The other day the phone seems to have just reset itself without user interaction. All apps and contacts and such are gone but the device memory is full (10mb free after clearing cache and doing delete dumpstate/logcat). The phone memory was also quite full before this happened. Before I perform a factory reset I wanted to ask if it's possible that the data is still there and could be recovered by rooting the phone or something.
Are the chances of recovering anything so low I might as well just do the reset? I'm also worried that the the low amount of available memory is a problem with rooting - is this a valid concern?
The phone is an GT-I9100 with stock Android 4.1.2 (not rooted)
Thanks in advance
So I rooted the phone and can now access the data on the phone using adb. However, I don't know how to copy e.g. the data folder to my computer or the usb memory because "cp" isn't recongnized and I'm not able to install busybox (or a file explorer) on the phone because of insufficient memory. I also can't seem to use adb pull to get the folders (adb pull /data/data outputs "0 files pulled, 0 files skipped").
EDIT: /data/lost+found seems to be taking all the space and looks like the lost data is there. After deleting some files I was able to install busybox and copy the folder where I can access it.
EDIT2: I indeed seem to be able to restore the data (so far tried with mini diary and was succesful) so I'll mark this as solved.
If you've got files in lost+found, they're there because the on-boot filesystem check, fsck, put them there because it found the filesystem to be corrupt. Best thing is to factory wipe as there may still be lurking errors. If it keeps happening, your phone's flash is probably defective (either worn out from use, or manufactured that way) like that in my i9100.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
Related
Are there any deep erasing apps out there that can zero the bytes or perform dod style erase methods? I'm trying to erase the internal memory (not the microsd) of the phone. How can I make sure its not recoverable when selling it?
Its just that it contains work related information that I wouldn't want someone trying to recover if they happen to be that type of person.
Ι guess, reflashing it should do the job, and then just mess around with install-uninstall applications, a lot!
The only way to recover data from phone memory if deleted is with taking phone apart and taking flash memory out(this includes melting down pins). And than put this flash on some other circut board.
Just so that you know how hard is it, enough for most people.
For exstremist what the poster before me said, writing and deleting many times. You could do that on rootet phone with some root explorer program. If you didn use custom ROMs you only need to take care of /data partition, if you did flash a bit DATA partition can move maybe(no sure) so you should do same for /system. Flashing ROM writes to some of system partition, the remainder fill it us with some trash files and to again
I heard 20 times is what makes it 100% FBI secure. But 2 times should make it 99.999% secure anyway
Edit: That 20 number is for hard drives with same special machines. I am not sure how it is with flash, maybe one rewrite makes it totaly unrecoverable already. If you only worried for softwere recovery once is enough.
I will also give an example. Suppose you have some critical info on your SD card. If you delete that info, you can't rest assured that your critical info has been deleted. Because system just shows it has been deleted. Until something else fills up the same sectors /space on your card, it wont be permanently deleted. But now, if you fill up your whole SD card with, say, videos and songs, then your critical info is really gone. Though simpler solution to do this is to format the SD card.
Same applies for internal memory. You must flash a new rom and fill the data space fully with other apps. Do it without activating/logging in your gmail. Once it's done, you can reflash it with wiping everything from recovery and give/sell to someone as a fresh phone.
In other words fill ur SD with trash,.
I haven't rooted the phone yet. If I do root just to flash a rom and fill space, will I be able to flash back the original rom and make it so that it was never rooted in the first place?
i wud "dd" all my phone's partition in recovery mode(manually mount them use df in normal mode to know wats mounted) and then flash stock rom using that kdz thing...
PS ..u cud also "dd" your sdcard using
dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sdb bs=5M count=1000
(/dev/sdb is assumed as your sdcard drive )
5M*1000=5000MB wiped multiply acc to your card's capacity
beastfromtheeast said:
I haven't rooted the phone yet. If I do root just to flash a rom and fill space, will I be able to flash back the original rom and make it so that it was never rooted in the first place?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes flashing some original ROM with KDZ (there is a thread with instructions somewhere) makes it like it was from the factory.
You r not rooted. In this case:
1.factory reset.
2.install futile apps till your internal memory is full.
3.factory reset again and you are done.
is there any way to install apps without adding a google account and d/l from the market?
yes
download them to your pc
move them to your sd card and install them from there
it would b flashing the new rom alover, of flashing the lg original firmware.
to flash another rom your phone must be rooted and have custom recovery
thanks guys, I flashed the stock rom with kdz then installed futile apps via adb until I couldn't install anymore (adb error when phone hit the 20mb mark). One hard reset later, I think its good to go.
shredroid
i have another gmail address that i use for signing up to websites that might start sending me junk. after ive reset the phone i just add that account to the phone and can get access to the market that way without messing up my other main google account settings... then use Shredroid to give the internal memory a good wipin'.
i never tried the other way but using shredroid sounds way quicker that installing apps until youve filled the internal memory, especially if you have a phone with a lot of it
ategtre sky
sarfaraz1989 said:
i wud "dd" all my phone's partition in recovery mode(manually mount them use df in normal mode to know wats mounted) and then flash stock rom using that kdz thing...
PS ..u cud also "dd" your sdcard using
dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sdb bs=5M count=1000
(/dev/sdb is assumed as your sdcard drive )
5M*1000=5000MB wiped multiply acc to your card's capacity
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
is there actually a dd binary in recovery mode / android at all?
