[HOW-TO] Download, Run CM7 off SD Card (Easy to follow! No root!)

my5pumpkins

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Re: [HOW-TO][WINDOWS] Download, Run CM7 off SD Card (Easy to foll

I have only been using an 8 gb class 4 sd card. It should work with anything larger then 1gb though. I downloaded a program simply called "SDFormatter" and do a full erase, and wiped my SD Card using that when it didn't work for me once. Worked like a charm after that.


Thank you so much for this link!!!!! I messed up the partition on my card and lost most of it. I looked all over the internet for something to get it back without costing $40 and up. This program worked!!!! And I am so happy!!! :D Thanks again!!!!!!
 

khmiller

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Re: [HOW-TO] Download, Run CM7 off SD Card (Easy to follow! No ro

thank you kcls! it all seemed to be so easy according to posts everywhere on the net - but it's not. followed your guide and it WORKED! i'm still not sure what i'mdoing but am able to boot off 16G Verbatim class 4. no other guides anywhere mentioned the sd card image in addition to the cm7 and win32 disk imager (glad you mentioned to download the binary version). i've never hacked anything,but with 2 or 3 computers running, i can usually eventually and painfully solve problems. a guide with some screen shots or youtube video is about the only thing that i think might have helped more. again, thank you and thank androidcentral. kyle,nook color 1.4
 

MiloDinteraz

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Re: [HOW-TO] Download, Run CM7 off SD Card (Easy to follow! No ro

I hope it's OK for a noob to ask for help in this thread (If not feel free to tell me what an I am)

So anyway, I followed the directions (many times) with no luck. Everything seems to work fine when I first boot with the sdcard. I get the penguin guy in the corner of the screen and the console mode with it scrolling through the install process. No error messages, it all seems fine.
I shut down the nook then restart and it goes back into console mode and then shuts itself off. No CM7 logo, no androidy goodness.

Sandisk class 4 8 GB sd card.
Reformatted using SDFormatter in between attempts
Used the size agnostic disk image from xdadevelopers.

Help please.

I've tried multiple CM7 versions hoping that the issue was a bad installer but no luck.
 

noyb72

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Re: [HOW-TO] Download, Run CM7 off SD Card (Easy to follow! No ro

I hope someone can help. I have followed this word for word and when I turn on the nook it loads the CM7 boot screen and then I get the CM7 screen with the "spinning arrow" and it just sits their. I used the stable image from the link provided. I appreciate all the effort put into the tutorial.

Thanks in advance!!

Ron
 

Daniel King

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Re: [HOW-TO] Download, Run CM7 off SD Card (Easy to follow! No ro

Having an issue with my sd card. It won't load cm7, but i know it's still on there. Checked using a chkdsk and apparently there are some bad sectors. Should i just try the sdformatter?:-\
 

kcls

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Having an issue with my sd card. It won't load cm7, but i know it's still on there. Checked using a chkdsk and apparently there are some bad sectors. Should i just try the sdformatter?:-\

Yup! If all else fails, format and start over.

Tapatalkin' it from my IHO CM7.2'd MIUI Themed Optimus V
 

charkswitlazers

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Re: [HOW-TO] Download, Run CM7 off SD Card (Easy to follow! No ro

any kind of sd card recommended by anyone? I wanna get at least a 16gig. are there any i should/shouldn't buy?
 

kcls

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any kind of sd card recommended by anyone? I wanna get at least a 16gig. are there any i should/shouldn't buy?

You'll want to get a sandisk class 2 or 4. Mine ran cm7 smoothly with an 8gb class 4 sandisk, but I've since moved to ICS. I made the mistake of getting a patriot class 10 the first time, and I'm surprised it even booted it was so slow.

Tapatalkin' it from my IHO CM7.2'd MIUI Themed Optimus V
 

medt

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Re: [HOW-TO] Download, Run CM7 off SD Card (Easy to follow! No ro

Thank you very much. I was able to do it finally. The best step by step guide I was able to find.

Any tips for a dual boot?
 

medt

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Re: [HOW-TO] Download, Run CM7 off SD Card (Easy to follow! No ro

Found it. Thanks Broncho!

