[Q] Completely removing encryption on SD? - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

So when I joined my phone to the corporate network, it insisted on (amongst other things), encrypting the SD card. After some annoyance with that, pins etc, I decided to revert back. I successfully removed the accounts etc and unchecked the encrypted SD card option.
However, when I did so, it said something about only applying going forward and I still keep getting asked for the pin to decrypt the SD card. So it seems that stuff is still decrypted on there? I have done some searching but have had little luck finding any definitive answers, most seem to be related to problems with people losing whatever key to decrypt items which is obviously not the case here since once I enter the pin, I can access items with no problem
So what's the deal? Do I have to save everything off and reformat the SD card to get back to normal? Seems kind-of wonky to me but that's Android, I guess.
Oh, I have tried reencrypting and unencrypting the SD card again and the Android version is 4.1.2 if that's any help.

[Solved]
Not sure how to mark this solved. Maybe a mod can do it.
So I ran into some issues with the phone and managed to back up my data, completely reformatted the card and copied all the files back to the SD card.
*Still* I would get the "encryption password" popup. Nothing was encrypted, I could view all the files if I used a card reader. Yet when I plugged it back in, I either had to enter the string or couldn't see the files at all (even though they were clearly unencrypted).
The culprit?
/.sds.bin
I deleted that and everything is fine again. I guess it hung around when I disabled the encryption and was causing my misery. I hope this can help someone else who might be having the same problem
Funnily enough, now that I know what I am looking for, I found the exact solution to my problem here.
https://community.verizonwireless.com/thread/777978?start=0&tstart=0
In fact, there is a hidden and very magic file sitting on the card named ".sds.bin" which is the flag to Android that the data on the card (may) be encrypted. If you remove this file (easiest on Linux or OSX) and then put the card back into your phone, you will be back in business. It seems as if someone at the Google forgot to remove this file when I told it to decrypt my phone earlier this year.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh well, que sera sera.

Related

Peculiar DAMAGED SD CARD problem.

I've read upon the DAMAGED SD CARD problem with android, but most of the phone becomes virtually unusable, mine says it's damaged but market works, and I can install apps to phone memory, even with APPS2SD enabled. If I try and copy my files to the computer, it stops halfway with 'perimeter incorrect', glad I did a backup like 1 week ago. Funny thing is, in recovery the SD card is fine, I can make backups, I even tried to repair SD Ext Partition, no luck.
Its probably Android thinking it's damaged without it really being so. Totally confused since I warning/error is on the ongoing notification. Also when I go into the SD card & phone storage shows information as unavailable and SD information widgets can't read it either. I don't mind formatting and copying everything over, but it kinda works, but android thinks it's corrupted or something. Very weird. Also I did nothing out of the ordinary, but with computers or machines random errors can occur. I had the partition in place for a 3 weeks now, installed MCR 3.1 couple of weeks ago and using it pretty much like this, but since the WIFI hanged (kept saying it's turning off but being stuck) I rebooted and the message came up.
Is it possible to fix it how it is? Or shall I just re-format and copy everything again. I'm just worried it may happen again.

(Q) help with sd card problem please!

