Root Creating Gold Card; What happens to my...

[spooky_b329]

I've just rooted my T-Mobile Desire, Android 2.2.2. I've not flashed a ROM yet, still on the stock one.

I've done my Nandroid backup via Revolutionary. I now want to create a Gold Card before going any further.

So I need to format my SD card to Fat32...

I only have one microSD, the one in my phone. I obviously have apps on my SD card, what state will the phone be in once its formatted? I'm assuming many of the apps won't work, but what else?

Can I partition the card and use the new partition to create the gold card without wiping the other data? Can I simply copy everything on the SD to my PC and copy it back after making the gold card?

Thanks for any help...although the phone is old and out of warranty/contract, I don't really want to tie myself to the laptop researching the Internet for the next couple of days if I do manage to mess up!

 

[Hadron]

I've never made a goldcard, but I believe that it's something that sits in the master boot record rather than in one of the partitions. However, if you are going to partition the card, I believe that you should do that first - IIRC the one way of "ungolding" a card is to repartition it.

I can't really add more on the goldcard business than what it says in the rooting faq (in the All Things Root Guide sticky post). What I would note though is that the official 2.3 upgrade is an RUU which works with all UK network branded phones, so you can run that without a goldcard if you need to.

Partitioning will also wipe the card. So before you do anything like that, back up the entire contents of the card to a computer. Make sure this includes "hidden" files and folders (those whose name starts with a "."). The apps you've moved to sd, for example, are in .android_secure, so make sure you have backed that up. After completing any operations which endanger the data, you can copy everything back to the card. Then the phone will work as normal.

Finally, if you do partition the card for a2sd+ or an "advanced Sense" ROM (the only reasons for partitioning) do make sure you use GParted, rather than some Windows tool like Minitool Partition Wizard - things like that do not work well with ext3 or ext4 formats, whatever they claim.

 

[spooky_b329]

Hi, thanks for your post, very helpful and re-assuring