Will I need a card reader?

[taosaur]

I'm gearing up to set up a dual boot, and one thing I haven't seen spelled out is whether the NC itself will serve as a reader to load the files onto the SD card. Posts seem to assume that you're plugging the card into your PC by another means, but all my other devices do serve as readers for their respective media.

Will I need a reader?

[mwheinz]

You don't need a reader. What happens is that if you put a microsd card in your nook and connect it to your computer, the computer will see 2 devices: the nook and the sd card.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by mwheinz

You don't need a reader. What happens is that if you put a microsd card in your nook and connect it to your computer, the computer will see 2 devices: the nook and the sd card.

That does not appear to be the case. I got a 16GB SD card, and while the NC recognizes the SD card, Windows only allows me to navigate the Nook itself.

EDIT: nvm, this last time I removed the Nook then plugged it back in, the card showed up.

[mwheinz]

taosaur,

It's possible the nook hadn't yet noticed you had added the card to it the first time - I've gotten in to the habit of turning off any device I add a card to, then turning it back on after I've added the card.

[jasoraso]

Originally Posted by taosaur

I'm gearing up to set up a dual boot, and one thing I haven't seen spelled out is whether the NC itself will serve as a reader to load the files onto the SD card. Posts seem to assume that you're plugging the card into your PC by another means, but all my other devices do serve as readers for their respective media.

Will I need a reader?

I may not be understanding your question, but let me clarify:

Once you have dual-boot setup, and in regular use, you will not need a cardreader; merely connected the NC to the computer via the cable, and you will be able to move files onto the sd card etc. Your computer will see it was an extra drive.

However, if you are going to INSTALL a rom onto the sdcard, you WILL need a cardreader to prepare the dual-boot installation. To make the sdcard "bootable", you need low-level access to the card, and you can't get that kind of access by using the NC as your card-reader.

[taosaur]

Everybody's wrong xD

As I said, the Nook recognized the card from the outset, but the PC was only able to mount the Nook itself maybe 1 in 3 attempts, sometimes seeing the card and sometimes not, which created a cycle of plugging and unplugging and restarting and oy vey!

However, once the PC recognized both the NC and the SD card, I was able to write a bootable image to the SD card while it was in the NC, and move a CM7.0.2 ROM into the resultant boot partition, and boot to CM7. When I initially made the change, the Nook said the SD was not formatted and asked if I wanted to format it--obviously not. After I got CM7 installed and then booted to the stock OS, it simply saw the SD card as "ready to remove," and would not otherwise interact with it.

CM7 is running great, but I no longer have access to the SD card's boot partition over USB, so I can't install gapps/market (maybe it would have installed if I had dropped it in with the original ROM? ROM Manager seems to look for them separately on a recovery boot). I did, however, quasi-accidentally (okay, carelessly) replace my stock OS on emmc with Clockwork Mod Recovery, so I may have more options now. I also have Root Explorer installed, so theoretically if I could find the right directory on the boot partition (would it or wouldn't it be listed in Root Explorer?), I could drop the gapps zip file in there and do a recovery boot.

I have sideloaded some apps and set up the Amazon app store via the browser. I've already overspent my gadget allowance at least until next week, so I want to see how far I can get without a card reader, after which I'll probably just get a multi-reader to stick in my tower.

[jasoraso]

Thanks for this! I didn't realize the NC could act as a card reader at a low enough level to write .img's. Everything I had previously seen seemed to indicate it couldn't. Good to know.

[taosaur]

I found a solution, detailed over here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...15#post1528515

EDIT: and to correct an earlier post, I was mistaken about replacing the stock OS with CWM--I actually replaced the stock recovery utility, leaving the OS intact.