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Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother

Cross-posted to 3 groups.

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On Thu, 10/24/2024 1:20 PM, ...winston wrote:
> Carlos E.R. wrote:
>> On 2024-10-24 09:20, Paul wrote:
>>> On Wed, 10/23/2024 5:54 PM, Andrews wrote:
>>>> I need a bigger sd card - I spent years for this moment by using Windows to
>>>> make Android sdcard swaps smoother and drama reduced experiences for all.
>>>>
>>>> Some questions...
>>>> Does a Windows "Quick Format" work as well as the slow format?
>>>> Does the format type matter when the sd card is to be used in a phone?
>>>> Do you change the volume label when you format on Windows for Android?
>>>> <https://i.postimg.cc/dVtqQ9dX/sd01.jpg>
>>>>
>>>> Some background...
>>
>> ...
>>
>>>> Did I need that slow format?
>>>> Is the default of XFat (128kbyte allocation unit) an OK setting for phones?
>>>> Is the type of card I bought OK for phones?
>>>> The (slow) format is still running, but when it's done, I'm going to copy
>>>> my "0001" data over from the old sdcard in the phone, to the new sdcard.
>>>>
>>>> And then I'm going to swap out the old sdcard for the new one for, what I
>>>> hope to be a seamless experience using Windows to make Android smoother.
>>>>
>>>> Wish me luck!
>>>
>>> You would buy an SD card with static and dynamic wear leveling.
>>>
>>> A quick format is good enough. It writes and puts a FAT or $MFT on the partition.
>>>
>>> The slow format does the same, except it includes a read-verify of the surface.
>>
>> Doesn't it fill everything with zeroes as well? Or erase all sectors? That reduces the life of the card or stick.
>> Writing zeros for full format option was introduced with Vista. 
> Applicable also to all later Windows o/s.
> Full format
>  - files erased
>  - writes zeros to the whole disk
>  - drive scanned for bad sectors(does not fix bad sectors)
>  - new root directory and file system

I recommend using Process Monitor, to track what a tool does to a device.

USB is a bit of a problem, as it is treated differently.

Not everything is logged on the system, with the same skill and dexterity.
You won't know whats going to happen until you get there.

*******

A full format was a concept of a long time ago. It might have been
called a Low Level Format.

Devices could be soft sectored. There was an index mark on the drive.
As the drive would rotate, your LLF would lay down a track. This
includes writing header section, write splice, and payload area.
If you stopped the low level format, the drive was bricked.
And seeing as the drives cost $1500 back then, you looked
like a right dope when this happened. (At least once, the power
went off at work while I was doing that.)

well, modern drives are no longer soft sectored. We no longer redefine
the interleave pattern by rewriting the entire surface of the platter.

Modern drives have servo wedges, and both headers and servo wedges are permanent.
The header is the address.

The only thing you can do to a modern drive, is write the payload section
of a sector.

Now, flash drives, the address is implicit. The address is hard wired.
Via a MAP table, there can be a mapping between external virtual LBA
and internal storage LBA. The written part of the flash, contains
the 512 byte sector, plus a 50 byte syndrome with Reed Solomon code in
it. I have never seen any information which points to there being
a verification LBA value in the sector too. But the size of the sectors
does not have to be a precise power of two. Nothing inside modern flash
has to be like that any more. They use all sorts of weird numbers for
stuff, and I don't know the rule set for that.

When you format a drive, the activity does the bare minimum.
You rewrite the metadata tables. Most of them, placing a
minimal length table is sufficient (the table will grow with time).
The master file table, it will be small, and it will have all file
entries removed.

None of the remaining clusters, need be written. The OS is not
a maintainer of a forensic situation. The user must know where the
information leakage points are, and use the right tool for the job
when highest security is required. I have tested this, by injecting
test patterns on drives, and finding later, two hundred "shards"
of info were left behind. Naturally, this leaves me just a bit concerned
about my control of things.

   diskpart   clean      # Remove partition table, hardly cleans a damn thing, takes one second
              clean all  # Takes hours on a slow drive, overwrites the surface with zeros

   dd.exe                # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=8192
                         # That writes zeros over the storage device SDA.
                         # Hard drives a divisible by 8192. The entire surface is written.
                         # Consult the help, to determine the real name string of the drive.
                         # The name shown is just an illustration.

You can then partition and format, in the knowledge that any "format"
command you're using, which does not do a lot, all the other clusters
are already zero because you dd'ed them and you don't have to worry
about information leakage.

Any time I do research on disk layouts, I establish a background pattern
by zeroing the entire drive. This takes a few hours on the size of drive
I would normally use. Next, I partition the drive. Then, take a hex editor,
and "scroll" down near the end of the disk. The GPT secondary table stands
out like a sore thumb, down at the end of the drive. You can't miss it then,
because most of the drive is still zeroed.

Similarly, for RAID research, I zero the drive on an alternate-brand
computer, do the RAID setup on the branded RAID I want to test, then
bring the drive back to the alternate-brand computer and "scroll" with
my Hex editor. Then I can see the 64KB or smaller RAID metadata table.

By knowing how these things work, you can be in control.

Using tools like Process Monitor, you can observe things being done,
if need be.

   Paul

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Thread

Using Windows to make Android smoother Andrews <andrews@spam.net> - 2024-10-23 21:54 +0000
  Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2024-10-24 03:20 -0400
    Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2024-10-24 16:12 +0200
      Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother "...winston" <winstonmvp@gmail.com> - 2024-10-24 13:20 -0400
        Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother Harry S Robins <stanleyrobins@nothere.uk> - 2024-10-24 13:00 -0500
          Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother "...winston" <winstonmvp@gmail.com> - 2024-10-24 14:12 -0400
          Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother Arno Welzel <usenet@arnowelzel.de> - 2024-10-26 12:10 +0200
            Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2024-10-26 15:56 +0200
            Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2024-10-26 14:09 -0400
              Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother Arno Welzel <usenet@arnowelzel.de> - 2024-10-28 16:53 +0100
                Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2024-11-01 09:19 +0100
        Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2024-10-24 14:33 -0400
    Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother Andrews <andrews@spam.net> - 2024-10-24 17:15 +0000
      Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2024-10-24 14:42 -0400
  Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother Andrews <andrews@spam.net> - 2024-10-24 17:35 +0000
    Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother "...winston" <winstonmvp@gmail.com> - 2024-10-24 14:35 -0400
  Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother Andrews <andrews@spam.net> - 2024-10-25 18:41 +0000
  Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother Andrews <andrews@spam.net> - 2024-11-01 06:26 +0000
    Re: Using Windows to make Android smoother Andrews <andrews@spam.net> - 2024-11-01 13:56 +0000

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