If you are running CM 7.1, hold the N button down while you are turning it on and it will let you choose between the eMMC (internal memory/Nook software) and the SD (CM 7.1).
 

thunder18

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Re: [HOW-TO] Download, Run CM7 off SD Card (Easy to follow! No ro

An amazing set of instructions! I was able to root my Nook Color this evening. Thank you for all the effort you put into it.
 

asemeco

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Re: [HOW-TO] Download, Run CM7 off SD Card (Easy to follow! No ro

First of all, thanks for a comprehensive and easy to follow guide.

I think credit should be given to the author of the SD image partitioner (here). I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the size of the partitions is adjusted according to the size of the card, so no space is wasted.

Second, I would like to point out to my major obstacle, once I have successfully installed CyanogenMod on my Nook Color: The stock OS uses the first partition for user data, but in our case this is a relatively small partition hosting the CyanogenMod OS. This severely limits the use of the dual boot feature.

Has anybody come up with a way to overcome this?

Once again, thanks.
 

suzeo99

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Re: [HOW-TO] Download, Run CM7 off SD Card (Easy to follow! No ro

Please help - I have been reading everything I can but can't find the answer to this:

First I put the generic-sdcard.img on my card
Then - it would say that there wasn't enough room for it.

After hours of research put generic-sdcard-v1.3-ICS-large.img on instead

Card now called boot

Dragged zipped update-cm-7.2.0-RC1-encore-signed.zip into card

Put card in nook

Android installer does its thing, reboots

tries to reinstall CM7 and then says that the card is already properly formatted

then says initial install images not found and tells me to find them somewhere they don't exist.

Then just sits there.

I keep following the steps and every time the step says to restart after reboot and it should boot in cm7 nothing happens.

My card has a CM7 partition now that is empty and has some folders in the boot partition.
 

erickrocks1126

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Re: [HOW-TO] Download, Run CM7 off SD Card (Easy to follow! No ro

Want to give a big THANKS to the op for this thread. Directions were easy to follow and everything worked perfectly!

Question though...trying to sort out in my mind how flashing ROMs/Nandroids from ROM Manager would work since this ROM is off of SD. When booted off SD into CM7, if I went into the ROM Manager that's an app resident with the ROM:
1) If I flash CWM Recovery from ROM Manager, does that create a nandroid on the SD card or the internal memory? I guess either way I would just boot into CWM Recovery from the SD anyway, right?
2) In ROM Manager still, if I download and flash a ROM, will it flash to the SD card or internal memory? Meaning...if I flashed any other ROM through ROM Manager with the bootable SD still in, am I creating a bootable XXX ROM SD card?
3) Since the .img file burned to the bootable SD is "generic" (I'm assuming generic by the title) then could this be used to load other ROMs instead of CM7 and make it a bootable XXX ROM from SD? If so, I would assume that instead of placing CM7 on the partition and booting to have CM7, you would put, say MIUI, then boot, then flash Gapps.
 
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kcls

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Want to give a big THANKS to the op for this thread. Directions were easy to follow and everything worked perfectly!

Question though...trying to sort out in my mind how flashing ROMs/Nandroids from ROM Manager would work since this ROM is off of SD. When booted off SD into CM7, if I went into the ROM Manager that's an app resident with the ROM:
1) If I flash CWM Recovery from ROM Manager, does that create a nandroid on the SD card or the internal memory? I guess either way I would just boot into CWM Recovery from the SD anyway, right?
2) In ROM Manager still, if I download and flash a ROM, will it flash to the SD card or internal memory? Meaning...if I flashed any other ROM through ROM Manager with the bootable SD still in, am I creating a bootable XXX ROM SD card?
3) Since the .img file burned to the bootable SD is "generic" (I'm assuming generic by the title) then could this be used to load other ROMs instead of CM7 and make it a bootable XXX ROM from SD? If so, I would assume that instead of placing CM7 on the partition and booting to have CM7, you would put, say MIUI, then boot, then flash Gapps.

