Reset to factory

[Bill984]

I get running low message, if I reset my fire stick will the Kodi builds on the flash drive still function?

[TP-Dracoo]

Please review this for all firestick issues and guides, if the following hasn’t worked feel free to ask.

This should resolve most to all issues.

All fire stick guides in one spot! *Please Read*

Alot of talk on this, so I’m making all the troy guides available updated in one topic pinned for easy access. Please be aware of all of amazons changes before buying a product or trying to cut the cord. Take a look here as well. Please understand you are limited in customization of your device. Kodi users DO NOT use builds, stick with single addons. Maintain your device always with sticks. Always search troypoint.com for updated stuff first. Remote shell app Best streaming apps to use with …

[Bill984]

I know how to reset but I have a flash drive with 3 Kodi forks and builds. If I reset the fire stick , when I restart it will these builds still run from the flash drive? Or will I have to reinstall them?

[KingPro]

Yes! Any factory reset device will not acknowledge anything on an external flash drive. Think of it like this. If you had a PC with Windows OS installed and it was playing up. You reinstall windows and the PC is now free of all the programs and files, just the OS. If you had an external flash drive with programs etc, it would not mean you can “run” those programs, you would need to reinstall them. Your Firestick is like that! A factor reset has restored the device and now there’s no additional content on it…until you reinstall it.

[Miki]

King is correct. What isn’t widely advertised or known is that regardless of the fact that you have installed 3rd party apps onto an external USB drive the app still keeps Data on the Firestick. So when you wipe the stick you effectively wipe the Data of apps on the USB Drive that stored their data on the stick.

[KingPro]

Indeed! Another thing that tripped me up in the past was this. Installing an App once an external drive is attached will automatically place that App on the external drive. [You can move it to internal later] The install will ‘dump’ data on the Firestick by way of a simple exe to load the App…but remove that external drive and the you loose the ability to run the App.

[Miki]

Except in the case of apps in the Amazon app store. They will be installed onto the Firestick. 3rd party apps will be installed onto your external USB drive formatted to be “internal” storage.

[KingPro]

Meant to say that it’s ‘third party’ Apps
If you are changing or upgrading external storage, would I be right in thinking it’s wise to uninstall Apps? I remember when I was new to all this, I only had three/four Apps on the external storage. I didn’t plan on using the Apps in the future, so just removed the drive. Later I decided to use one of them again, it would not install! The old data left on the Firestick from the original install of that App was preventing a new installation.

[Miki]

Thanks for that King. The information you just gave is new to me. I do know when formatted as “internal” only the Firestick it was installed on will be able to read it, however if formatted as external for storing files and recordings the USB Drive can be read by any device. I’m doing some reading up now on, if it’s possible to make a “mixed” USB drive, both internal and external, but I haven’t found any articles with "precise " info. So far it appears I can’t.
I should be a bit more precise. You can use the ADB shell to format an external USB drive to both internal and external storage what I can’t find is if I can load an APK onto the “external” partition from say a computer, plug it into the Firestick and then install the app onto the stick or onto the internal partition. Lol. So much to learn and try.

[KingPro]

I don’t think you can partition an external drive to allocate some space to increase the internal storage.
One thing I plan trying is to ‘clone’ my Flash Drive to a larger capacity drive, plug it in and see if that works without issues. Sounds simple and in theory should be a solution if you need more storage. But we all know Firesticks ain’t got the reputation for simplicity in these situations.

[Miki]

So far it’s an easy process to expand “internal” by adding a usb and formatting it as internal, or if you just want the usb for recording you can format it as “external” . However techdoctoruk has instructions on using the ADB Shell to format the USB drive as a “mixed” drive.

[elginherd]

Bill,
The quick answer is ‘no’…
When you reset the Firestick, it’s pretty much the same as it’s new out of the box.
You’ll have to reinstall Kodi and the addons or builds.

Word to the wise, in order not to overwhelm the capacities just use a single light-weight build or one or two good addons. If you like a build, I’d recommend “Skeleton Crew”.
If you want to use a stand-alone addon or two, my two current favs are “Homelander” & “The Crew”. All three of the above are in the Crew repository and Troypoint has guides for all these.