[Q] Data Recovery from sick galaxy s3 - Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

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!

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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).

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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

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Data recovery sticky ???
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2344125