Partitioning Surface Duo (1st Gen)

January 1, 2026 · View on GitHub

Files/Tools Needed

TWRP image:

File Name	Target Device
surfaceduo1-twrp.img	Surface Duo (1st Gen)

Parted: parted
Platform Tools from Google (ADB and Fastboot)
A Windows PC
The Partition Offsets Helper tool: PartitionOffsetsHelperTool.exe

Disclaimers

Warning

Don't create partitions from Mass Storage Mode on Windows (because ABL will break with blank/spaces in names), your phone may be irrecoverable otherwise
If you see a warning and/or error during the process, it is not normal. Contact us on telegram if you see anything odd, but do not continue or proceed on your own, you will break things further.
Don't rerun the commands if you interrupt the process. You may break your partition table. Parted is a very delicate tool, anything you do may cause permanent damage to your device.
Do not run all commands at once. Parted is a very delicate tool, anything you do may cause permanent damage to your device.
Do not commit any typo with any commands. Parted is a very delicate tool, anything you do may cause permanent damage to your device.
Be familiar with command line interfaces. Parted is a very delicate tool, anything you do may cause permanent damage to your device.
When using TWRP, it is normal and expected for the phone to be detected as a Xiaomi phone and for touch to not work.

Important

THIS WILL WIPE ALL YOUR ANDROID™ DATA

We don't take any responsibility for any damage done to your phone. By following this guide, you agree to take full responsibility of your actions. We have done some testing,

but this is STILL IN PREVIEW and things can go wrong.

PLEASE READ AND BE SURE TO UNDERSTAND THE ENTIRE GUIDE BEFORE STARTING

Steps

If you see no device listed, check for updates in Windows Update, you likely have a Driver Update pending so the phone is recognized, when you're good to go, you should see the following image below this notice. It is possible certain computers see no update offered (like Windows ARM64 Computers or other older machines with no functional Windows Update). If this is your case, we also provide Drivers for you to download at the following location, you will have to install them using Device Manager on your PC. Download USB Drivers

Run the following command now

adb reboot bootloader

You will be rebooted to Surface Duo's bootloader.

Image of what you should see right now: Surface Duo in Bootloader mode

Booting to TWRP

Plug your phone to your PC, open a command prompt and start by typing the following text, but do not press enter just yet

fastboot boot

Go find the surfaceduo1-twrp.img file you downloaded earlier, right click it, click "Copy as path"

Then go back to the Command Prompt window we started writing text in previously, and simply, right click on it with your mouse (or long press if you're on a touch device), you should now see this:

Now you can press enter

You will now boot to TWRP. Touch will not be working and the device will say it is locked. This is completely normal. Keep the phone plugged to your PC and continue along.

Preparing TWRP

Once booted into TWRP, start by running the following command to make sure everything we do is accepted by the device:

adb shell "setenforce 0"

Now, let's copy parted onto the device, first, start by typing the following text, but do not press enter just yet

adb push

Go find the parted file you downloaded earlier, right click it, click "Copy as path"

Then go back to the Command Prompt window we started writing text in previously, and simply, right click on it with your mouse (or long press if you're on a touch device), you should now see this:

And now, continue to write the rest of the command, like so:

 /sdcard/

Now you can press enter

Now let's install parted correctly onto the TWRP image, by running the following command

adb shell "mv /sdcard/parted /sbin/parted && chmod 755 /sbin/parted"

Now, let's open a shell onto the device, by running the following command

adb shell

Now we are issuing commands directly from inside Surface Duo using the PC.

Making the partitions

Dangerous section

Warning

This section if followed incorrectly could make your device unusable and require dedicated fixing steps that would be better given through assistance within our telegram channel.

Please carefully follow every step, and try to not commit typos by missing numbers or characters, as those may make the device unusable.

Further more, rerunning these commands after running them once ever can also damage your device, so do not refollow this section ever again.

You can only refollow such instructions when you have followed our uninstall guide first.

A warning or unexpected message is, well, unexpected, contact us if you see one, and do not attempt to fix anything by yourself.

Flashing a Microsoft provided "recovery" package will not help you recover from such failures, and may even make matters worse. Contact us instead.

Let's now run parted:

parted /dev/block/sda

Let's now run a specific unit command:

unit s

And let's execute parted's print command:

print

You'll get a list of partitions.