it says my sd card is blank and it doesnt seem like its mounting.... i took it out and formatted it to fat32 and its still saying blank sd card i did this a bunch of times..
If you formatted it, it is blank. What's the problem?
What does it say in settings/SD & phone storage? Have you tried formatting it there?
tried both put it in comp formatted it put it in phone formatted in there too says mount sd card like its not reading it
and it also said the blank thing when i had stuff on my sd card
so i guess im effed cuase i cant put anything on my sd card phone wont read it so i cant get back to stock...
Try formatting it on your computer or phone, put it back into your comp and put some files on it
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk
i did and i even tried a diff sd card wont read that either
I'm new to this so someone please correct me if I'm wrong but you can download the stock Rom from your phone and use Rom manager to go to stock,there is 2.5g of space on phone
my problem and worry is i wanna get unrooted so i can call and this will prob be covered under warranty and i wont have to pay the rediculous deductable on insurance if i have to go another root...
and also you cant use rom manager unless sd card is mounted i tried and mine doesnt mount
So you have tried multiple SD cards in your phone and none of them work?
yes i have tried a couple and the thing pops up in notification bar blank sd card and in sd and phone storage it says mount it but doesnt work
Well if you have tried more than one, formatted and all, and it still doesn't work I would say that your card slot has obviously stopped working. There is no way to unroot without access to the SD card AFAIK.
well that just sucks guess im gonna have to break this thing to make an insurance claim there goes 90 bucks downt he effn drain
Before you take your phone back to Verizon, try connecting to the phone with adb. If you can cd to the sd card and ls the contents, you can push the RUU to the card and return to stock. I am currently trying to resolve the same problem where the SD card fails to mount on PC and suspect it might be related to root. I might end up returning it to stock to test my hypothesis if I can't find a solution in a few minutes; I'll post back with my results.
Okay, this may or may not be relevant to the original poster, but after more investigation, it appears that this issue might be related to some corruption of system files related to handshaking with Windows in Drive mode that occurred since rooting the device. Restoring the rooted system image resolved the problem. The issue was unrelated to kernels, though, since flashing the default kernel did not improve anything.
If you can access the SD card with ADB, your best bet is to restore your rooted stock backup or re-flash the stock image to see if that corrects your issues prior to returning your phone.
DigiK said:
Before you take your phone back to Verizon, try connecting to the phone with adb. If you can cd to the sd card and ls the contents, you can push the RUU to the card and return to stock. I am currently trying to resolve the same problem where the SD card fails to mount on PC and suspect it might be related to root. I might end up returning it to stock to test my hypothesis if I can't find a solution in a few minutes; I'll post back with my results.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If the phone can't read the SD card it doesn't matter what he can get on it, the phone has to be able to read the sd card to flash anything.
If you have the proper images, they can be flashed using fastboot, which doesn't require an SD card.

[Q] Phone storage read only

I noticed that under settings > SD card & storage that my Phone storage shows being read only.
I was wondering what may be causing this and if there is a fix for it, because several of my apps no longer work (BeyondPod being the main one I miss) because they need an SD card to work with.
I'm running the out of the box firmware, rooted using amon ra recovery.
I do have an exchange activesync account that requires encryption and pin, not sure if that could be causing any issues.
I did try to search the problem but couldn't find any relevant threads.
do you have SD encryption turned on in settings?
Is that the culprit?
Looks like I need to download that modified Mail.apk
After I re-locked my phone to apply the last GB OTA with new radios, I noticed that when I booted my phone the entire /data partition was in read-only mode somehow and it was causing all sorts of weird problems as you could imagine. Simply rebooting to bootloader and hitting "factory reset" option on the bootloader menu fixed the problem. I was then able to write to /data again and everything was fine. Obviously this will clear it everything. I was then able to apply my nandroid backup though and restore my system to how it was before the OTA.
zourn said:
Is that the culprit?
Looks like I need to download that modified Mail.apk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thats just my guess... turn it off and see if it helps
Started getting weird read errors when trying to read/write to the card while it was mounted in the phone with the password for the encryption already put in.
I think the card was going bad, or just got all FUBAR'd during the encryption process.
Deleted exchange acct, removed SD card encryption, put in new SD card, re-added exchange acct/re-added encryption, everything works!

[Q] Completely removing encryption on SD?

