You MUST have an ext3 partition on the SD Card BEFORE installing
We suggest a 512Mb ext3 partition for most users. If you want to try the CM7 Hboot later on, 1Gb is better. Do not exceed 2Gb.
It is STRONGLY recommended that these actions are performed prior to installing a rom, and that you have the entire contents of your SD backed up to your PC. While both process have the facility to keep your data intact, there are no garantees and we will not be held responsible for any data loss – you’ve been warned!
*For S-OFF users only*
1 – Install 4EXT recovery (heavily recommended) via market app or 4ext.net
2 – Reboot to recovery
3 – Within recovery, select “tools” then scroll down to select “partition sd card”, select to save your FAT32 partition. Set 1st SD-EXT at 1024mb, select “skip” for 2nd sd-ext and “skip” for the swap partition. Confirm at the end at let it do its job 
4 – You’re DONE!
Our preferred method of creating the ext partition is using gParted or Parted Magic - gParted instructions follow.
- If you are using RA Recovery, it provides an easier method (see the bottom of the page)
- DO NOT use the ClockWorkMod partitioning features – they are flaky as hell and cause no end of trouble!!!
- Make a Gparted liveCD (Download the Latest Stable .iso version of gparted-live-stable from here and burn it as an image to a CD). Intructions for burning an image under Windows are here
Note: DON’T use the big green Download button. Scroll down the page to gparted-live-stable and remember, you want the.iso version. Some people have had problems using versions later than the Stable version so stick with the gparted-live-stable releases. Alternatively you might want to try Parted Magic- Set your Desire to have a Default connection of Disk Drive (Settings > Connect to PC > Default connection type > Disk drive > Done
- Untick Ask me
- Plug in your Desire into the (Powered Down) PC via the cable supplied with it
- Run Gparted (ie set your PC to boot from CD and boot up the Gparted CD). If you can’t get the LiveCD to boot its probably because you burnt the .iso as a file rather than as an image. Try reading this.
- Normally just hit Enter on every prompt until you get the graphical display of Gparted.
- In Gparted, refresh the view (Gparted > Refresh Devices or Ctrl+R)
- There will be a box or two below the menu toolbar representing the partitions on the selected hard drive. They will be labelled /dev/hda1 xx.xx GiB (or more) for IDE hard drives or /dev/sda1 (or maybe /dev/sdn1) for SATA and USB drives. Make sure you can select the (/dev/sdxx) drive corresponding to your SD Card (its fat32) If you can’t see the USB drive select Gparted > Devices > /dev/sda
- Work on the right hand side of the partition (the white bit) when resizing as this only has to shrink the empty space without moving too many files.
- Click on the fat32 partition, click on Resize/Move and shrink the fat32 partition by 512Mb to 2Gb – 1Gb is recommended for most users, do not exceed 2Gb (this will not affect files in the fat32 partition if you have plenty of free space on the card)
- Once you are happy with the size select the Resize/Move button.
- Don’t worry, nothing has been changed yet.
- You’ll now see what the new set-up will look like.
- A new section is now shown at the bottom of the screen. This is the pending job. If you are un-happy with what you have arranged & wish to undo it simply select Undo in the toolbar.
- You can now add another job here as well, such as formatting the free space as ext3, or you can do this as a separate step. When creating the ext3 patition make it a primary partition.
- If you want to proceed, select Apply, this is when your SD Card actually gets modified.
- Once you have finished, double click the Red Exit button to shut down the PC
- You can also run gParted from a bootable USB by following the instructions here
UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux distributions without burning a CD. It runs on both Windows and Linux. You can either let UNetbootin download one of the many distributions supported out-of-the-box for you, or supply your own Linux .iso file if you’ve already downloaded one or your preferred distribution isn’t on the list.
Requirements
* Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7, or Linux.
* Internet access for downloading a distribution to install, or a pre-downloaded ISO file
Features
UNetbootin can create a bootable Live USB drive, or it can make a “frugal install” on your local hard disk if you don’t have a USB drive. It loads distributions either by downloading a ISO (CD image) files for you, or by using an ISO file you’ve already downloaded. - Using RA Recovery image
- Boot to Recovery
- Partition SD: FAT32, EXT3 (EXT partition must be AFTER the FAT partition)
- Wipe all data
- Turn off verification
- Flash from zip > Radio image
- Reboot
- Flash from zip > ROM image
- Reboot and wait
