Separate Partition

[berdinkerdickle]

This thread isn't an attempt to beat on the SD card topic more.
It just came as a surprise to me when I learned a factory reset even wipes storage space.
Maybe having a SD card all this time, made me ignorant of this.
I guess I don't understand why a separate partition or volume isn't part of the setup in the first place.
My webOS touchpad has three partitions. One for webOS, One for Android, and One shared for storage.
Doing a hard reset in Android only wipes all user data on the Android Volume and puts you back to a fresh install. I can then restore all my apps from the Storage Volume.
In fact, I think the Storage volume is seen as an Emulated SD Card.
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Why isn't this the case with the internal storage on these devices that don't have an SD slot?

 

[Rukbat]

Because you're running a dual boot system - 2 operating systems, and one can't wipe out the other one's files. That could leave you with a brick.

You CAN wipe only the system partition in Android, but you need a custom recovery, the standard recovery wipes everything you've done since you turned the phone on. With TWRP, you can choose which partition to wipe, back up or restore.

Oh - the data partition in an Android phone is a separate partition - but it gets wiped during a factory reset. So does the system partition. So does the system cache partition.

It's a decision Google made when designing Android, it's not something that's a must. Why do you have 3 forward gears in a car with an automatic transmission? 95% of the people who own them have no idea what 1 and 2 are for? It's a design decision, the car would work fine for most people if it had D, N, R and P.

What I want is for USB debugging, read only, to be enabled in download or fastboot mode. Phone is bootlooped? Screen smashed? Deleted an important file by mistake? No problem, just a pain and a lot of time (computer time, then hours naming the recovered files). Would they do it? Yeah, on my 150th birthday. Most people run with USB debugging off, so if you can't get to the screen, you can't recover files unless the phone is already rooted and you have a file recovery app or Busybox installed. You can get to download without a screen, you don't have to see or touch anything to recover files from there.

 

[berdinkerdickle]

...clip...
the data partition in an Android phone is a separate partition - but it gets wiped during a factory reset. So does the system partition. So does the system cache partition.

It's a decision Google made when designing Android, it's not something that's a must. ...clip..

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That's too bad.
If it didn't get wiped, it would solve a good portion of my SD card concerns.