/data", so the internal data space isn't visible any more, and the second partition of the SD card will be asimilated to be the "internal data" partition, Android will be fooled to believe it actually IS the internal memory. But YOU will be able to decide on how big it will be. Mine is 4Gb, which is HUGE and seems limitless ;) And space usage is correctly displayed in settings, too ! But you need in this case to install all your apps "on the phone", since the sd-ext partition IS in fact your internal data space (hope I'm not too confusing here, have a look at the bottom of the attached screen-shot, maybe it's clearer then) !

Since it is also backup'ed by CWM, it is not an issue when testing other ROMs, or other stuff, it will be backup'ed and restored.

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I've decided to go the MAGLDR way, since one of my issues on SD was the fact that I couldn't use VPN over Data (3G) because the PPP interface was already used by the Data connection (so I never really considered cLK). I also had some battery drain issues.

Battery issue is gone for good since on NAND. The fact that MAGLDR won't charge while the phone is off, or rather will turn it on automatically when plugged in, is no big deal to me, my HD2 is always on anyways :cool:

The issue I have had with VPN not working over Data isn't resovled, even though I can get a VPN connection, I won't be able to use it ... still looking for a solution, none found so far.

I haven't had any Data issues while on SD though, only battery drain issues, so there is no improvement here since this was just fine on SD already for me. But since on NAND, I have had no issue whatsoever with Data connections !

Hope this helps shed some further light onto the yet somewhat dark path ahead of you :cool: But go there, you won't regret it !

JP.