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.
Hi all.
I have backed up my razr yesterday because today i was making a guide in one of my local forums.
i backed it up with Bootmenu (for ICS) that has been released here in the development section,but i cuted it while it was backing up the webtop partition because i needed the phone with me on the go.
now it fails to restore it manually because of this stupid MD5 checksum...
there is any way to restore that backup by myself?
maybe accessing to the phones root folder?
It would really help me if someone knows the answer.
Thanks in advance
I guess your phone run out of space while performing backup.
Which partition you want to restore?? (except webtop.. it's broken)
It will be easy for me to help you if you can list down all files (*.tar) inside the backup folder you make yesterday
Moved To Q&A
Please post in the correct section
whirleyes said:
I guess your phone run out of space while performing backup.
Which partition you want to restore?? (except webtop.. it's broken)
It will be easy for me to help you if you can list down all files (*.tar) inside the backup folder you make yesterday
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it backed up everything except this webtop partition.
any way i recovered everything with an app i don't remember its name,but its not titanium backup.
its better than mess with everything and its easy.
Hi guys,
I know there are several threads on this topic, but no solution worked for me.
Yesterday I made a nandroid backup and everything went fine. Than I installed MiniCMSandwich, which works very great. But then I wanted to restore my old backup and got a md5 mismatch.
I tried this and this method, but they didn't work.
In my backup folder are only these files:
data.yassf2.img
system.yassf2.img
.android_secure.vfat.tar
There is no nandroid.md5 or any other file
What have I got to do to fix my nandroid backup?
By the way, I didn't rename it!
Please help
Michi
Ok Terminal Emulator method worked after trying a bit, but now I've got another problem! I created a new thread for that
You could have made new backup and replace the data and system stuff...? Or it might not work?
OK could you explain that pls? What exactley have I got to do.
I tried to take system and cache out of another backup before and put it in the (bricked) backup folder instead of the system and cache of bricked up. Then I tried the terminal method again, but theres md5 mismatch!
What have I got to do?
But... if you have an older backup, couldn't you just restore that one? Just saying.......
Feanor88 said:
But... if you have an older backup, couldn't you just restore that one? Just saying.......
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes I restored it and it works fine, but that was a backup immediatly after the ics update and all apps installed. There are no settings from apps, etc. Can I restore Data and Apps out of my old Backup? Is there an App?
What I can say for sure is that you cannot "mix" files from different nandroid, and that's because of the md5 checksum itself. If you mix the files, you'll always get an error.
I'm sorry, but I don't know if there's a way to "extrapolate" your apps and settings from another nandroid. Think you'll have to reinstall all your apps
Titanium Backup Pro can extract apps with data from Nandroid backup.
Someguyfromhell said:
Titanium Backup Pro can extract apps with data from Nandroid backup.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I just found out... while updating TB I was reading the notes, and there it was, written in front of my eyes!
Is there some tutorial to do a full NV backup on our phones? Want to make a full NV backup just in case I may hit the IMEI bug.
No because it doesn't seem to be a problem with this phone. However, just to be safe, I used an app called zipme from the play store to make a flashable zip containing the efs folder. I then proceeded to back it up to my dropbox. Just in case
persom55 said:
No because it doesn't seem to be a problem with this phone. However, just to be safe, I used an app called zipme from the play store to make a flashable zip containing the efs folder. I then proceeded to back it up to my dropbox. Just in case
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Click to collapse
yea, I made a EFS backup through TWRP but just want to be super safe with a Full NV backup. Got the IMEI "0" bug on the S3 and restoring the IMEI wasn't enough to fix it. I had to do a full nv restore to fix the phone.
mugenfa5 said:
yea, I made a EFS backup through TWRP but just want to be super safe with a Full NV backup. Got the IMEI "0" bug on the S3 and restoring the IMEI wasn't enough to fix it. I had to do a full nv restore to fix the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems like something to ask the synergy team I guess, since they figured it out on the s3
Hey guys,
yesterday i flashed a new rom. everything worked as usual and i started installing my backups etc.
after a while i noticed that i didnt have any signal apart from my wifi. after some investigation i saw that my IMEI was gone.
I had heard of this before so i went to a journey to google to try and solve my problem.
The thing is i didnt perform a backup of my efs folder manually or using tools like HC-ktool.
BUT on my external sdcard are files called
efsdev-mmcblk0p1,img
efs_03Mar2013-2255.tar.gz
which i assume are backups which where made by custom kernels.
Now my problem is that i dont know how to restore these backups, as every tool i tried didnt identify the files mentioned above.
How can i restore those files manually? Or which tool do i need to use?
If all that doesnt work, is my phone bricked now or is there any other option?
Thanks in advance
Jens
Maybe the recovery that came with the kernel has an option to restore efs partition.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium
Yep. Probably Siyah/similar doing an auto backup. Lucky for you; hopefully this is a lesson learned - backup your EFS immediately after rooting/flashing a custom rom & keep a copy somewhere safe away from the phone as well . Try restoring with kTool (I prefer over EFS Pro for its simplicity) from Google Play; there's a thread devoted to it on here that's a great resource if you have problems (search).
Edit - kTool should be able to restore from either the img or the tar.gz, might want to read the kTool thread to workout what caused the restore not to work if you did try to restore with it/it didn't work (you were a bit vague about what you did/didn't do & the actual problems you had with the restore).
Extra edit - Also, the IMEI disappearing can be a temporary thing; some people have got it back simply by going back to stock.
So there's a couple of things to keep you busy for a while.
Restoring the backup via ktools for example didnt work for some reason i dont understand.
I tried flashing a stock rom though and suddenly the IMEI was back.
I dont understand it, but the thing is it works not =)
Thanks for your help.
First thing i am doing now is creating efs backups and save them _everywhere_
Really happy that i dodged that bullet.
Thank you thank you thank you =))
Yeah that's weird you couldn't restore with kTool. Oh well, the important thing is going back to stock worked & you have your IMEI back. I'd also love to know exactly what causes IMEI's to sometimes go away seemingly randomly like that when people flash custom roms. I guess we'll never know.
You're welcome