Root Slower after rooting...

[Captain Stu]

Erm... I just finished rooting my (formerly) Orange-branded Hero with VillainRom 10.3 and I only have about 50mb of memory (maximum) and I'd like to know why! I thought this was supposed to make it quicker!

My mate has a T-Mobile Hero, he just debranded his and he has 137mb free!

Any suggestions guys and girls?!

 

[Xyro]

Hang on, which type of memory are you talking about? RAM or ROM?

Running any of the many custom/offical ROMs used, I've never ever seen mine go above 90MB of free RAM; is it possible your friend is talking about his internal memory?

 

[Captain Stu]

Hang on, which type of memory are you talking about? RAM or ROM?

Running any of the many custom/offical ROMs used, I've never ever seen mine go above 90MB of free RAM; is it possible your friend is talking about his internal memory?

I suppose he could be but I'd be amazed and would have to rip him for years because he works in IT and deffo knows the difference between RAM and ROM! I'm talking about RAM, Advanced Task Killer tells you how much you have free, on 1.5 I used to vary between 100mb (doing nothing) and 70mb (few apps open) but now on 2.1 I'm looking at 60-70mb (nothing running) and down to about 25mb (with a few apps open).

Any ideas brainboxes?

 

[Xyro]

I suppose he could be but I'd be amazed and would have to rip him for years because he works in IT and deffo knows the difference between RAM and ROM! I'm talking about RAM, Advanced Task Killer tells you how much you have free, on 1.5 I used to vary between 100mb (doing nothing) and 70mb (few apps open) but now on 2.1 I'm looking at 60-70mb (nothing running) and down to about 25mb (with a few apps open).

Any ideas brainboxes?

Heh, it does seem unlikely he's confusing the two then. But still; I don't think I got anywhere near 137MB, even when running a rooted, but otherwise stock, 2.1 ROM. In fact most 2.1 ROMs I've tried have been somewhere around 40-60 I think.

You should try an app called AutoKiller. The way it works is by changing how aggressive android's own internal task killer is, telling it how much RAM to keep free. So if your phone is filling up RAM so much that it lags, make it more aggressive.

It's not as simple as that, but that's how I understand it anyway.

 

[Captain Stu]

I've got that Autokiller but it makes me a bit uneasy, I don't like the idea of it closing shit down... I hope it has some serious intelligence to know what to leave alone!!

The only person I know with that much free memory is my mate with a Desire and simply that's because it has twice the memory and so has a lot more to play around with in the first place.

Even though there's not a lot free, it still runs nice.

 

[Xyro]

It's never given me trouble. I always have three apps running in the background (locale, screebl and juicedefender) and I've never seen them killed yet.

 

[Captain Stu]

And yours has a similar amount of RAM free at most times?

Hmmmm.

I've been on so many forums today, looking for guides to rooting, advise, etc... and I'm sure I saw somewhere where there was some of process for running apps from the SD card to improve RAM or something, I wasn't really paying attention.

Is it possible to partition a small amount of the SD card and use it as an additional RAM/cache?

 

[Xyro]

Yeah, it doesn't change much. On 1.5 the RAM bounced around all the time (and got really laggy by about 20MB), but 2.1 seems to stay very stable at a comfortable mid point.

I've never heard of that being done, but it would be a nice option to have though

 

[chief1978]

I used the same VillainRom and saw the same thing - there is a great stock 2.1 rooted rom on XDA - used it and its is so much faster and back to the 50-90mb free like i was used to with 1.5.

I think they over pack these roms with stuff you just dont need.

 

[stoney73]

Erm... I just finished rooting my (formerly) Orange-branded Hero with VillainRom 10.3 and I only have about 50mb of memory (maximum) and I'd like to know why! I thought this was supposed to make it quicker!

My mate has a T-Mobile Hero, he just debranded his and he has 137mb free!

Any suggestions guys and girls?!

has your friend rooted his hero? And installed a custom rom aswell? If so, I reckon he has Apps2sd, which moves apps to the memory card.
Have a look at Villain 12, which as long as you've partitioned the memory card, and made it ext3, which sort out the apps2sd automaticaly.

 

[Captain Stu]

I used the same VillainRom and saw the same thing - there is a great stock 2.1 rooted rom on XDA - used it and its is so much faster and back to the 50-90mb free like i was used to with 1.5.

I think they over pack these roms with stuff you just dont need.

Ah right, so that other one is just a rooted 2.1 with no bells and whistles? That might be another, the tutorial I used did recommend a separate one for performance so I could re-root it... but that'd be more than mildly annoying after having already reinstalled all my shit.

has your friend rooted his hero? And installed a custom rom aswell? If so, I reckon he has Apps2sd, which moves apps to the memory card.
Have a look at Villain 12, which as long as you've partitioned the memory card, and made it ext3, which sort out the apps2sd automaticaly.

