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I searched a little and didn't see anyone with a similar issue so I could be doing something wrong.
I used Odin to go back to stock JFD to prepare for another rom.
After Odin finished I booted into the stock recovery and deleted the cache and user data (in that order if it makes a difference).
Booted back up, plugged into my PC and mounted to copy files over and noticed that a lot of directories are still there (some live wallpaper apps, TitaniumBackup, ClockworkMod, as well as all media I copied).
I checked Re-Partition in Odin assuming that it would take care of that for me. I guess I was wrong.
Anyone shed any light on this?
Nahh your not the only one. It only clears out input data i.e passwords, email addys etc.. it doesn't get rid of the pics, files etc..
Come to think of it, I don't think factory reset does either.
I tried all of the reset options I could find in the stock android recovery (2e maybe, don't recall the letter) and all of them left directory structure (that was noticable) intact.
Maybe there's some other non-manual way to wipe this data that I can't find.
What if I simply deleted it all while the storage is mounted to my pc then put it in download mode and pushed a stock rom back to it? Seems sort of dangerous to me, though.
the only way to really wipe the internal sd, i.e. your files, is to format the sd, either from the phone, or from windows. as jmcghee1973 said, flashing only wipes the personal data from the rom, not the files on your sd.
So, I gave my sister a hand me down i777, it has CM10.2 installed on it... She constantly gets notified that 'Storage is low", this is referring to /data probably... On newer phones, ones that normally shipped with ICS and newer, they don't use two partitions for /data and /sdcard, because you might have tons of space available on one but not the other, and you won't be able to utilize it, rather, they ONLY have a /data partition, and user content instead goes in /data/media. This way, app installs go on the same technical patition as photos or videos... Anywho, this current setup is a real limitation on how many apps she can install, I suppose there's some apps2sd crap I could do, but she doesn't actually have an external SD, and there's TONS of space on the built in '/sdcard"
TL;DR: Can I switch the i777 to a '/data/media' partition layout instead of the old '/data, /sdcard/ layout?
Well, it LOOKS like I might be able to resize /data and /sdcard with a modified .pit file, which may be good enough for now, but I guess it begs the question why there isn't an official CM setup that includes a modified .pit that eliminated the /sdcard partition?
My partner's phone has suddenly decided of its own accord that it wants to reformat the internal memory, presumably due to some sort of unrecoverable data corruption. The message that came up informing us of that was something along the lines of "Phone memory is damaged. The data partition is damaged, you should restore your phone to factory settings. Doing so will delete all your data" and then a single button saying "Restore phone to factory settings". (I say something along the lines because that is a translation from the actual Spanish message that comes up)
So, she has a bunch of data that she would prefer not to lose (mostly backed up, but some apps not, and photos missing for last month or so of our daughter - usual story).
So I have been hunting around to see if it would be possible, and mostly what I have found isn't too optimistic. I did however find the following link that did seem somewhat promising:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1994705
So it is for the Nexus and the title refers to internal data, but then also refers to SD cards, but the process does seem to refer to internal data. I have a bunch of questions about the process in the context of an S3:
1. Anyone think this process is transferable to the S3? If so what is the equivalent data partition name? For the Nexus it appears to be /dev/block/mmcblk0p12. Would that be the same for the S3?
2. I am going to have to root this device first unfortunately (meaning I am going to have to write to the internal memory ahead of doing the RAW dump, obviously not ideal, but I see no way round it). Is the process described here (root only option):
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2046439
appropriate, or am I going to need to somehow find out what version my partner was on (not 100% sure but I think it was 4.1.2) and adjust accordingly?
3. Do I have to have a fully working version before I can install busybox, or is that something that can be put in place using CWM?
4. Likewise do I have to have a fully working version before I can get ADB working or can I get ADB to work with CWM? I have found a couple of threads that suggest ADB works natively with CWM and others that suggest not.
5. I know how to turn on USB debugging if I can get into setttings of a normal Android system, but how do I do that without a working version, can that be done via CWM?
I guess basically I want to know what would be the minimal set of steps that I can run through to get Busybox installed on the phone, (presumably rooted) and talking ADB to my PC. I say minimal set of steps becuase the less writing I do, the more data might be salvagable.
I am surprised that there isn't some bootstrap version that can't just pull off the existing data and allow you to manipulate it elsewhere (which is what the process I have put the link to seems to do) but it seems much more involved than just a bootstrap.
Be gentle with me - I am just a noob!
bobalucci said:
So, she has a bunch of data that she would prefer not to lose (mostly backed up, but some apps not, and photos missing for last month or so of our daughter - usual story).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if its only that I would do it a bit more simpler:
for app data: make a nandroid backup and after the reformat you can use nandroid manager to restore your apps and their data (if you simply restore the damaged data partition as a nandroid backup the problem could accur again). but maybe if the apps and data are damaged because of the damaged data partition they could maybe not be restored.
for photos etc. you can flash philz touch and then follow the steps in the main thread of philz touch on how to put the aroma.zip onto an external sd card (just search for aroma in the thread, you'll find it). aroma is like a file browser with root priviliges which can be executed through recovery. with that you can copy your photos onto the external sd card
btw. I am not sure if the standard factory reset wipes the internal sd cards data. if you only format your data partition photos etc. shouldn't be affected (for example through philz recovery you can just format data partition).