So when I joined my phone to the corporate network, it insisted on (amongst other things), encrypting the SD card. After some annoyance with that, pins etc, I decided to revert back. I successfully removed the accounts etc and unchecked the encrypted SD card option.
However, when I did so, it said something about only applying going forward and I still keep getting asked for the pin to decrypt the SD card. So it seems that stuff is still decrypted on there? I have done some searching but have had little luck finding any definitive answers, most seem to be related to problems with people losing whatever key to decrypt items which is obviously not the case here since once I enter the pin, I can access items with no problem
So what's the deal? Do I have to save everything off and reformat the SD card to get back to normal? Seems kind-of wonky to me but that's Android, I guess.
Oh, I have tried reencrypting and unencrypting the SD card again and the Android version is 4.1.2 if that's any help.

[VS985] OTA updated to 49A on 11/11

The phone pop-up just said "security updates". No link was provided in the notice or on the "LAST SYSTEM UPDATE" screen.
I haven't looked on Verizon's web pages to see if it's listed there.
Thanks! https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/lg-g3-update/ only says:
Software Version: VS98549A
The current software update gives you the most up to date Androidâ„¢ security patch on your device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
and LG's site doesn't list 49A yet http://www.lg.com/us/support/product-help/CT10000027-1414534794596-software-updates?search=&categoryId=CT10000027&superCategoryId=CT10000003&symptom=&subsymptom=&sort=
roirraW "edor" ehT said:
Thanks! https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/lg-g3-update/ only says:
and LG's site doesn't list 49A yet http://www.lg.com/us/support/product-help/CT10000027-1414534794596-software-updates?search=&categoryId=CT10000027&superCategoryId=CT10000003&symptom=&subsymptom=&sort=
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I doubt this fixes Dirty Cow. I think it's what was announced not too long ago about the latest Google patches.
https://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2016-09-01.html
iBolski said:
I doubt this fixes Dirty Cow.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I doubt it too.
Well, I took the OTA today. So far, the only issue I had was that it kept ejecting my SD card. A reboot nor power down didn't work, so I allowed it to finally tell me it ejected the card, opened the back with the phone still on, pulled the SD card down to eject it, then pushed it back in and after several reboots, things are working again. Not sure what happened, but it's okay now. The SD card is good as I've verified it via file system checks, so not sure why the OTA caused it to burp like that, but so far, the new OTA is working fine.
I don't know if I can still downgrade. Since this is my daily driver phone, I don't feel like trying to attempt to downgrade back to 10b. My feeling is, this was mainly fixing all the other security issues (minus Dirty Cow more than likely since that is at the kernel level and the kernel is still v3.4 which is dirty cow vulnerable).
Hopefully someone else can test if you can TOT back to 10b.
UPDATE: Hmm. I'm getting sporadic "SD Card has been ejected" messages. It almost appears as if it's not seated tightly enough. But this issue only started AFTER taking the 49A OTA. I've never had this issue before. Going to have to keep looking at what the issue is. When I get home, I'll copy all the data off, reformat it and try again. It almost seems like it's not sitting tight enough in the slot any more (maybe). Not sure if the OTA has something to do with it or it's just coincidence.
UPDATE #2: Inserted a different SD card and so far, no issues. So, it might be the SD card. It's relatively new and I limit the amount of writing I do to it. Mainly, pictures and music. The card giving issues is a 64GB card and it's been in the phone for over a year. The current card not giving issues is a 32GB card, so we'll see how it goes. I'll try to format the card when I get home tonight and see if that fixes the 64GB card. It's just strange that this issue began immediately after the OTA was done upgrading and rebooted the phone today. I've never seen an issue with the card before this.
UPDATE #3: Okay, it's happening with ANY SD card I insert. So either the SD Card slot is bad all of a sudden (I haven't had ANY issues until AFTER I did the OTA), or else the OTA did something. Tonight I'm going to try and downgrade to 10b, so I guess that test is coming after all! LOL
