I plan to try my hand at installing some custom roms in the near future to gain some more experience of my rooted device and to see what the other roms have to offer. Before I do I want to make a complete back up and keep this on my computer hard drive so that I can go back to my stock unrooted rom as it is now.
I have TWRP installed and can boot into the recovery menu
The back up option comes with a number of items already selected but some are not - what it is showing is:
+System (1148 MB)
+Data (2691 MB)
+Boot (8 MB)
NS Recovery (8 MB)
NS Cache (17 MB)
NS efs (8 MB)
(settings)
+Enable Compression
+Skip MD5 created during back up
it is also set to back up to external SD rather than internal storage
Do I need to select any of the unselected items for a full back up?
Do I need to change any of the selected settings (+ = pre-selected NS= not selected)
This should I believe give me a full back up to restore my phone to its complete original, but rooted, state!
From what I have read I then need to do another data back up to recover my data and apps to a newly installed custom rom - this seems logical to me as I wouldn't want to try and write system files from the stock rom over the system files of my new custom rom
I have read the forums, and several others, so what I am trying to do is to clarify my understanding of them is correct- I know that installing a custom rom is bread and butter to most of you but for me it is the most scary thing I have tried (at least it will be the first time.
Initially all I want to do is install several different roms one at a time to see what they do and what advantages / disadvantages they have for me - it is likely I will use each one for a couple of days (weekends) and then restore the stock rooted rom for use during the week when I need my phone to be reliable. Is this a good (and realatively safe) plan?
Thanks guys
First backup just your efs partition, copy the backup to your PC, dropbox, attic and anywhere else you can find - this is the most important step of all before flashing anything on your phone. Don't enable compression or skip the MD5 creation.
The standard Nandroid backup will return your phone to it's current state so yes, that part of your plan will work.
Don't restore data, or anything else, to your new ROM via recovery- you'll just break it unless it's exactly the same build version e.g. 4.1.2 and even then it's not recommended. You can backup and restore apps and their data safely using titanium, but no system apps or settings etc.
Do a full wipe of system, data, cache and dalvic between ROMs and you shouldn't have problems, also before restoring the earlier Nandroid backup.
Finally, have the correct modem and RIL for your country in a CWM flashable form on your external SD card - many ROMs contain the wrong modem and will result in no connection when you first boot then.
Related
How much wiping do you need to do when you are upgrading to a new ROM release? I don't really want to have to go through all of the setup every time a ROM is updated. What does every generally do?
I'm running the G-Harmony ROM.
Use Titanium backup or the like to take a backup of everything if you are upgrading from one version of the rom to a new version. At first I wasn't backing up and spent hours getting everything back to the way it was. Now, in a matter of minutes I'm back running the same way I was before, but on a newer ROM.
Take the backup -> copy the backup folder to your micro sd card or computer -> follow the steps to install the ROM (do what is recommended such as the user data, dalvik, cache) -> once the rom is up and running, copy the backup folder back to your tablet -> download titanium backup, it will see the folder you copied over containing your backup-> restore data, apps, user settings from titanium backup.
I'm not sure how it works if going from ROM to ROM, probably want to search on it.
Cool, that's pretty much what I did. Unfortunately, I hadn't copied off the TitaniumBackup folder, and the new ROM version switched the emmc and SDCard mount locations, so I had to switch them back to be able to get at my backups. I didn't have an external micro SDCard reader with me, so I couldn't easily copy the folder from the internal card to the external. Ah, well. Going through the Titanium restores right now. I really should buy this software to prevent having to approve every restore
chadness,
One of the main things I try to help people here with is boot loops and I spend a
lot of time trying to figure out the cause so we can prevent it.
IT IS MY OPINION that one of the things causing the boot loops and making
people have to re-flash and re-partition -- is the stuff leftover in flash after
flash playing with their tablets.
I'm not sure the Android file system is all that good. I don't believe in tablet formats
because it doesn't work like a hard disk. You can delete a file and go back later and
the file is still there. You can nvflash the tablet and stuff is still let there.
When stuff gets left over it can conflict with the new stuff and BAM -- boot loops.
All of this is to say -- I SAY before every ROM burn you should nvflash to a solid
version -- bekit 1105 (2538) or 3588 -- the repartition to 2048 and 0, Fix Permissions,
Wipe Dalvik Cache, Wipe Cache and Wipe/Reset Factory Data.