Make sure that the last partition listed is numbered 6. If it is not, below's commands may damage your phone. Contact us if that's your case

Take note of original sizing value of the userdata, we highlighted the given for you below, you will need it shortly.

Now run the Partition Offsets Helper Tool you downloaded earlier (PartitionOffsetsHelperTool.exe) by double clicking on it

Answer whenever or not your device is a 128GB model or 256GB model (Y = 128GB, N = 256GB)

Answer which total storage capacity you want to give to Android

Now select with your mouse all 3 commands

Right click on the command prompt, the selection will vanish and no menu will show, this is expected

Open Notepad

Paste all of them here

Edit the highlighted value below with the one you noted earlier, replacing it fully, here's a before for us:

And here's after the edit:

It is possible both values are the same, do not worry about it if that's the case, above, we intentionally showed different values as well to illustrate

Go back to the Partition Offsets Helper Tool window/command prompt

Press enter, the window will exit.
Go back to the parted window/command prompt

Run the following command first

This command removes the userdata partition

rm 6

Now come back to Notepad

Copy the first command

Paste it with right click onto the parted window, and press enter

It is possible that parted says the partition is not aligned for best performance, if that's the case for you, ignore such warning by answering "i" like so:

Copy the second command

Paste it with right click onto the parted window, and press enter

Copy the third command

Paste it with right click onto the parted window, and press enter

It is possible that parted says the partition is not aligned for best performance, if that's the case for you, ignore such warning by answering "i" again

Run the following command

This command sets the ESP partition created earlier as an EFI system partition type.

set 7 esp on

Run the following command to sanity check what you did:

print

If this looks good, proceed to below's step, if something looks horribly wrong, contact us.

Run the following command

This command leaves parted.

quit

This will get you out of parted.

We have deleted partition 6, which was the Android™ userdata partition, and created 3 partitions: the new userdata partition for Android™, just smaller; an esp partition which will contain the Windows boot files; and the last one, a win partition that will have Windows.

Now let's make these partitions actually usable:

Start with this command:

mke2fs -t ext4 /dev/block/sda6

Then continue with this command:

mkfs.fat -F32 -s1 /dev/block/sda7

Then finish with this command:

mkfs.ntfs -f /dev/block/sda8

And let's exit the device shell

exit

End of the Dangerous section

Rebooting into Android

Now, reboot into Android again:

adb reboot

You should now be seeing the Android™ Out of Box Experience (OOBE). Setup your phone to confirm it works correctly.

Android™ - OOBE

Congratulations, you successfully partitioned your device.

Steps	Illustration
Assuming your Surface Duo is booted to Android™, plugged to your PC, Using the Microsoft Launcher, find the settings app
Open the Android™ Settings app
Scroll down to the about section, and open it
Scroll all the way down til you see the Build Number field
Press the Build number field 7 times consecutively, you should first start to see a popup after 3 taps
Once done tapping 7 times, you should be seeing this popup instead
Now go to the System section, you should see a new Developer options section like shown below
Go to the Developer options section
Scroll all the way down til you see the "USB debugging" option
And turn on the "USB debugging" option

The End

And we're done, please continue with the previous guide that made you land here :)

Additional Context and Notes

If you somehow break entirely your partition table, you might be interested in the original offsets of each partition in order to fix it.

mkpart ssd 6s 7s

mkpart persist ext4 8s 8199s

mkpart metadata ext4 8200s 12295s

mkpart frp 12296s 12423s

mkpart misc 12424s 12679s

The offsets are valid for both the Surface Duo (1st Gen) 128GB model, and the Surface Duo (1st Gen) 256GB model. They do not include userdata. You will have to recreate this yourself.

(NEVER RUN THESE COMMANDS IF YOU DO NOT NEED TO OR YOU ALREADY PARTITIONS IN PLACE, ADVANCED USERS ONLY, YOU MAY KILL YOUR PHONE HERE)

Snapdragon is a registered trademark of Qualcomm Incorporated. Microsoft, the Microsoft Corporate Logo, Windows, Surface, Surface Duo, Windows Hello, Continuum, Hyper-V, and DirectX are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States. Android is a registered trademark of Google LLC. Miracast is a registered trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance. Other binaries may be copyright Qualcomm Incorporated and Microsoft Surface.

Limited emergency calling

Running Windows on your Surface Duo is not a replacement for a proper phone operating system and does not have emergency calling capabilities.

Hello from Seattle (US), France, Italy.