I have been having similar issues since the last OTA update, only with both my SIM and SD card. Sometimes it only happens once a day, sometimes it happens every ten minutes, but I now get frequent errors of "No SIM Card Inserted," "SIM Card Not Readable," and "Your SIM Card is not from Verizon." When I reboot the phone, it will read the SIM card again (for awhile) and usually pops up a message "An SD Card has been inserted." This started happening the day I downloaded the previous update (currently on VS98548A).
Kiruvi said:
I have been having similar issues since the last OTA update, only with both my SIM and SD card. Sometimes it only happens once a day, sometimes it happens every ten minutes, but I now get frequent errors of "No SIM Card Inserted," "SIM Card Not Readable," and "Your SIM Card is not from Verizon." When I reboot the phone, it will read the SIM card again (for awhile) and usually pops up a message "An SD Card has been inserted." This started happening the day I downloaded the previous update (currently on VS98548A).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the feedback. So it appears I'm not the only one then. I'm going to factory reset first and see how that goes. If that doesn't work, then I'm going back to 10b, then upgrade all the way to 48A and then stopping there. I'll just have to deal with the update notifs as I do not root. I use NFL Mobile and Android Pay, so I cannot root.
Well, I'm screwed. The download mode won't come on now. It got interrupted in the middle of the TOT flash and now I can longer get into download mode. When holding the Vol Up button (after powering down), and then plugging in the USB cable, some text comes up at the top left about no download mode or something. It says "Boot Certification Verify. Secure Booting Error" and then goes blank, and flashes between red and blue for the LED light. I think I'm screwed.
I can get into the stock recovery, but factory data reset, safe mode, continue power on all result in the same error message. Is there any way to fix this?
UPDATE: Okay. Had to use the hard brick recovery option.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/verizon-lg-g3/general/how-to-hardbrick-guide-using-test-t3276928
Wow! Never had to take apart the phone before. Had to manually flash each piece (after extracting from TOT file) until I could get it back to boot into DL mode. Then I was able to flash via LG Flash tool because I couldn't get the final partition (sbl1) to flash that way. Holding the wires was fun (I don't do solder) but I'm back up and operational. Whew!
I did notice I was still having issues with the SD card in 10b, so maybe it's the SD card slot in the phone because it's happening with all SD cards. Darn. I wonder how much a new motherboard is? Now that I know how to take it apart, I'm comfortable with doing that (just unhooking all the stuff from the motherboard is a little hairy for me, but it looks easier than when I had to fix my daughter's iPod screen once. That was a pain!)
BTW, this proves you CAN still downgrade to 10B from 49A, so that is still possible.
However, I'm still having issues with the SD card, and it occurred also with 10B and all the subsequent OTAs after it. Not sure if the 49A OTA started something, but it looks like the SD Card slot might be bad. It's just suspicious that the SD card issue started happening after I accepted the 49A OTA. Before that, never had na issue with the SD card being unmounted.
This morning I also saw one time where it couldn't sense my SIM card. Uh oh. That's not good. I really wanted to hold off on getting a new phone as this phone works just fine for me and has been good with minimal to no issues.
I feel comfortable enough to replace the motherboard since I had to open it up last night to fix the hard brick issue. Motherboards are around $110 USD it appears from what I can tell. Verizon was going to get me a new G3 for $150 USD if we couldn't get it fixed. I'm going to take it to a cell phone repair shop in town and see what they say. Maybe they have the motherboard for cheaper and I'll just buy the board and replace it myself.
Oh, and I am back on 49A since the SD card issue was prevalent throughout all the OTAs after I was able to recover my phone. Although, I have noticed it's not happening as much now. Not sure why. I'm still going to see how much it would cost to repair the SIM/SD slot.
UPDATE: Wow. Murphy's Law struck me bad! After thinking everything was fixed, this morning I found out that I couldn't receive or send texts nor phone calls. My wife had to call my work phone asking why I wasn't answering her texts nor her phone calls. Finally got it working after various factory resets and working with Verizon. Still getting the SD card messages, so definitely going to see if Cell Phone Repair+ can give me a good estimate on repairs. But at this point, I'm now fully operational. That was an exercise in frustration!
No problems here