Data Recovery from sick galaxy s3 (installing custom recovery)
Thanks for that... that makes sense... any way I can get the custom recovery onto the phone without having already reformatted the data partition? All the methods I have seen for installing a custom recovery require normal access to the phone... and I don't have that at the moment - just to a screen that tells me that it will reformat the data partition - and I don't want to do that if I can avoid it - as it will modify the data I am trying to save.
Darkened_Sky said:
if its only that I would do it a bit more simpler:
for app data: make a nandroid backup and after the reformat you can use nandroid manager to restore your apps and their data (if you simply restore the damaged data partition as a nandroid backup the problem could accur again). but maybe if the apps and data are damaged because of the damaged data partition they could maybe not be restored.
for photos etc. you can flash philz touch and then follow the steps in the main thread of philz touch on how to put the aroma.zip onto an external sd card (just search for aroma in the thread, you'll find it). aroma is like a file browser with root priviliges which can be executed through recovery. with that you can copy your photos onto the external sd card
btw. I am not sure if the standard factory reset wipes the internal sd cards data. if you only format your data partition photos etc. shouldn't be affected (for example through philz recovery you can just format data partition).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Data recovery sticky ???
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2344125
When doing a factory reset some partitions are wiped from all their data.
How is the wipe done?
Are all flash blocks belonging to these partitions erased, or are only references cleared, meaning data could be recovered as long as not overwritten?
I'd say with some professional grade software it could be restored. Before Android 4.3 you'd have better luck as TRIM isn't built in. 4.3+ it is.
It's about a Samsung Galaxy S3 on Android 4.1.2 so Trim shouldn't be an issue unless Samsung implemented it themselves.
Though, after running two seemingly serious recovery programs (Wondershare and Remo Recover) in raw ("deep") inspection mode I don't find any of the lost 8GB of files. The recovery programs do find the files that were newly created during the factory reset so the deep inspection seems to work (I gave them a raw 11.5GB image of the data partition extracted using dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0p16 ... so they still had to work for it).
So it looks like this is not only about lost references but lost data is at least not making it out to the dd:ed image.
This could either be because all flash blocks were actually erased during the factory reset, or it could be because unreferenced block data is not making it out through the eMMC subsystem. It would be interesting to be able to read the raw contents / erase status of the MMC flash storage like can be done with nanddump for MTD flash storage.
Anybody knows of such a tool for MMC?
Or (returning to the original question), do the above findings in fact show that a full erase has been performed? (meaning data is irrevocably lost)
In the end I traced the source code to see what is actually done at factory reset. The short story is that the device boots into recovery mode and erases volumes /cache and /data. On my device with MMC storage this means recreating the ext4 filesystem with a wipe parameter set to true. The wipe parameter will cause an ioctl(BLKSECDISCARD) on the whole block region, which will erase all blocks. Thus data is irrevocably lost.
According to this discussion http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1644364&page=42 this behaviour was new from Android 4.0, so in earlier versions data may be recoverable.
Wouldn't that mean factory reset would take a lot longer?
mikewse said:
In the end I traced the source code to see what is actually done at factory reset. The short story is that the device boots into recovery mode and erases volumes /cache and /data. On my device with MMC storage this means recreating the ext4 filesystem with a wipe parameter set to true. The wipe parameter will cause an ioctl(BLKSECDISCARD) on the whole block region, which will erase all blocks. Thus data is irrevocably lost.
According to this discussion http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1644364&page=42 this behaviour was new from Android 4.0, so in earlier versions data may be recoverable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm know expert but if that was the case wouldn't a factory reset take a lot longer?
From what I read BLKSECDISCAED "Discard is voluntary. The device might ignore it silently. Also what you read back from the discarded blocks might not be zeroes — you might read back stale data or random data" from https://rwmj.wordpress.com/tag/kernel/
Doesn't that mean that if the factory reset was fast the the underlying block devices must have opted not to write all zeros so there would be stale data. Again I'm no expert.
Block erase is a native operation on flash memory. It doesn't have to iterate over bytes and "write zeroes" as you suggest and thus is very quick.
The rest of your suggestions are already answered in my previous post. If you have an Android 4.0+ device with internal MMC storage (most do), and your distribution is using the default Android MMC driver (most do), then the factory reset BLKSECDISCARD will cause a native block erase on the whole /cache and /data volumes. Check the Android source code yourself if you don't believe it.
TWRP, Pitchblack, OrangeFox, whatever recovery I try, I always end up with this Super partition. And I can't see how much size it is. It's just sitting 8192MB by default.
