Can I explore root without rooting phone? - Galaxy S III Q&A, (US Carriers)

This might be a silly question, but I was currently trying to backup some saves for games I bought, and was unable to find my Final Fantasy 3
saves on my sdcard.
I found out that the saves are actually in internal storage in some location like /data/data/com.square_enix.android_googleplay.FFIII_GP
My phone isn't currently rooted, and the file explorers I found required root.
Is there a way I can backup the saves to my PC without having a rooted phone?
I wanted to backup all my stuff before attempting to root my phone, but will the root process erase my phone's internal storage, or is that only
when flashing ROMs?

Wifi File Explorer Pro seems to work fine. I can see the folders outside of the SDCard folder...including the root stuff. Now changing those files or folders...I have not tried.

JonSolo said:
Wifi File Explorer Pro seems to work fine. I can see the folders outside of the SDCard folder...including the root stuff. Now changing those files or folders...I have not tried.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, downloaded the app and I do seem to be able to explore the phone's internal storage, however the data folder in question seems to be
completely empty according to the app.
EDIT :
After trying with another app, it looks like I probably need root to view the /data folder.

Related

AstroFileManager ?'s

rooted
bamf 1.6.3
ok i know this isn't an astro fourm but any advice would be appreciated.
in astro file manager Ver 2.5.2, navigating to /data returns (directory is empty) there are other directories which i expect to have files or sub directs that return the same result. is this a free Vs. pro issue. am i missing something?
i like the app but don't want to upgrade if this is glitch of the app.
additionally there is "busy" icon rotating around in the lower portion of the window whenever i open astro and continues to rotates as busy continuously
thanks
mark
would another app with similar functionality be recommended?
Buy Root Explorer
Sent from my T-Bolt
second root explorer. its well worth the $2 or whatever it costs. astro doesn't show anything because it cant access the rooted portion of your phone, only the sd card
I'm pretty sure I've gotten Astro into the Root of my phone... Maybe I'm imagining things.
BAMF includes an adblock. The free Astro usually has ads on the bottom. You see the busy icon because the ad is never downloaded.
Astro also shows my /data directory as empty. Root Explorer sees everything just fine.
ERIFNOMI said:
I'm pretty sure I've gotten Astro into the Root of my phone... Maybe I'm imagining things.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use root explorer but once when I flashed a Rom it wouldn't install from titanium backup or the market so I had to use Astro and it worked just fine replacing files in the system, I changed the boot animation and the Adobe file to get Hulu to work on my X.
ERIFNOMI said:
I'm pretty sure I've gotten Astro into the Root of my phone... Maybe I'm imagining things.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if you could share how thatd be great. farthest ive gotten it is to show / which should be root... but only three folders. two are empty and one is sd card
You need root explorer. Astro rocks for the simple things. Moving files around, creating new folders and emptying your ever full "download" folder into things you want to keep, and deleting things you don't. It will allow you to view pictures, and video directly inside it. And has a nicer look and feel than root explorer. However, it won't get you into that data or system folder like RE will. I use astro for mundane tasks, and RE for it's extraction abilities, and data folder. Both are nice to have.
astro is cool for simply moving files around and exploring files. But if you wanna see whats on your phone, buy root explorer. Its pretty amazing.
But...pair astro and root explorer...then its ok. But you would have to mount r/w with root explorer before using astro...which is a drag.

[Q] Is there any way 2 get rid of the unused app folders apps leave behind?