As the OP, I have not seen any such problems with the 49A update. I have a (FAT32) 32GB SanDisk microSD card inserted. I do see a "SD card unmounted" message upon completion of booting, but it is immediately followed by a "SD card inserted" message. Access to the microSD card works fine.
Notes:
I run with the internal eMMC storage encrypted, but the microSD card is NOT encrypted. Before the 49A update, I briefly tried encrypting the microSD card, only to decide that was a bad idea: Unlike Microsoft's BitLocker encryption of "To-Go" storage, the Android encryption of a microSD card is tied to the device, which means encrypted files on a microSD card are USELESS for backup (think about it).
Due to the above, shortly before the 49A update, I inserted a blank 32GB microSD card (which the G3 formatted) and started over with loading content to it. It was about 1/2 full at the time of the 49A update.
DeanGibson said:
As the OP, I have not seen any such problems with the 49A update. I have a (FAT32) 32GB SanDisk microSD card inserted. I do see a "SD card unmounted" message upon completion of booting, but it is immediately followed by a "SD card inserted" message. Access to the microSD card works fine.
Notes:
I run with the internal eMMC storage encrypted, but the microSD card is NOT encrypted. Before the 49A update, I briefly tried encrypting the microSD card, only to decide that was a bad idea: Unlike Microsoft's BitLocker encryption of "To-Go" storage, the Android encryption of a microSD card is tied to the device, which means encrypted files on a microSD card are USELESS for backup (think about it).
Due to the above, shortly before the 49A update, I inserted a blank 32GB microSD card (which the G3 formatted) and started over with loading content to it. It was about 1/2 full at the time of the 49A update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It seems to have calmed down. I normally never see this sort of behavior ever, so it was very alarming. Especially when I couldn't send or receive phone calls nor texts. But as I think back on it, I did restore some system apps that I had backed up with LG backup (or at least system settings), so maybe that caused the issue. Once I did a factory reset (twice - must have been a lot of gunk), I saw the dismount then a remount a few times after the boot and then things were fine.
I'm just glad things appear to be working fine. Fingers, toes, and eyes crossed!
Let's just put it this way: I was not ready to get a new phone. I really still enjoy this phone as it does everything I need and it does still very well. The camera is fine for me for the type of pictures I take (casual). It plays music, games, etc fine. I always hate getting a new phone because then sometimes, some of the apps I enjoy don't work on the new phone for whatever reason. So at this point, I want to stick with this phone as long as I can.
@DeanGibson or anyone else who is on the 49A OTA, I expect the Android software version still says 6.0 (as opposed to 6.0.1 or other), correct? I was at a point I could've flashed the 49A KDZ and check myself (which I'm uploading now) just a little while ago but I couldn't think of a reason I would want to, and I just finished restoring my phone back the way I had it.
Version
The 49A OTA reports 6.0, patch level 2016-10-01, build MRA58K.
I have a similar issue with the SD card. Only in my case I found that my old card was corrupted. I went out and got a new one today, but it doesn't show up in the phone. In the Settings menu there's no option to even do anything with an SD card. I did get ONE message about ejecting an SD card when I pulled it out when the phone was still running, but otherwise I don't see any options. You're saying the solution is to roll my phone back two or so versions? Or to roll back to the factory settings and then update to the latest and see how it goes? Will that wipe out all my photos and everything?
nulloverride said:
I have a similar issue with the SD card. Only in my case I found that my old card was corrupted. I went out and got a new one today, but it doesn't show up in the phone. In the Settings menu there's no option to even do anything with an SD card. I did get ONE message about ejecting an SD card when I pulled it out when the phone was still running, but otherwise I don't see any options. You're saying the solution is to roll my phone back two or so versions? Or to roll back to the factory settings and then update to the latest and see how it goes? Will that wipe out all my photos and everything?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, flashing back to an older version will wipe everything, so whatever is on your internal memory needs to be copied down off the phone to your PC before you flash back to 10b. But, I don't know if 49A really is the culprit here. I really do think now that it is my SD card slot. It must have been ironic coincidence that the issues started showing up right after I took the 49A OTA. That's all I can say because going back to 10b, I saw the same issue, so I really do believe that my SD card slot is bad.
