Most of the old generation Android phones come with a ridiculous 200-400 megabytes of internal storage which begins to cause problem after you install a handful of applications and games. Fortunately, there is a possible way to increase the internal storage of your Android phone if you can root it in any way.
Now, if you’re unsure what rooting is, waste no more time and go read our detailed post on what is rooting and why it is done.
This tutorial is also available in Bangla on Android Kothon.
How Does it Work?
You can’t obviously increase your internal memory literally. But you can allow your Android to use some of your SD card’s storage to use as internal memory to install applications and games directly. This helps you keep your phone running at an excellent condition as well as let you install as many games and apps as you wish.
To take advantage of this trick, we’re gonna need two things:
- A rooted Android phone;
- Link2SD application
Rooted Android Phone
Rooting Android phones is not a rocket science. There’s an instruction on rooting almost any phone you want to root. Just search on Google or ask us at the bottom of this post and we’ll publish a rooting tutorial in our Root category. When you’ve successfully rooted your Android phone, you’re ready to move to the second phase.
Link2SD
Basically, Link2SD is an application that works best on rooted phones. It installs all the games and applications (except system apps that have to remain on the phone memory) on SD card’s second partition (that you have to create) and link them. This way, you can easily install apps and games way beyond that ridiculous 200-400 megabytes of internal storage your phone has.
Another benefit of using link2SD is that you will not lose any running application when you connect the SD card to your computer. Because each time SD card is connected, only the first partition will be connected (mounted) to the PC leaving the second partition running smoothly on your device.
So, let’s begin by partitioning your SD card.
Step 1: Create a second partition on your microSD card
A second partition on your SD card can be created in two ways: via ClockWorkMod (CWM) recovery and via MiniTool Windows application. For your convenience, I will cover both ways in detailed instructions below.
Before you do anything, make 100% sure to back up your SD card fully to your computer. There’s a chance of messing things up and you may end up losing all your SD card’s data. If all hells break lose, you will want to restore every bit of data that’s stored on your SD card.
Partitioning using CWM Recovery
First, enter the CWM recovery mode. It’s usually entered by powering off your phone and powering on while pressing down volume down button and power button at the same time until you see the following screen.
Now, go to Advanced menu from CWM recovery options.
Go to Partition SD card option. Select ext and 512 MB or 1024 MB. It’s up to you how much space you want to give to your second partition.
Now you’ll see that your SD card is being partitioned. Wait a few moments. This should take a little while.
Once you see “Partitioning Done!” message, reboot your device and restore your data from the back up you had taken before proceeding.
Now, if you don’t have CWM recovery on your device or if you can’t find Partition SD card on your CWM menu, feel free to check out this alternative way. You will need a Windows computer for the following tool to work.
Partition using MiniTool
First, connect your memory card using a card reader and download MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition from here.
Once installed, run MiniTool. Make sure you keep a back up your SD card. Then note the drive letter of your SD card. Select your SD card from the listing and delete it. All your data will be gone at this stage. So remember to back up earlier.
- Now select “Create as” on that drive letter.
- Select “Primary”.
- If the size is less than 2GB, select file system FAT. If it’s more than 2GB, select FAT32.
- Do not select the whole card as partition size. Turn the slider to the left and leave some space on “unallocated space”. This will be the second “EXT” partition of your SD card.
- Now, choose the unallocated space again and select Create as -> Primary.
- Now, choose EXT2 file system. You can let the whole space take over in this step.
Now, click OK and then click the Apply button from the top left of the window. It might take some time for the operation to finish.
Once done, restore the data to your SD card. On Windows, you will always get connected to the first partition of your SD card because Windows does not recognize ext2 file system which is the second partition of your SD card for installing apps and games.
On Linux, though, make sure to restore your data to the drive that is significantly larger. Because your second partition is always the smaller one and you don’t want to fill up your second partition with media files!
At this point, you have just finished partitioning your SD card. Congratulations! Now you just need to configure Link2SD to connect to this second partition and link apps and games.
Configuring Link2SD
Now is the time to download and install Link2SD application from Google Play on your Android phone. Once installed, run the application. You may see a screen asking for Superuser Permission (root permission) the first time you run it. Make sure to select “Remember” and press Allow/Grant.
Note that if you don’t see this prompt, your phone is probably not rooted. In that case, you have to Google on how to root your phone! Without root permission, this will not work.
On successful launch after gaining root permission. Link2SD will ask you to select the file system of your second permission. We remember we set it as ext2. So, ext2 it is.
Upon OK-ing, your device will need to be restarted.
Upon restarting your phone, open Link2SD again and a dialogue will show up. Press OK and click the icon you see on the screenshot below. Choose On Internal. This will show up a list of apps and games installed on the internal storage of your phone.
Now select options and choose multi-select. Then press the select all button. All of these apps will be selected.
Now, click Actions and then choose Create link.
Check all three boxes and touch OK.
Link2SD will now take a little time to move all these apps and games (except system files) and create a link with them from the second partition of your SD card. Touch OK when done.
Almost done! Now, to make sure that every time you download something, it gets auto-linked to the second partition, do the following:
Go to settings from Menu.
Touch Auto Link.
Check all three checkboxe and you’re done. You’ll no longer have to worry about the ridiculously low internal storage on your Android device.
To see the storage status of your second partition, you can always go to storage info within Link2SD application.
Other Things to Know
- Now that your SD card has been linked as internal storage, remember never to take out your SD card because that way, a lot — if not all — apps will stop working immediately.
- You can also choose ext3, ext4 or even FAT as file system on your second partition. However, ext2 works faster on Link2SD than any other file system.
I hope you are already feeling way too happy for making a purchase of an Android phone that lets you do almost anything you can imagine!
Are you happy with your Android purchase? Let us know in the comments.
