So I was reading about backing up your /efs folder and I was wondering if backing up your device with CWM through recovery, will that also back up /efs folder?
Thanks!
i dont now this but you can just copy the efs folder and paste it at your computer.its so easy
If you want you can download nitrality apply from market, which can automatically do a backup for ya
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
just copy the files might not be enough, permissions and ownershiop etc is lost. Look in this thread for info how to backup /efs
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1068193
I'm wondering the same thing... Does CWM backup the /efs folder?
No. There are apps that can do same (Hellcat's kTool being one), and some kernels automatically make an EFS backup by default (Siyah for example).
Edit to add - For clarity, CWM will not make a separate backup of the EFS. As it essentially makes an image of the phone, obviously the EFS details will be included (everything is included), but I doubt you can extract the EFS folders/files on their own from a CWM backup. If there is a way, I'd certainly like to know how to do it Would be handy to know, even if I do backup EFS whenever I do a backup as a matter of course.
So as long as I've made backups using CWM and then suddenly my efs folder gets corrupted, a simple CWM restore would repair the efs?
On the other hand... in theory (I would never try this) wouldn't that mean that if I did a CWM restore on a different SII that phone's IMEI would change?
Brgds... /Tubgirl
Hmmmmm....Basically when you restore a CWM backup, you go back to whatever state your phone was in at the time you made the backup.
Now, if you borked your EFS, and if you restored a CWM backup, would this fix this EFS issue. In theory & based on the CWM backup being an 'image', you'd reckon yes it would.
In practice, I'm not about to delete my efs folders & try it out tho
So far as the IMEI is concerned, no, I don't believe it would. Reason I say this is because I know people who have taken a CWM backup of a phone they've had to return for replacement. Got the replacement phone, and restored the CWM backup on the new phone; essentially cloned the old one. And that hasn't messed with the new phone's IMEI.
At the end of the day, people who don't make EFS backups are insane IMHO (you probably guessed that from my sig). Given it takes literally 20 seconds to make an EFS backup with kTool, and another minute to transfer a copy over to a PC, there's no excuse for not making a backup.
Edit to add - Interesting questions/thread BTW I know who could answer these questions definitively for us. Odia. He's the EFS king on here. Can sometimes (often ?) recover IMEI's when there are no EFS folders/files to work with. How ? Who knows. Voodoo maybe ?
Ok, I'm no expert by any means and please correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a complete efs backup include imei?
The reason I'm asking is because suddenly my phone can't make/receive phone calls with my current carrier (other carriers still work). I restored a previously made CWM backup but it didn't help. Today I read about efs and what it contains so I started to wonder if maybe that's where the problem lie. I've only made CWM and Titanium backups so far because I had no knowledge about efs.
Brgds... /Tubgirl
Easiest way to tell if it's an IMEI issue is to check the IMEI. If you have your actual IMEI in settings/about phone, that obviously isn't the problem (whatever you do, don't post your IMEI on XDA. Ever), if you have the generic IMEI 004999010640000, then you've got a problem.
If you do have the generic IMEI, then we can look at options to possibly rectify it (sometimes possible, sometimes not).
If your IMEI is fine, the problem lies elsewhere & you're worrying about nothing There are a million things that could cause the problem you described.
However, no excuse for not making an EFS backup nowish if your IMEI is OK & keeping one copy on your external SD card & another copy on your PC (and even another copy on a external drive if you're really paranoid).
I just used the IMEI example to question whether efs is included in CWM backups or not. My IMEI is just fine but since I'm so reluctant to send my phone in for repair I'm just grasping for straws here Thought maybe my problem was related to efs since I suspect it's not included in CWM backups. Anyway... since I never made a "real" efs backup my question is pure academic. I'm afraid my phone needs to be sent to a service center. System restore didn't resolve my problems either but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't resolve efs problems either.
Brgds... Tubgirl
Did a bit of digging & found this. It would appear EFS is not backed up in a Nandroid backup after all despite it being somewhat of an 'image'. So I guess that answers both our question.
No, system restore more than likely won't solve EFS issues. Normally the only way to fix it short of having Samsung do it is Odia/whatever method he uses (which he won't divulge; and fair enough. I'm sure it's highly technical).
If you need to send your phone in for warranty service, do a format cache, data, system, & sd card in CWM. Then flash a stock rom in Odin, then use a jig to reset the flash counter.