I can't prove it yet -- but I bet if people would do that most of the boot loops would stop -- and probably some of the other little stuff too.
This is just my opinion -- but then I have only nvflashed either of my G-Tablets one time in five months now (involuntarily -- because of problems.)
Think about it.
Rev
Interesting! I've been flashing different ROMs this week and haven't run in to any problems as long as I've formatted system and data.
butchconner said:
. . .
All of this is to say -- I SAY before every ROM burn you should nvflash to a solid version -- bekit 1105 (2538) or 3588 -- then repartition to 2048 and 0, Fix Permissions, Wipe Dalvik Cache, Wipe Cache and Wipe/Reset Factory Data.
. . . . Rev
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Rev, what is your opinion about using 'Calkukin's_Format_All.zip & wiping Dalvik Cache' vs all the above steps ?
Hello, I always find the people on this corner of xda very helpful. As usual, I think I know what I'm doing, but I'd like to check that I am proceeding in the right direction.
I've been using Mik's Cyanogen ROMs on my Optimus One. That's going well. But I need to SIM unlock my phone and I need to go back to a stock ROM to input the codes (please let me know if this is incorrect).
Before installing Mik's ROM, I performed a Nand backup. I have boot, cache, data, recovery and system img files. I think I can flash these through recovery and I should be back to stock.
Do I lose my apps and settings by doing this? Do I need to clear any caches?
What about returning to Cyanogen after I unlock my phone... Do I have to root my phone again or will I still be able to flash using recovery?
Using Clockwork, I just backed up my current ROM. I assume I will be able to restore from this later.
Is there anything else I should be aware of?
Thanks for answering my questions / clearing up my confusion.
Hello, I always find the people on this corner of xda very helpful. As usual, I think I know what I'm doing, but I'd like to check that I am proceeding in the right direction.
I've been using Mik's Cyanogen ROMs on my Optimus One. That's going well. But I need to SIM unlock my phone and I need to go back to a stock ROM to input the codes (please let me know if this is incorrect).
this is correct
Before installing Mik's ROM, I performed a Nand backup. I have boot, cache, data, recovery and system img files. I think I can flash these through recovery and I should be back to stock.
Do I lose my apps and settings by doing this? Do I need to clear any caches?
to revert back to stock, you must wipe data/factory reset, cache, and dalvik cache. you will lose your settings. as for your apps, you can back them up with titanium backup and restore them after you have restored your backup.
What about returning to Cyanogen after I unlock my phone... Do I have to root my phone again or will I still be able to flash using recovery?
when you restore your backup of the stock rom, you will still have root. i dont think unlocking your phone will cause you to lose root. your root access and custom recovery will still be intact
Using Clockwork, I just backed up my current ROM. I assume I will be able to restore from this later.
yes this is true
Is there anything else I should be aware of?
just to be on the safe side, please list the steps you are going to follow
Thanks for answering my questions / clearing up my confusion.
Thanks for the quick answer...
I on my sd card, I have a /clockwork directory with two subdirs. One is my original backup that I made before first installing Cyanogen. The other is the one I just made. Both contain boot, cache, data, recovery and system img files. The difference is that with my new backup the image files have an extra yaffs2 suffix: cache.img (stock) but cache.yaffs2.img (Cyanogen). Any problem here?
1. boot into recovery
2. restore stock from my sdcard using nandroid and wipe caches as you indicated
3. reboot, enter unlock code
4. reboot into recovery
5. restore current ROM from my sdcard using nandroid and again wipe the same caches
6. reinstall / restore apps (I'm not using Titanium, instead I backed up the list of installed apps)
Will I need to find and reinstall the GoogleApps (Market, etc) or will they come with the backup of my current ROM?
Pretty simple really. This make sense?
Thanks for the quick answer...