I have a ton of folders on SD card and some places on my phone's internal storage that I want to know how to delete, bottom line is some of them are important folders that may be required by the system - some contain downloaded data from games and what not - such as The Sims Freeplay - that range in sizes from 400MB to 900MB.
I'm running on a stock phone, HAS NEVER BEEN ROOTED, DO NOT WANT TO ROOT THIS PHONE TO GET RID OF THESE - is there any ways to do this without rooting the phone?
Any help is appreciated
SDCard folder deletion
Hi,
As everyone gets to read/write on the sdcard you should be able to delete everything on the card.
Since you are unsure if the files are still needed, I'd suggest you back them up, delete them and put them back on the card if you run into problems.
Take a look at the files timestamps to identify old and probably unused files.
As for deleting stuff, I see several ways to accomplish that:
transfer files via USB mode
use a file manager from the market and just click your way through
use ADB from the android SDK, this will open a shell and you can use all the unix commands you want. You'll also have access to 'adb push' and 'adb pull' to transfer files.
Astro file manager .
Sent from my HTC PH39100 using xda premium
You can probably just delete the files using a file manager. It's tedious though.

Back up & Restore in ICS - where on internal storage ?

Hi,
i run a backup sesseion yesterday with the build-in app "back up & restore" on my ICS 4.04. i had no chance to choose "usb storage" even my mobile was connected with my laptop so i keep it on "internal storage".
but i can't find the backup now on there. There are just a few folders but only some KB's in size.
Where put the app my backup in ?
It's in a folder called .semc-fullbackup
and where is that folder? do I have an access without root?
how to delete backup from app?
can't find it either.... it's not on my internal storage / SD card....
very useful from backup&restore to put the backup onto the phone memory with no option to save it somewhere else <facepalm>
its in internal memory and its hidden so use explorer and then youll see it.
olaf313 said:
can't find it either.... it's not on my internal storage / SD card....
very useful from backup&restore to put the backup onto the phone memory with no option to save it somewhere else <facepalm>
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're supposed to connect a USB flash drive TO your phone, not your phone to a computer. It works, i've tried it.
To view the folders, open them through your computer when connected via a data cable; if you try to view them on your phone via a file explorer they don't show up.
Edit: To get Es file explorer to show hidden files/folders go to: Settings --> File Settings --> Show hidden files
It's great that you can do a backup to a USB flash drive, but you don't get the USB on-the-go cable in the box and most people wouldn't know they exist, or where to get one (I've never seen one on sale in a shop).
(For those that don't know, you can get official Nokia or Samsung ones dirt cheap from Amazon and probably eBay etc).
I use MyBackupPro and found that it was impossible to transfer the folder contents to another folder on my Mac desktop using MTP. Certain files just won't/can't copy. A total joke.
However, I can use a file manager to copy everything in the backup folder to a USB drive via the cable (well, actually via a LiveDock as the phone can't power an awful lot of flash drives) but that's a right PITA.
To be honest, I know Google can now backup app settings but the whole thing is a mess. When you reset, you don't always get the apps reinstalling (even if starts to do it seemingly fine) and I'm not confident it would work if I needed to rely on it. And even less so if I broke my phone and replaced it with another one, where the backed up data wouldn't reinstall either.
Frankly, despite showing off some really cool features in Android 4.1 at Google I/O today, the one thing they've not really taken much care of is making backups. Why not let me make a backup to my Google Drive storage space? Why not back up all applications and data, including apps installed on the SD card (or internal drive) and also backup widget data, home screen icon positions etc?
Even rooted devices are hit and miss when it comes to backups, and most people don't root their devices - or may have rooted the device they have now, but can't always root the device when changing phone or updating the OS.
Anyway, that was a much longer rant than I intended to write. Going back to the start, the backup app for most people is pretty pointless!!
Access Hidden Files Using Phone
Download Astro File Manager from Google Play
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.metago.astro&hl=en
Open Astro ...
Open Preferences ...
Goto Look and Feel ...
Check Show hidden files ...
Then you can see a folder named .semc-fullbackup.
Open the folder ...
Copy its contents to some other location ...
That is all ...
Enjoy
olaf313 said:
Hi,
i run a backup sesseion yesterday with the build-in app "back up & restore" on my ICS 4.04. i had no chance to choose "usb storage" even my mobile was connected with my laptop so i keep it on "internal storage".
but i can't find the backup now on there. There are just a few folders but only some KB's in size.
Where put the app my backup in ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I used ES file explorer to see the folder I said, my phone was rooted, maybe that's the reason the folder was visible by default
meyourchum said:
Download Astro File Manager from Google Play
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.metago.astro&hl=en
Open Astro ...
Open Preferences ...
Goto Look and Feel ...
Check Show hidden files ...
Then you can see a folder named .semc-fullbackup.
Open the folder ...
Copy its contents to some other location ...
That is all ...
Enjoy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
cheers buddy, that was great.
first i thought "Astro" is a horoscope app :laugh:
lordoftheriffs said:
I used ES file explorer to see the folder I said, my phone was rooted, maybe that's the reason the folder was visible by default
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just checked and you're right, ES file explorer can see the folders (my phone is not rooted), you just have to enable the option in settings.
Es file explorer: Settings --> File Settings --> Show hidden files
HI im ravi...thanks for your post....very good app
I'm not rooted, what I did was:
- connect the phone to you computer
- adb shell
- cd sdcard1
- ls -la
Then you should see the .semc-fullbackup folder. So you need to have android SDK installed, I'm not sure if you need to have developer mode enabled, but I did have it enabled.
Just wanted to add to this because this is the first Google hit I got.