Ignore ROM manager. ClockworkMod can't be flashed from the SD Card. It kind of a what you see is what you get deal. There is really no easy way to make a backup, other then using a different SD Card. From ROM manager, you can download a ROM to your SD Card, but you can only flash it by transferring it to your computer and updating the standard way from the guide. Afaik, CM7 and ICS can be loaded on the SD Card. Since MIUI is based on CM, it's worth a shot, and you can just format the card and start over if it doesn't work.

Sent from my LG-VM670 using Tapatalk 2 Beta-5
 

erickrocks1126

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Re: [HOW-TO] Download, Run CM7 off SD Card (Easy to follow! No ro

Thanks. Since this was running off of the SD, I kind of figured you couldn't use ROM Manager to flash other ROMs or make backups.

I might give MIUI a shot to see if I can use this process to do a MIUI bootable SD card.

Again, thanks for getting this thread out; I'm loving CM7 on my Nook, but also love trying out different ROMs as well.

UPDATE: Redid this process with MIUI 2.3.9 (the GB based version, not the ICS alpha in development) downloaded from MIUI.US and...it works! When the initial boot started, it said CWM said it couldn't flash the ROM because it was looking for one that started with "update_cm... .zip" so I had to rename the ROM file name with the CM7 name and retried...and it worked! It did say, when flashing, that a bunch of files in /system/vendor were missing, but it continued on and booted up. No need to flash gapps because it was built into the ROM already. Haven't had time to test it much but so far basic functions, wifi, and Google Market (Play) seem to be doing good! Also did a reboot (full power off/power on, not a power-->reboot option) to make sure it's truly bootable and good to go there. So it seems it is possible to make a bootable MIUI 2.3.9 off of SD Card using this process. Only issue so far is no soft buttons like on CM7 so I have to go back to home screen for everything. Maybe button savior will be handy. Anyway, just wanted to provide an update. Again, thank you!

UPDATE to UPDATE: Had some time to play with this a bit. First, Button Savior is already built into the ROM so that solves the soft button thing (it's a "ghosted" tab you pull from the right side, like you would pull down the status or notificatioon screen). Also, I put the analog clock widget in the trash and tried to put the "flip clock" widget instead...caused a looping force close of process.android.com. Ended up having to wipe the SD card by deleting all but one partition on the card using EASEUS to give me one big partition (the card itself) and then format the card and redo the whole process. So...add system widgets (the ones that pop up if you just 'long press' on the screen) at your own risk! But, you can make folders since I did that without issue. Hopefully this is helpful if anyone wants to make a bootable MIUI SD Card. Now to see if I can make a MIUI ICS bootable card ;-)
 
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rich'sNook

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Re: [HOW-TO] Download, Run CM7 off SD Card (Easy to follow! No ro

Every thing worked fine until I plug the SD card into the nook and turned it on. It booted the little linux penguin and a bunch of scrolling text and the screen when black. Never booted to CM7 or anything else. I waited for 5 min. then removed the SD card and the nook booted into the BN software. Any suggestion what to do now?

rich'snook
 

kozmo2k

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Every thing worked fine until I plug the SD card into the nook and turned it on. It booted the little linux penguin and a bunch of scrolling text and the screen when black. Never booted to CM7 or anything else. I waited for 5 min. then removed the SD card and the nook booted into the BN software. Any suggestion what to do now?

rich'snook

Put the microSD card back in and boot up. What you had seen on the screen was the verbose output of the install process writing CM7 to the mSDcard.
On the reboot, withe the card inserted, you should see the CM7 bootanimation

Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk 2
 

Nihilistsguide

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Re: [HOW-TO] Download, Run CM7 off SD Card (Easy to follow! No ro

Every thing worked fine until I plug the SD card into the nook and turned it on. It booted the little linux penguin and a bunch of scrolling text and the screen when black. Never booted to CM7 or anything else. I waited for 5 min. then removed the SD card and the nook booted into the BN software. Any suggestion what to do now?

rich'snook

Once the screen went black, the Nook was turned off. All you need to do is tap the power button and let it boot to CM7.