I on my sd card, I have a /clockwork directory with two subdirs. One is my original backup that I made before first installing Cyanogen. The other is the one I just made. Both contain boot, cache, data, recovery and system img files. The difference is that with my new backup the image files have an extra yaffs2 suffix: cache.img (stock) but cache.yaffs2.img (Cyanogen). Any problem here?
there might be a problem. what clockworkmod version did you use to make the backup of the stock rom? if i remember correctly, using cwm 3.x.x.x backs up a certain way (and also does not have the yaffs2 suffix) and using cwm 5.x.x.x backs up a different way (with the yaffs2 suffix) so backups may not be "inter"compatible (more info on that here). however, you can just flash back cwm 3.x.x.x right now (you can do it using rom manager), restore your stock rom backup, do the following steps, flash back cwm 5.x.x.x, then restore your backup
1. boot into recovery
2. restore stock from my sdcard using nandroid and wipe caches as you indicated (i recommend wipe first then restore)
3. reboot, enter unlock code
4. reboot into recovery
5. restore current ROM from my sdcard using nandroid and again wipe the same caches
(same here again, wipe first then restore)
6. reinstall / restore apps (I'm not using Titanium, instead I backed up the list of installed apps)
Will I need to find and reinstall the GoogleApps (Market, etc) or will they come with the backup of my current ROM?
i think you will have to flash gapps again
Pretty simple really. This make sense?
looks good (how sure am i? id say 80-90%. it definitely makes sense, but i have never done this before)
Good good. It's getting late so I'll tackle this tomorrow. Thanks for the detailed help... I'm glad I asked before going at it.
sweetnsour said:
looks good (how sure am i? id say 80-90%. it definitely makes sense, but i have never done this before)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I followed your instructions (I downgraded Clockwork before starting) and the 10-20% chance of you being wrong came true... but in a good way
Restoring from the backup brings everything back: apps, settings, contacts, SMSs etc. So it was actually even easier than you suggested since I didn't have to use my backups at all.
Thanks again for the tips!
bosth said:
I followed your instructions (I downgraded Clockwork before starting) and the 10-20% chance of you being wrong came true... but in a good way
Restoring from the backup brings everything back: apps, settings, contacts, SMSs etc. So it was actually even easier than you suggested since I didn't have to use my backups at all.
Thanks again for the tips!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
glad it worked out for you i am assuming your phone is now unlocked right?
sweetnsour said:
glad it worked out for you i am assuming your phone is now unlocked right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes... when I was back in stock I could access the unlock menu by entering 2945*#500# on my keypad. The SIM unlock code that I have worked fine. I haven't actually tested with another SIM card but the phone claimed to have been unlocked, so I should be good to go.
Just a little FYI I was able to do a full nand back up with eclipse 2.0.2 and do a full nand restore on my friends phone, thus upgrading him from old version of rom to the newest. The reason we tried that was that he wanted to have my rom with all the settings, and none of the head ache, and pain of going through all the steps involved in setting up the phone.
Fast & Easy way to clone a phone over if you have multiples.... in my case I have 5 that I have that are all DX2 based
Steps:
1. Root + Recovery Install (If you don't have that already)
2. Do a full Nand back up of your phone. Make sure you save it under external sdcard
3. Swap the sd cards out between the two phones.
4. Use the Recovery on the other phone to flash the image.
5. Clear the data... and cache after you have flashed the rom. (If you don't want them to keep your settings)
6. If you want them to keep your widgets and settings and programs... in my case this was the reason why we did this in the first place. All the person would have to do is delete the /data/accounts.db to start the registration for the default email address. Also you would have to make sure that you *228 option 1 to enable his Verizon settings.
Yep, I have a 2nd init eclipse 2.0.2 with scripts added available.
Hi,
I'm sorry if I'm asking something that has been asked a thousand times before, but I can't seem to find a satisfying answer..
At this moment my S3 is running on standard Samsung firmware that I have rooted with Samsung GS3 ToolKit v3.0.
I think I read somewhere that it is advisable to make a backup of some certain parts of your phone, copy the ROM to your phone (I want to install CM9) and reboot your phone with the button combination (home, vol up, pwr) to get it in CWM mode(?).. Then you have to erase something, I think.. and choose the .zip that you've copied to the phone.
Now the next thing that I can't quite figure out, what will happen to all my settings? Like the Wi-Fi networks from friends that I have saved and conversations in Whatsapp.. Will I lose all of that? Or is there a way to save that (with Titanium Backup? although I'm not quite sure what to choose there..)
Can someone tell me if I'm somewhat in the right direction? Or maybe tell me what forum post I should take a look at to get all of this figured out..