Obviously once you root a phone and/or run non-stock firmware on it you void your warranty and should have no expectation of warranty service, but many people have been able to get same by doing the above. But in saying that, there have been people on here who have followed these steps & been 'found out' in any event.
Unless it's a case of actual damage to the phone caused by use or whatever, if it's a hardware fault, you might be able to get away with it.
WHich method do you use to backup your efs?
I use Siyah kernel which automatically makes an EFS backup & dumps it in the /data/.Siyah folder. There are also apps which enable you to make a backup, I've used kTool in the past & there are others (names of which escape me; search on here/Google Play).
I'd recommend kTool (search for it on here/Google Play) as it isn't kernel or rom dependent, it backs up EFS to /sdcard/efs.img & also allows you to verify the backup. You can then transfer a copy onto PC, external drive or whatever in case the worst ever happens. Quick, easy & no fuss.
Thanks a bunch... I'll search for it.
No probs
Tubgirl said:
Thanks a bunch... I'll search for it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I saw this thread was about CMWbackups, and have a quetion about it. decided it's better to ash here than start a whole new thread
The CMW backups; does it backup EVERYTING?
So if i forexample have some movies on my external SD card, and then takes an CMW backup..... Next i delete everyting on this SDcard, and then flash the CMW image,,,,, will my movies then be back at my SD card? Will they be back at any other place at the phone? or will they be totally gone?
Nikolaiim said:
I saw this thread was about CMWbackups, and have a quetion about it. decided it's better to ash here than start a whole new thread
The CMW backups; does it backup EVERYTING?
No as said it does not back up EFS .
It takes an image of the firmware OS and applications on the internal sd card .
So if i forexample have some movies on my external SD card, and then takes an CMW backup..... Next i delete everyting on this SDcard, and then flash the CMW image,,,,, will my movies then be back at my SD card? Will they be back at any other place at the phone? or will they be totally gone
Gone Gone Gone .
jje
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If i have a siyah backup of my esf (a tar.gz and a img.gz) what do i have to do to restore my esf folder?
Search for/read the kTool thread on here.
I got stuck in flight mode yesterday and I can't get out of it.
I have seen i need to restore the efs folder but i don't have a backup.
Is there anyway of getting a backup of an efs folder?
If not how can get my phone back to working order? does it have to be returned to manufacturer?
Would I need to put my phone back to stock as it is now rooted if it needs to go back to samsung?
I have a full backup of my phone on kies if that works?
martyd1901 said:
I got stuck in flight mode yesterday and I can't get out of it.
I have seen i need to restore the efs folder but i don't have a backup.
Is there anyway of getting a backup of an efs folder?
If not how can get my phone back to working order? does it have to be returned to manufacturer?
Would I need to put my phone back to stock as it is now rooted if it needs to go back to samsung?
I have a full backup of my phone on kies if that works?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Search is your friend.
I searched this forum and found some intersting threads:
Here a user had the same problem and wrote how he could solve this issue => http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1261948&highlight=efs+restore
Here is a tool to backup (&restore) efs folder => http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1308546&highlight=efs+restore
And another user seems to have solved a similar issue => http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1331701&highlight=efs+restore
Good luck !
yeh i found all those posts and have been reading them carefully.
Only thing is i don't think i can find the nv_data.bin file anywhere.
I have ES File Explorer installed and i looked in the EFS folder but it says it is empty!!!
when i used the EFS Pro it worked through it, i got a .img file at the end of it which is 20MB but i can't seem to view anything in it...
ok now im getting somewhere i found the nv_data.bak so im going to use the articles again and have another go.
I didn't realise you had to use the .tar for the efs backup to view the files
Hi all !
if i restore nand backup from another phone on my phone + restore my orgininal EFS folder does it mean my phone will work perfectly without any surprise ????
thanks a lot
dahikino
totally not recommended. you could be coming from different android version, or even if same version, different manufacturers may have different setup.
if you feel adventurous, you can try just reinstalling the "data" portion though, that is where your installed apps are placed. but be warned it also contains some previous system settings which may not be compatible with sgs3.
better alternative is to install Titanium backup, it has function to read from nandroid backups so you can pick and choose what you want to extract from there.
First of all this is the wrong section to post this, go to the q&a section instead.
