question about reboot to nand after install to sd card

  • Have a fresh install of kszaq's LibreElec for Amlogic S905X on android device external sd card which works very well and which I may writetointernal. My question is how to prevent android 6.1 from modifying the sdcard if/when I reboot to android. It wants to treat the card as internal storage and as such offers to format the card. Of course this isn't wanted. Anyone know how to prevent this via system settings or otherwise? Thanks!


  • Have a fresh install of kszaq's LibreElec for Amlogic S905X on android device external sd card which works very well and which I may writetointernal. My question is how to prevent android 6.1 from modifying the sdcard if/when I reboot to android. It wants to treat the card as internal storage and as such offers to format the card. Of course this isn't wanted. Anyone know how to prevent this via system settings or otherwise? Thanks!


    Can't you just say 'No thanks'?
    The only android 6 device I have is a phone running CM, and on that there was a one-time prompt but you could choose to treat the sd card as removable storage - which I did.

  • Maybe so - will have to check. Android 6 on a tv box is not so intuitive as on a phone since there isn't a touch screen interface and notifications can't be handled with a finger swipe. Seems I was able to dismiss the notice, but it may reappear since all I did was dismiss. Trying to use an airmouse is a little wobbly, but better than the infrared mouse included with the box. Anyhow your answer that I can choose to treat it as removable storage is what i will look for next time.

  • Tbh I'd just image your sd card (just in case) with eg win32diskimager or usbit (assuming you're using windows) and then not worry about it until it happens. I'm pretty sure marshmallow won't convert an sd card without a user input telling it to.

  • I'm actually a unix/linux guy and don't run windows. But I do run rsync over ssh backups of my installed systems to an external backup drive. Have been using OpenElec for a while on a more robust HTPC (Zotac ID91), recently moved that over to LibreElec. Rec'd an android TV box and discovered it would run the AmLogic port, so jumped in. Don't really care much for android (or for Google's control of the platform), but didn't want to remove it right away - there's always an opportunity to learn something. Thanks.


  • Tbh I'd just image your sd card (just in case) with eg win32diskimager or usbit (assuming you're using windows) and then not worry about it until it happens. I'm pretty sure marshmallow won't convert an sd card without a user input telling it to.

    As it turns out, on booting the android system, it notifies me every time that the external sd card is corrupt, even though it mounts the LibreELEC system
    (vfat) partition, but not the ext4 partition. So it also offers to 'fix' the external sd card by formatting it. Apparently it sees the partition as not ending on a cylinder boundary:

    # fdisk -l /dev/block/mmcblk0

    Disk /dev/block/mmcblk0: 31.1 GB, 31104958464 bytes
    4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 949248 cylinders
    Units = cylinders of 64 * 512 = 32768 bytes

    Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
    /dev/block/mmcblk0p1 * 33 16417 524288+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
    Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary
    /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 16449 949248 29849600 83 Linux
    Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary

    That's a bit of a nuisance but of course the solution is to remove the external sdcard.

    As an aside I would imagine I can safely delete the 'Android' and 'LOST.DIR' folders (I think) the android system wrote to the external sd card. See below:

    # ls -l /storage/10D4-E16E/
    total 135336
    drwxrwx--x 4 root sdcard_rw 8192 Dec 31 2014 Android
    drwxrwx--x 2 root sdcard_rw 8192 Dec 31 2014 LOST.DIR
    -rwxrwx--x 1 root sdcard_rw 129531904 Oct 15 12:49 SYSTEM
    -rwxrwx--x 1 root sdcard_rw 48 Oct 15 12:49 SYSTEM.md5
    -rwxrwx--x 1 root sdcard_rw 1033 Oct 15 12:49 aml_autoscript
    -rwxrwx--x 1 root sdcard_rw 159744 Oct 15 12:49 dtb.img
    -rwxrwx--x 1 root sdcard_rw 37648 Nov 1 19:59 dtb.img.new
    -rwxrwx--x 1 root sdcard_rw 8790016 Oct 15 12:49 kernel.img
    -rwxrwx--x 1 root sdcard_rw 48 Oct 15 12:49 kernel.img.md5
    -rwxrwx--x 1 root sdcard_rw 2492 Oct 13 15:48 remote.conf
    -rwxrwx--x 1 root sdcard_rw 668 Oct 15 13:49 s905_autoscript