Link2SD guide – never worry about internal memory limits again

One of the most common gripes we hear from Sony Ericsson Xperia owners is that it doesn’t take too long before you fill up the phone’s internal memory. Whilst most of the 2011 Xperia range has a 1GB ROM, only around 380MB can be used for apps or games. Obviously manually moving your apps to the SD card is one answer to this problem, but this can be a pain to manage and sometimes part of the app will remain in internal memory.

To get round this problem, we’ve written the following guide on Link2SD. In layman terms, Link2SD uses a secondary partition on your SD card and uses it as another segment of internal memory. Link2SD moves and links apk files, dalvik-cache (.dex) files and lib files onto this partition, which the OS mounts on boot. The great thing is that these linked apps remain available when your phone is connected in mass storage mode as Android only unmounts the first partition. Also, you don’t need to worry about linking something you weren’t meant to as Link2SD doesn’t allow you to link certain system applications.

Link2SD allows you to cherry-pick which apps/games to move to the SD card, you can auto-link new installs and the whole thing is wrapped in a user-friendly user interface. We’ve been using Link2SD for a while now and it’s a godsend, especially for the Xperia PLAY where we tend to download a lot of games. If you’re constantly managing your internal memory we highly recommend you give Link2SD a try, see the full guide below.

Guide to using Link2SD on your Xperia smartphone

This guide may seem lengthy, but trust us when we say it is straightforward. All steps have been documented which makes it look daunting. Read each section carefully and follow the steps outlined to install Link2SD.

1. PREPARATION

1. Install “Link2SD” from market. Here is link: http://alturl.com/43oki. Once you install you see the icon as below image. Tap on that. It will load all apps in there and eventually will show the error message as shown in 2nd image. But don’t worry, that’s part of setup too. This error comes because your SD card is still not formatted (that’s i’m assuming

)

2. Now download EASEUS Partition Masters. It’s Free. (Everyone has different selection for partitioning purpose, but in this tutorial i’ll go thru this tool.)

Here is link: http://alturl.com/7kueu

- Before starting plug your phone using USB to PC and “Turn on USB Mode” from your phone to get SD card access in PC.

- After that , run EASEUS from PC. You will see your SD Card partitions.

- Follow next step as shown in screenshot (below).

3. Follow next step as shown in screenshot (below).

4. As shown below, move the dot to left side according to your require partition size. Once you do that, this partition will be called “Unallocated” because we haven’t formatted yet. We’ll do in next step. (Note: this is the partition in which your apps will move or linked).

5. After performing above step, it will show warning message as shown below. Just click YES.

6. Now we will define format method for unallocated partition. As shown screenshot follow the options and then click OK.

7. Now we are going to apply our settings for SD card. Click on “Apply” and proceed ahead. It will create partition on SD card (i.e. 200MB- Ext2. )

8. Unplug your phone from PC. PLEASE RESTART YOUR PHONE NOW.

After reboot, Go to Link2SD app. As it will start, you will see the message as shown in screenshot. Basically it mount script on SD card and it will run on next reboot and mount the partition that we have created. Go ahead press OK, it will restart your phone.

9. After reboot, open Link2SD. It will pop up 4 options for you. Select ONLY that partition that you have created using EASEUS. (i.e select ext2, as we have cerated ext2 partition using EASEUS)

10. After that you ready to go. Click on any apps that you want to link to SD –> Click on “Create Link” option –>Check mark all the boxes (it’ll pop up menu to ask which data files you want to move. Select all) and press OK.

It will move that app to SD and as shown below ,it’ll show red text at the bottom of app if its linked successfully.

11. Let’s have a look to the some features. In last step we have move app and data manually. What about auto move?

Follow screenshot, you will get it. It will move apps directly to SD card automatically after enabling “Auto Link” option. (Note: Already installed apps won’t move automatically from internal to SD card, you have to do manually for those. This option only effective for next installation of any apps.)

12. Another useful features are shown below.

13. Last but not least, it will give info of Internal storage and SD card partition storage.

14. Hope you have setup Link2SD app successfully. Still if you have any problem, questions or comments, feel free to post it below in comment section.

Thanks