If the other phone was not the same exact model of phone then DO NOT restore the nandroid. Like the other commenter mentioned you can use titanium backup to save and restore apps or even use it to extract the apps from the nandroid.
Hi all,
I remember my first Froyo rom on my GS1 was provided as a nandroid package..
Questions go in the Q/A section
Fyi, nandroid doesn't touch the EFS partition or the bootloaders, or radio, just the system, data, cache and boot (kernel) partitions.
You *can* restore another person's nandroid onto your phone, but its really not a good idea (someone shipped roms as nandroids for a bit...), and you shouldn't need to touch the EFS unless something goes wrong, and a rom should never touch the EFS.
Edit: As people above say, don't restore a nandroid from another model of phone onto your device, if you want to move data from phone to phone like that use titanium backup or the like.
i want to copy a nand backup from a S3 orange 16GB onto my phone S3 SFR 32GB, because i have no solution for a "NO SMS,NO CALL BUT INTERNET WORKING" problem
changing rom, modem,etc.. etc... so many things without solved it
thanks
dahikino
dahikino said:
i want to copy a nand backup from a S3 orange 16GB onto my phone S3 SFR 32GB, because i have no solution for a "NO SMS,NO CALL BUT INTERNET WORKING" problem
changing rom, modem,etc.. etc... so many things without solved it
thanks
dahikino
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well in that case at your risk by Nand i hope you mean a CWM Nandroid recovery .
Its often best to have the same version of recovery to restore backup if first attempt fails ..
Be far simpler to flash a stock SGS3 Orange rom via Odin .
jje.
Hey Guys
My i9300 was running stock rom and i decided to flash the illusion rom. but i downloaded and flashed the wrong file. so now my imei number is lost and i get no signal.
I have backup of IMEI from the software EFS pro but it does not restore. the software shows all ok but the IMEI on phone is still unknown.
Also there is a file on my sd card with the backup of efs. maybe a rom previously flashed may have taken the backup. I can try and restore that.
Please help me how to do so. its a tar.gz file
Please help me restore my IMEI number. i have no phone signal and dont want to go to service center because my phone is rooted and its voided warranty.
also i had a nandroid backup i restored it and all my data has been restored but not the IMEI
thanks in advance.
Can't help you to get your IMEI back, but to use https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.triangleaway , use Odin (or mobileOdin) or unroot it you don't need a IMEI.
Tar files are flashed via Odin .
jje
Actually this may be simpler than expected.
tar.gz can be flashed from odin since now it has an /efs field. That alone may be enough. But please do another backup before trying anything. Really, just copying all the files over to somewhere safe is enough.
But Tar.gz is a compressed file (like zip). Have you tried to check what's inside that tar.gz? I'd decompress it to somewhere and compare it to what's inside your /efs partition on your phone. If it seems the same, i'd do a new /efs backup and try replacing the contents of the /efs with the uncompressed backup.
You may need to do this through adb on recovery mode - once, brain went full retard and wiped my /efs partition by not thinking about what i was doing, phone instantly rebooted on the spot to never normally boot again until fixed (had an awesome weekend trying to figure how to fix it , posted somewhere around here how i did it). Doing it from recovery is just to avoid that. Also, all this is assuming some file on your /efs is just corrupted and your backup is in good shape.
If you're still feeling unsure you can (and should) search for related stuff around here in xda. There is PLENTY of info about lost/corrupted /efs around, happens quite often.
Hey guys,
Thank you very much for your replies
It's quite shocking but an official firmware flash via odin solved the problem.
I guess my imei was just corrupted.
Thanks
Hey guys, I had the same problem, but now I know what went wrong, thanks!
does efs change everytime we install a rom or changing a firmware versions?i have a lot of copies of my EFS file because i always back it up before ill try a new firmware or custom roms im just confused if its ok to delete the old EFS file that i saved.
heyjhay said:
does efs change everytime we install a rom or changing a firmware versions?i have a lot of copies of my EFS file because i always back it up before ill try a new firmware or custom roms im just confused if its ok to delete the old EFS file that i saved.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AFAIK every rom has to avoid EFS and not mess with it, since its crucial for your phone. Backing it up is a wise thing to do, and if you do each installation as instructed, you should have no worries. But do a backup of those EFS files on your PC if you intend to delete them from your phone, just in case.