Aren't there any recoveries that show partitions normally like system, vendor separately, with actual sizes filled ?
MPK99 said:
TWRP, Pitchblack, OrangeFox, whatever recovery I try, I always end up with this Super partition. And I can't see how much size it is. It's just sitting 8192MB by default.
Aren't there any recoveries that show partitions normally like system, vendor separately, with actual sizes filled ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's because there are no dedicated partitions for system, vendor, and product. They are all located inside one partition called "super". Think of it as one big partition that houses other smaller partitions. The size of the individual partitions is variable hence you'll only be able to see the size of the super partition.
The size of the super partition is fixed and cannot be resized after a rom is installed. The super partition was created to eliminate the need for vendors to allocate specific sizes for sub partitions. Before the super partition, each partition had to be allocated a specific size and any free memory left after writing data to it could not be used when other partitions required more space. This free space was therefore wasted.
In the super partition, the sub partitions can be the exact size of the files contained within them. Any free space is left inside the super partition and can therefore be used by other sub partitions if they need it.
Unfortunately, the biggest setback for developers is that they cannot modify the contents of sub partitions once they're made read only (usually on the first boot after installing a new rom). People who try to modify these partitions often get into boot loops forcing them to reinstall the stock rom.
twistyplain said:
That's because there are no dedicated partitions for system, vendor, and product. They are all located inside one partition called "super". Think of it as one big partition that houses other smaller partitions. The size of the individual partitions is variable hence you'll only be able to see the size of the super partition.
The size of the super partition is fixed and cannot be resized after a rom is installed. The super partition was created to eliminate the need for vendors to allocate specific sizes for sub partitions. Before the super partition, each partition had to be allocated a specific size and any free memory left after writing data to it could not be used when other partitions required more space. This free space was therefore wasted.
In the super partition, the sub partitions can be the exact size of the files contained within them. Any free space is left inside the super partition and can therefore be used by other sub partitions if they need it.
Unfortunately, the biggest setback for developers is that they cannot modify the contents of sub partitions once they're made read only (usually on the first boot after installing a new rom). People who try to modify these partitions often get into boot loops forcing them to reinstall the stock rom.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Understood. But can we access /system & /vendor folders & modify files in it through root explorer.
So you're saying there's no way to remove system bloatware & unwanted apps ?
twistyplain said:
That's because there are no dedicated partitions for system, vendor, and product. They are all located inside one partition called "super". Think of it as one big partition that houses other smaller partitions. The size of the individual partitions is variable hence you'll only be able to see the size of the super partition.
The size of the super partition is fixed and cannot be resized after a rom is installed. The super partition was created to eliminate the need for vendors to allocate specific sizes for sub partitions. Before the super partition, each partition had to be allocated a specific size and any free memory left after writing data to it could not be used when other partitions required more space. This free space was therefore wasted.
In the super partition, the sub partitions can be the exact size of the files contained within them. Any free space is left inside the super partition and can therefore be used by other sub partitions if they need it.
Unfortunately, the biggest setback for developers is that they cannot modify the contents of sub partitions once they're made read only (usually on the first boot after installing a new rom). People who try to modify these partitions often get into boot loops forcing them to reinstall the stock rom.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thx for explanation bro. Currently I have this issue. Can you take a look into this thread below & answer there ?
Unable to decrypt FBE device
Plz anybody help this out... I unlocked bootloader, then immediately flashed Pitchblack recovery, then booted into recovery. Initially console shows decrypted FBE device with default password. But Encryption status : Encryped So I went into wipe...
forum.xda-developers.com
MPK99 said:
Understood. But can we access /system & /vendor folders & modify files in it through root explorer.
So you're saying there's no way to remove system bloatware & unwanted apps ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In some custom miui roms like miui eu it is possible without causing a bootloop. Sometimes a bootloop will occur because of the root explorer you use. However, of you're still on stock rom you'll very likely end up in a bootloop. AOSP roms don't have this weaknesses but they're not as stable as miui.
I recommend installing a debloated rom like MiuiMix or miui eu. Then get help from the support forums to find out how to get into system without killing the rom.
Everytime I tried to flash a ROM without wiping system (bc I can't) I got error 7. So I had to do a format data and I lost all of my stuff. Is there any way of wiping system so I don't have to do a format data?
Piusak said:
Everytime I tried to flash a ROM without wiping system (bc I can't) I got error 7. So I had to do a format data and I lost all of my stuff. Is there any way of wiping system so I don't have to do a format data?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Once after booting up any rom, check whether the device is encrypted or not. (Security > Encryption)
If it is, then offcourse, in recovery you had to wipe everything if you wanna flash a new rom. This device has dynamic partition update, that merges all OS partitions (system, vendor, product) & encrypts data partition if it's decrypted.
Ofcourse you also can't able to modify partitions while encrypted, caz you'll end up into errors.