Since my Max2Play 4Gb SD card was indeed consumed I ended up re-doing my entire Max2Play system on a new 8Gb SD card. And when I got the very first Expand warning on the very first boot in the Max2Play, the process expanded the primary Max2Play partition to use the entire SD card. So, I now have a 6Gb primary where Max2Play „resides“. It seems, based on both of our experiences, that the Expand function is problematic and not entirely consistent in its operation.
As you have taken your SD card about of your Pi you can use other tools to manage its partitions than the Max2Play „tool.“ I do not know what tools exist for Windows or MacOSX that can do what I’m about to describe because I am a 20-year Linux user and that is what I know best. But the concepts should remain the same no matter what tool you use. If you use Windows/MacOSX, google „partition manager“ for tools for those operating systems.
To do this with a Linux OS, you need an application called „parted“ (Partition Editor) installed. Many Linux variants come with parted installed and the Max2Play installation does have it. If you desire a GUI version, then gparted is the application. I confess that this is one application where I prefer the GUI to the command line. The visual representation of the partitions is simply easier to understand. Note that you cannot use your Pi booted to Max2Play to do this because resizing a mounted „in use“ partition cannot be done, so you cannot boot your Pi then use parted on the booted OS that is on the Max2Play SD card.
BUT … if you have a second bootable SD for your Pi, and you can install parted on it, you can boot from it, mount your Max2Play SD card (IF – big IF – you have an SD card reader dongle like I have in which you put your SD card which then plugs into a USB port on your Pi). Doing this might well be worth the effort.
Concepts:
1. Mount the SD card (which you know how to do).
2. Determine which „mounted“ disk is your SD Card. On a Linux system run „sudo fdisk -l“ to see the mounted disks; the list will show items named like „/dev/sda#/ where # is a number, e.g., /dev/sda1 or /dev/sdb1; the letter before the number will increase with the number of mounted disks, a, b, c, d, etc.
3. The tricky part here is knowing which of these is your SD card. On a desktop system /dev/sda is usually the main, primary drive, /dev/sdb is often the cd/dvd drive. On my Pi, my USB drive on which is my music, is mounted as /dev/sdb (because my Pi has no CD/DVD drive) and the partition is /dev/sdb1. If I wanted to modify its partitions then /dev/sdb is the disk I would use parted on. A Max2Play SD card will show Linux as its OS and it should not be the /dev/sda disk when it’s mounted on a running OS.
4. On Linux using gparted to do this: https://www.howtoforge.com/partitioning_with_gparted
5. If you cannot use gparted but can us another Linux OS on your Pi with your SD card mounted to it (and you’re using parted from an SSH session) then this will be helpful: https://www.gnu.org/software/parted/manual/html_node/parted_31.html You’ll see it’s as easy as (!) seeing the total size of the SD card (shown on the Disk geometry line of the „print“ command output, then walking through the Start/End values of the SD card’s partitions).
6. NOTE – there is always the change, however small, that doing this can bork your SD card. But, in 20 years I’ve never had that happen to me, personally, so I’m comfortable doing this.
Hope this was of some use.
