[Tutorial] How to modify your EBR and change your partitions for MTK6589T, MTK6582

[bovirus]

@Burs
Is not possible to send you PM and then report you feedback about EBRTweak.
Does EBRTweak woeks with EBR1/EBR of any mediatek chispet (MTK6577/82/89/92) and with any ROM size?
EBr1/EBr2 structure (and value locations) should be the same and don't change with different chipspet or ROM size.

@vampirefo
Could you post you apk version on some host?
Could you describe what you change and where?
Thanks.

[mirandam]

Hi to ya all, although I'm new here I'm not a newbe.
I'm well trained in the partitioning/linux/android/system/flashing business so I won't be asking obvious questions. About a month ago I unbricked a completely bricked (no boot, no recovery, no charging, no nothing) MySaga C3, did imei and mac changes, well all the lovely stuff we're here for

Here's a little info about my ebr mod.
I have a brand new tengda/star Z2 which is a very nice phone with only one problem: app space is just 1GB. Internal SD is about 6GB (the phone has 2GB/8GB specs) so enough to do some repartitioning.

First a made sure droidtool and flashtool worked flawlessly as this is only way to recover if this really go wrong.
Made a complete stock rom backup, nvram the whole shabang, did the same through readback with ft and made a another backup with the stock backup app and a full titanium backup. This all has become a sort standard work-practice due to earlier experiences.
I had the phone rooted from day 1, with supersu and busybox.
Checked the EBR's created by dt, both 512 bytes and thus decided to use Bur's EBR tweak on them. Choose 4GB for data which would leave me with about 2GB for internal sd. EBR's were created, I checked them for any strange stuff, seemed ok. So I flashed them with FT, I already had the cwm recovery flashed, so did the factory restore, reboot and the phone formatted the internal sd straight away.
Results were 3.9GB of data partition and 2.3 of internal sd, restored the apps and data (I used link2sd before all this and it picked up all apps that were in the 2nd partiton of the external sd) and everything was again in its place.
All in all it has cost me about 2-3 hours, mostly because of the extensive backups and verifications, the process itself takes about 6 min.
I had read about the meteos repartition app, but a lot of posts reflected problems so I didn't think it would be a good idea to use. I always trust my own instincts more, probably because of my 40 years of experience in the computer world, and since my Z2 now has this lovely 4GB of space to install my apps, I think I did the right thing.
Thanks to those who posted detailed information about the EBR structure, that helped a lot to make the right decision.

[mirandam]

Btw, my Z2 is a MT6592 and it seems the EBR's are not different to the others (6589, 6582 and 6572) that I own.

Here's a pic of how the phone is now:
[Only registered and activated users can see links Click here to register]

[mirandam]

Please I tried using ebrtweak application but it doesn't detect my device, I tried editing my mt6589 using hex editor but i get much memory than supposed because I'm using a 16gb rom! Sometimes I get 6 gb internal and 10 gb external whereas its supposed to be 13gb total. Please I have attached the two ebr files in zip archive! I don't know if anyone can help me edit it to 6gb internal and the rest to external.

You probably didn't create the correct EBR files. If they were created by droidtools, after the backup you should have done the "To prepar blocks for FlashTool", which converts the blocks to the correct size for flashtool, in this case 512 bytes each.
These are the files you can use for ebrtweak, not the backup-ed ones, you can find them in the !Files_to_FlashTool folder in your backup folder.

b.t.w. If've attached the correct EBR's created by ebrtweak with 6GB for you.

[asterx]

Good Day! after doing the repartition using ebrtweak it works, but after a few days I noticed that my phone storage does not mount, i tried to format the storage but then again after days its wont mount again.

Same issue here, with the little difference that I'm getting the phone storage corrupted message after every reboot. Is there a way how I could debug?

[mirandam]

Good Day! after doing the repartition using ebrtweak it works, but after a few days I noticed that my phone storage does not mount, i tried to format the storage but then again after days its wont mount again.

Same issue here, with the little difference that I'm getting the phone storage corrupted message after every reboot. Is there a way how I could debug?

I suppose you mean the internal SD storage got corrupted, or is it the data partition?
If it is the internal SD, then, did you try different values for the data partition size?
Or does it happen with all sizes?
I've had no problems, with several reboots and the phone now working for about 4 days without interruption.

[asterx]

I suppose you mean the internal SD storage got corrupted, or is it the data partition?
If it is the internal SD, then, did you try different values for the data partition size?
Or does it happen with all sizes?
I've had no problems, with several reboots and the phone now working for about 4 days without interruption.

Yes, the internal SD storage. The data partition is ok. I've tried 2.5, 3 and 4 GB and all show the same issue. I've tried viewing the EBR files with 'file' under Linux and except displaying that it's a boot sector it did not tell anything else. However the same is true for the MBR file, so it could be an issue with my 'file' command. If I try to read back block info with MTK Droid Tools, it should show the new values, correct?

[gerstavros]

Yes, the internal SD storage. The data partition is ok. I've tried 2.5, 3 and 4 GB and all show the same issue. I've tried viewing the EBR files with 'file' under Linux and except displaying that it's a boot sector it did not tell anything else. However the same is true for the MBR file, so it could be an issue with my 'file' command. If I try to read back block info with MTK Droid Tools, it should show the new values, correct?

format it from PC

[asterx]

format it from PC

To make the partition visible at all on my computer I have to format it first on the phone. After that I can format it from my PC, but after a reboot I'm still getting the 'Damaged phone storage message'.
See my original and ebrtweak modified EBRs and MBR (that's just the original for reference) attached.

[mirandam]

...
Yes, the internal SD storage. The data partition is ok. I've tried 2.5, 3 and 4 GB and all show the same issue. I've tried viewing the EBR files with 'file' under Linux and except displaying that it's a boot sector it did not tell anything else. However the same is true for the MBR file, so it could be an issue with my 'file' command. If I try to read back block info with MTK Droid Tools, it should show the new values, correct?

Indeed, I just made a backup to check this and droidtools returned the exact same EBR as the ones I used for flashing.

The file command on linux doesn't do you a lot of good. For viewing files in hex, use hexdump. You can redirect the output it to a textfile which you can later compare to another one to show the differences.

btw. I just had a look at your EBR's, the new ones look quite healthy to me. MBR has no use here. I assume you did a factory restore directly after each flash?