Thanks!!
rioohhh said:
Hi,
I'm sorry if I'm asking something that has been asked a thousand times before, but I can't seem to find a satisfying answer..
At this moment my S3 is running on standard Samsung firmware that I have rooted with Samsung GS3 ToolKit v3.0.
I think I read somewhere that it is advisable to make a backup of some certain parts of your phone, copy the ROM to your phone (I want to install CM9) and reboot your phone with the button combination (home, vol up, pwr) to get it in CWM mode(?).. Then you have to erase something, I think.. and choose the .zip that you've copied to the phone.
Now the next thing that I can't quite figure out, what will happen to all my settings? Like the Wi-Fi networks from friends that I have saved and conversations in Whatsapp.. Will I lose all of that? Or is there a way to save that (with Titanium Backup? although I'm not quite sure what to choose there..)
Can someone tell me if I'm somewhat in the right direction? Or maybe tell me what forum post I should take a look at to get all of this figured out..
Thanks!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have an International S3 and NOT a US model just:
- Download and install the latest CF Root by Chainfire with Odin v3 3.0.4 (you now have root + busybox + cwm)
- Make a nandroid backup in cwm
- Download the latest CM9 nightly + gapps
- Copy them to you internal memory card
- Go into recovery and wipe cache/dalvik cache, data/factory reset and format system in mounts and storage
- Flash the nightly and straight after that gapps
- Fix permissions and then Reboot.
You can generally backup and restore any apps you installed via Titanium. No sytsem apps though, they are known to have issues.
Then use "sms backup+" to safely store your Sms and call log on Gmail.
Make sure you ticked Sync settings for Contacs in your Google account and also ticked to backup your phone data to Google (that will backup your wifi passwords too)
Use an app to backup efs or do it manually through Shell.
Now, download Cm9 + Gapps and optionally eg Siyahkernel, put them in an easily accessible folder on your storage (i call it Ainstall since it will be in the top of the directory listing)
If you're on an older baseband (radio), get DXLF3 modem too.
Reboot in CWM and install cm9 - (siyah) - gapps in that order.
Without leaving recovery, factory-reset your phone. Reboot and enjoy.
Restore your data with the same apps you used for backup (obviously). Again, do not attempt to restore system apps.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
After a disastrous experience trying to root my phone through Magisk and their "modified" boot.img, I lost everything on my phone. Worse even, TWRP was unable to restore my system from my TWRP nandroid backup.
But after days of investigating solutions, trying tirelessly, I finally, FINALLY was able to restore my nandroid into my phone.
It should have been straight forward, that's the purpose of a nandroid, right? But it wasn't, because my TWRP backup (nandroid) was some updates behind my current phone OS, and apparently that was enough, because phone brands and google can't stop messing with low level android "for our safety and privacy" (google taking care of our privacy, LOL!), and as such they keep changing stuff about partitions, boots, protections, all this new crap about A/B slots, 'vendor' and 'vbmeta' .img files, and whatnot. There's even a file called 'uefi_sec.mbn' in the ROMs now.
When I was trying to restore from my nandroid backup, half of my partitions were giving me errors at restoring, and /data was giving me the infamous "createTarFork() process ended with ERROR=255". Rebooting only gave me either bootloops, or a reboot only to the bootloader.
Something in the partitions had irreversibly changed with the new updates, and not even a previous nandroid was able to deal with it and put it all back as it was before. All my stuff *right there* in that backup, ready to surface again in a supposedly seamless process, and I was unable to reach it. So close and yet so far away. It was infuriating.