[Q] How to access the whole file system?

Hi,
I wanted to see the whole file system of my phone. I have already rooted it.
This is what I want to do :
I have installed an app. by the name "Printershare". It is, as the name says, for printing. When I connect a printer to the phone, it downloads some driver pack from the internet. I want to check what it downloaded (All the files everything in the 'Driver Pack'). But when I connect my phone to my system, using samsung kies, I can only access the phone data and not the data internal to the apps.
Is there any way of accessing everything on the phone?
NOTE: Phone is already rooted.
Thanks
-Sahil
Download a file manager on your phone like ES File Explorer or something similar. Those usually allow you to browse to root directory after gaining superuser privileges.
Or if you want to just view them you can install terminal emulator and do a
Code:
cd /
Well via a pc I dont think there is a method to access system partitions...but if you use ES file explorer ..you will be able to access all your system files through your phone itself....but be careful not to delete any important files in the system good luck
hope this helped
use adb shell
sadeshmagic said:
Well via a pc I dont think there is a method to access system partitions...but if you use ES file explorer ..you will be able to access all your system files through your phone itself....but be careful not to delete any important files in the system good luck
hope this helped
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for ur reply
That really helped..
One more question...Where would the application data be stored, I mean in which folder??
I explained the problem in more detail in my first post on this thread.
Thanx
sahilh14 said:
Thanks for ur reply
That really helped..
One more question...Where would the application data be stored, I mean in which folder??
I explained the problem in more detail in my first post on this thread.
Thanx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If the app you installed is a normal apk file....and I mean if you installed it like normal....some of the app data will be in the data folder of your root ....that means you need to go back up to the root folder...then you will see a folder called data....go into that folder and you will see many folders....there are two important folders....one again is named data...the other is named app....but please if you dont know what you are you better not go in...as there maybe risks to the system....
/data/app
/data/data
these are the two pathways of the folders
good luck...hope this helps
SIII data folder
SIII application data folders are here
/sdcard/Android/data
and
/sdcard/Android/obb
obb is common used by large HD games like those from gameloft.
tigerporc said:
SIII application data folders are here
/sdcard/Android/data
and
/sdcard/Android/obb
obb is common used by large HD games like those from gameloft.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no. that's external data. app data is in /data/data

Lost data after update

Hello,
Today I updated one of my friends phone to Android 4.3 from Android 4.1.2. I rooted it and installed a custom ROM. The problem is, all images, songs, files, everything is gone. The strange thing is that storage is used by more than 4 GB (the same use before losing data). When I go to install ZIP from the recovery, there is a 0 folder inside SD Card, however, I cannot access it normally using a file manager, not even using ES file manager or root explorer.
Any ideas?
Note: Better say, file managers can only go to sdcard/0 which has empty folders. How to go to sdcard?
Read the sticky thread in general forum on changes to file structure between 4.1 and 4.3.

Categories

Resources