Nope, not rooted - just debranded it - can you just install apps2sd and use it or do you have to partion your SD card?

EDIT: Been speaking to a few guys in work who also have rooted phones (but both on 1.5) and I think I'm gonna re-do it tonight and I don't think I did it properly. They've recommended doing the partition thing but I am a little confused about that... can you explain?

Ok, so I don't need to do anything about the recovery image or anything like that... all I need to do is partition the drive using gparted... but how do I then install apps2sd? I couldn't find it on the market.

Halp?!

What would I need to do if, say, I wanted to move from VillainROM 10.3 to 12? Just boot it holding the home button down, clear the cache and everything and then just load a fresh ROM (saved on the root as update.zip) and that'll work? If so, I assume I'd need to partition the SD card before doing anything like that as partitioning would wipe everything anyway?

Sorry if this sounds stupid, I'm sure it does, but despite being a computer gimp I'm so hesitant to mess around with my phone! To try and clear it up in my mind... rooting the phone is like a hacked BIOS and the ROM is the OS... yes? No?

 

[stoney73]

Then Switch off the phone, switch it back on holding home key & power key, to get into recovery mode.

To enable Apps2SD (install apps to sd card) you must create a partition on the SD Card. To do this click on partition sdcard. We want 512MB as EX2 and the rest as FAT. After this has completed, go back to the partition SD menu and click on SD:ex2 to ext3


WARNING: you may or may not have to re-flash your phone. I've never partitioned the phone after installing a rom, I've always partitioned the sd before.

Maybe wait for someone to comment on if it does require reflashing beforehand?
Apart from that, thats the only risk.

nope, you arent messing with the bios anymore, if the phone is already rooted. If you think of it like a pc, you are just changing/fiddling with the Operating system.Which as everyone knows, one can just wipe and re-install and everything is fine.

 

[Captain Stu]

Then Switch off the phone, switch it back on holding home key & power key, to get into recovery mode.

To enable Apps2SD (install apps to sd card) you must create a partition on the SD Card. To do this click on partition sdcard. We want 512MB as EX2 and the rest as FAT. After this has completed, go back to the partition SD menu and click on SD:ex2 to ext3


WARNING: you may or may not have to re-flash your phone. I've never partitioned the phone after installing a rom, I've always partitioned the sd before.

Maybe wait for someone to comment on if it does require reflashing beforehand?
Apart from that, thats the only risk.

nope, you arent messing with the bios anymore, if the phone is already rooted. If you think of it like a pc, you are just changing/fiddling with the Operating system.Which as everyone knows, one can just wipe and re-install and everything is fine.

That certainly helps, cheers buddy. I don't mind reflashing seeing as VillainROM 12 has just been finished, I might throw that on and see how we go but I didn't know I could partition the drive from recovery mode!!

I'm gonna do 3 partitions - one for general use, one for apps2SD and the other as a paging file to improve performance.

 

[stoney73]

erm, you don't need the swap file. set that at zero. then its up to you. Remember, this isn't windows.

but villain 12 is much better than 6. I remember trying villain 6 and thinking it was terrible. I used sensehero instead.

 

[Captain Stu]

erm, you don't need the swap file. set that at zero. then its up to you. Remember, this isn't windows.

but villain 12 is much better than 6. I remember trying villain 6 and thinking it was terrible. I used sensehero instead.

I'm using ClockwordMod Recovery v2.0.1.3 and partitioning on this looks tricky to a root-n00b such as myself.

 

[bluenova]

I've got that Autokiller but it makes me a bit uneasy, I don't like the idea of it closing shit down... I hope it has some serious intelligence to know what to leave alone!!

Autokiller doesn't kill anything itself, it just tweaks the built-in Android memory manager.

 

[Captain Stu]

Autokiller doesn't kill anything itself, it just tweaks the built-in Android memory manager.

Really? Oh right, I did wonder what the hell it did. Ta.



So, my plan for tonight is burn off that formatting program off onto CD, format my SD card, wipe all the shizzle off my handset and flash it again with v12.

 

[stoney73]

remember....Partitioning a card will wipe it clean, so save the stuff you want to keep.....put it on your pc.

 

[Captain Stu]

remember....Partitioning a card will wipe it clean, so save the stuff you want to keep.....put it on your pc.

Yeah, I've already got it backed up from last night, I didn't think my tinkering was over so didn't get rid of it.

 

[Xyro]

Apps2sd is just a script that kicks in every time you boot the phone, so it's perfectly fine to partition the SD card after using the ROM for a while. It will take a while to boot as things are copied across though.

 

[Captain Stu]

Apps2sd is just a script that kicks in every time you boot the phone, so it's perfectly fine to partition the SD card after using the ROM for a while. It will take a while to boot as things are copied across though.

Gotcha.