So I decided to trace back everything. What I tried *and worked* after many attempts, was this:
(NOTE: this will recover virtually everything you had in your system when you made the nandroid, but it could wipe your internal storage, depending on your ahead decisions)
— Make sure you have ADB and Fastboot tools installed on your desktop computer, and also the same ROM you had when you made the nandroid or another one close enough (more details ahead), and the same TWRP version from which you created the nandroid. — Have an SD card and copy your nandroid backup there (the whole "TWRP" folder in your storage root), if it isn't there already. — Get a ROM closer in version/date to the one you had when you created the nandroid backup. If it's the same even better, no matter if it's outdated, you want it outdated, since it matches your also outdated nandroid. E.g, if your phone was on MIUI 13 and you made your nandroid when you had MIUI 12.0.2, then get the 12.0.2 ROM or another close enough. Also match the other ROM specifications you have in your nandroid backup (Global/India(Indonesia/China/Russia). And get the FASTBOOT ROM version instead of the recovery version, and save it to your desktop computer. — Now decompress the gzip file of that ROM: you'll get a .tar file, decompress this one either, until you get a folder with files inside and a 'images' folder. Winrar or 7Zip will decompress those easily. To avoid long pathnames, put this folder in the root of your hard drive. — Boot your phone into bootloader/fastboot, connect it to your PC/MAC, and install that ROM via fastboot, with the script files included in the rom folder flash_all.bat (flash_all.sh for linux or Mac). Mind you this script will also wipe your internal storage, so make sure you have previously backed your stuff from there (search the internet on how to pull/save files from internal storage through adb pull, or even easier, put a SD card and save your stuff to it, assuming your internal storage isn't reading 0bytes as mine was...)NOTE: If you really want to preserve your internal storage you can instead run the script flash_all_except_data_storage.bat/(.sh), but I don't know if it will be as effective. — Once the rom is flashed through fastboot, reboot the phone and config the device with the initial settings screen (I don't know if this step is really necessary, but it worked with me), until you can see app icons on the home screen. — Now reboot the phone into bootloader mode (fastboot), connect it to the PC, and boot TWRP WITHOUT flashing, you'll just boot it by running TWRP into the ram disk of the phone. The recovery of the now installed ROM needs to be untouched, or you'll have bootloops. To boot TWRP without flashing it, you enter this on the command line: fastboot boot twrp.img (considering twrp.img is the name of your TWRP file, and it's present in your current path)NOTE: It may be important to work with a twrp version similar in version to the one you used when creating the nandroid backup, you never know... — Now with TWRP running from the phone's RAM, use your PIN to unencrypt the phone storage if it is asked. — Using the Mount button, mount every partition you see except OTG_USB. I don't know if this step is necesssary, but it worked with me.
— Do a normal wipe to the phone (no need to go to the advanced wipe). Again, I don't know if it's necessary, but it doesn't hurt. But it's almost certain this will wipe your internal storage, so you decide. — Now finally go to the restore button of TWRP, select your external SDcard as the storage where your backup is, select the backup from the folder browser, and choose to restore ALL the partitions from your nandroid backup (when I created my nandroid backup, I backuped every partition except maybe dalvik cache)
Now you wait, drink a glass of wine, go outside, it may take a while restoring everything, specially if you created your nandroid with compression enabled. Hopefully this won't give any errors, or at least no significant ones. Once it's done, reboot, wait a little longer since it may take longer to reboot this one time. When that is also done, hopefully you have your phone the way you had it when you created the nandroid backup, with your system, preferences, apps AND all their data, home app folders, chats, SMS messages, etc.
You may find some small stuff slightly off, like having the day theme while you're sure your phone always had the night theme, the clock now has a different setting, no fingertprints installed, maybe this is stuff inherited from the rom you flashed that remained, but all of this is easily configurable to what you want.
And that's it!
Now, after all this, you want to go to your appstore app and update all your apps -- they are the very same apps stored in the nandroid, they may be outdated, my nandroid was 6 months old -- and also update your OS through OTA or other means, since your rom is also outdated.
Optionally, after all this is done, you may want to make another nandroid backup: reboot into bootloader, connect the phone to the PC, again reboot to TWRP without installing it since it's better if your original recovery remains untouch (do fastboot boot twrp.img ), -- this time you can use an updated TWRP version -- select the storage you want to save the nandroid backup to (either internal storage or the SD card), and select all your phone partitions for backup except internal storage, SD card, and cache. Reboot your phone to system, and save your new nandroid somewhere safe in your PC's hard drive. If you encrypted your nandroid with a password, save that too, otherwise if a time of need arrives, you'll have nothing.
And very important, DON'T TRY TO ROOT IT with Magisk with that altered boot.img process they have, which supposedly "doesn't touch your partitions". You'll only get tears with that, since not even trying to flash your original boot.img will get your system back. Maybe they'll correct this in the near future, but for now avoid it like the plague. They also have an older way of installing root through TWRP and a zip file, I don't know if this one still works. But AVOID the other one.
This process helped me immensely, I hope it also helps someone with the same problem I had.