The 49A_04 KDZ is now in the same place as my other KDZ and TOT uploads, linked to at the bottom of the first post in @annoyingduck 's stickied return to stock thread in this section.
iBolski said:
Yes, flashing back to an older version will wipe everything, so whatever is on your internal memory needs to be copied down off the phone to your PC before you flash back to 10b. But, I don't know if 49A really is the culprit here. I really do think now that it is my SD card slot. It must have been ironic coincidence that the issues started showing up right after I took the 49A OTA. That's all I can say because going back to 10b, I saw the same issue, so I really do believe that my SD card slot is bad.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think the slot is bad unless however many people's phones decided to go bad all at once. Mine started acting up a week or so ago after my phone spent all night plugged in but didn't charge and was really hot. I think that coincided with some device update as well. The problem then was that it wouldn't recognize the SIM card. I took it to the shop and they gave me a new SIM which seemed to solve the problem (I thought the excess heat had fried the SIM card). Then the 11/11 update happened and my SD Card started acting up. I thought the same thing could be true of the SD card so I got a new card and when I downloaded the SanDisk recovery tool I saw a bunch of corrupted files from the old card. Now, having had the new card in my phone since the afternoon, I am seeing a lot of error messages involving the card not ejecting properly or the files being corrupted (there's no files, yet - it's a clean format). So, it's definitely something resulting from either the overheating a couple weeks ago, or the 11/11 update or a combination of the two. I would really hope LG and/or Verizon wouldn't send us the Order 66 code for our phones, but if they really did trash it I'll be getting a new phone and they damn sure better not want their deductible.
---------- Post added at 05:17 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:43 AM ----------
I actually just spoke with Verizon's support people. It turns out the device is not compatible with the latest Android updates. Maybe going back to square one with it will fix the problem, but they said they would give me a new device with the updates disabled until the problem is fixed. I don't know if that means I'll have to give them the new phone back when the updates are working or what. I'm kind of partial to this one, now. But I do know that possibly bricking my phone with this KDZ or TOT stuff is a less appealing option than getting a free replacement and/or upgrade. I'll find out more tomorrow.
nulloverride said:
I actually just spoke with Verizon's support people. It turns out the device is not compatible with the latest Android updates. Maybe going back to square one with it will fix the problem, but they said they would give me a new device with the updates disabled until the problem is fixed. I don't know if that means I'll have to give them the new phone back when the updates are working or what. I'm kind of partial to this one, now. But I do know that possibly bricking my phone with this KDZ or TOT stuff is a less appealing option than getting a free replacement and/or upgrade. I'll find out more tomorrow.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice find there! I can concur as well. I'm currently back at 48A and have NOT had one sdcard issue. That really sucks. Means they didn't test very well. I hope they have another update to address that issue. So 48A is the latest I'll go to. Wish I could disable the update myself so it doesn't notify me of 49A.
Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk
Rom tekcafe vs985 49A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FxIk7x-CaE
More normal
DeanGibson said:
As the OP, I have not seen any such problems with the 49A update. I have a (FAT32) 32GB SanDisk microSD card inserted. I do see a "SD card unmounted" message upon completion of booting, but it is immediately followed by a "SD card inserted" message. Access to the microSD card works fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In order to increase my external storage, today I replaced the above 32GB card (formatted FAT32 by the G3, as I recall) with a SanDisk 128GB card (formatted exFat by Windows 10). Did the same thing on my two LG G Pad X8.3 (VK815) tablets (which is running the same build/patch level as the G3). No problems so far.

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