My phone (sk17i ) did a hard reset with a full wipe of the sd card contents. Do not know how this happened. I was at 10 percent battery, i just pressed the button on top and it just restarted and now the sd card is wiped clean but i do have my google account on the phone. This is stock firmware , stock rom , rooted with blocked bootloader, only modifications are systemui and quickpanel ( colored ) . Other root applications are Xperia Cwm Auto Installer and titanium backup. Is there a log i can look into to see what happened ?
kasmq said:
My phone (sk17i ) did a hard reset with a full wipe of the sd card contents. Do not know how this happened. I was at 10 percent battery, i just pressed the button on top and it just restarted and now the sd card is wiped clean but i do have my google account on the phone. This is stock firmware , stock rom , rooted with blocked bootloader, only modifications are systemui and quickpanel ( colored ) . Other root applications are Xperia Cwm Auto Installer and titanium backup. Is there a log i can look into to see what happened ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think there isn't any log for that action.
Are you sure you didn't doing something with your SK17i before it got fully wiped..??
By default, there is no background logging process in order to have better performance and battery life.
I did not do anything . i was just checking the battery life. so i opened the phone looked at the 10% of battery that i had left and closed it. Now- any good sd card data restoring software anybody can help me with. I need a good one , and i tried 4 until now and i can't seem to find anything on that sd card.
If the SDcard was formatted, then there is only a very small chance to restore anything.
From Wikipedia
As in file deletion by the operating system, data on a disk are not fully erased during every[17] high-level format. Instead, the area on the disk containing the data is merely marked as available, and retains the old data until it is overwritten. If the disk is formatted with a different file system than the one which previously existed on the partition, some data may be overwritten that wouldn't be if the same file system had been used. However, under some file systems (e.g., NTFS, but not FAT), the file indexes (such as $MFTs under NTFS, inodes under ext2/3, etc.) may not be written to the same exact locations. And if the partition size is increased, even FAT file systems will overwrite more data at the beginning of that new partition.
From the perspective of preventing the recovery of sensitive data through recovery tools, the data must either be completely overwritten (every sector) with random data before the format, or the format program itself must perform this overwriting, as the DOS FORMAT command did with floppy diskettes, filling every data sector with the byte value F6 in hex.
However there are applications and tools, especially used in forensic information technology, that can recover data that has been conventionally erased. In order to avoid the recovery of sensitive data, governmental organization or big companies use information destruction methods like the Gutmann method or the DoD 5220 of the National Industrial Security Program[18]. For average users there are also special applications that can perform complete data destruction by overwriting previous information. Although there are applications that perform multiple writes a single write is generally all that is needed on modern hard disk drives.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From my personal experience i restore from my sd card in photocamera (fat32 like here) few 5 years photo even when i using this camera. Its becouse theses jpg files wasnt ovewrited with other. But that program was especialy designed for photo files only.
My point is i thing there is bigger chance just keep away from formating and ofc make restoring to your hard drive
Sent from my ST15i using XDA
So - for photos i used East Imperial Soft Magic Photo Recovery - did a great job, except it changed the names of the photos .
And for the other files i'm using EASUS data recovery wizard -this is the best thing ever. It recognized a ton of files and right now i'm restoring all my files.
Hi
I accidently deletede all files on internal storage, when trying to setup DropSync. My mistake. Wanted to sync a Dropbox folder til internal storage, but had it set to sync from Dropbox to internal storage root. Well, all files are gone, except the folders synced from Sropbox and the Android folder.
My question is, how do I recover the files that resided on the internal storage. I have only used my phone fore some days, and didn't have any data (of my knowledge) on the internal storage, that I've put there. A don't mind doing a factory reset of the phone, if this means that the internal storage will be build up again to a normal state. I have no idea whether the files are necessary or not, and the phone seems to work fine. Since I've synced other files to the internal storage, I guess a recorvery is waste of time. Haven't found an aswear to whether a factory recovery would rebuild the internal storage. Hope someone here can answer my question.
Best regards
Frank
Did you delete internal SD then just restored but if you deleted system file / with no root, I can't help you.Find your phone's forum online they will be able to help if anyone can.
lamike said:
Did you delete internal SD then just restored but if you deleted system file / with no root, I can't help you.Find your phone's forum online they will be able to help if anyone can.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi lamike
Thankz for your reply. I'll be more specific, since I forgot this.
I'm on a non-rooted Sony Xperia Z3 running Android 4.4.4.
I installed DropSync to sync folders between my Dropbox and the internal storage. I set up sync from Dropbox to Internal storage, which resulted in only (first) the folders from my Dropbox appearing on internal storage. My mistake was not syncing to at dedicated folder on the internal storage, instead of the root. Then the folder "Android" appeared, and others has show up in the time after the sync. I've had my handset turned off to, which also returned some folders I could recognize. Funny thing is, that when I connected the handset to my PC, I could see the folders, that was gone when browsing with file explorer tool on handset. Weird. Tried to copy all folders, but was only able to copy a few.
Will a factory reset rebuild the folder/file structure on the internal storage back to as when recieved from the factory? As mentioned before, I havn't placed files (only some ringtones) on the internal storage, so I don't think I'll be missing anything.
How does the internal storage work? Are there files residing here, that the system depends on, and which needs to be recreated? Since I did the sync, and new files has been placed on the internal storage, I think a restore might be out of scope, or what? Again, if I can restore the files, by doing a factory reset, I'll just do that. Only used the handset a couple of days.
Best regards
Frank
Well, I went ahead and tried doing a factory reset. From reading several posts, I thought the phone would be brought back to original state, as when I turned it on the first time. But that wasn't the case. Files that was placed on the internal storage by me, still resided there after the reset, which astounded me. I thougt everything was wiped when doing the factory reset. This means that I manually have to delete files, when wiping the phone, or what? Also, original files from Sony wasn't present/recreated after the factory reset, like sample pictures and videos. Are they not recreatable? Isn't it indeed possible to recreate the phone to it's original state, as the factory reset claim to do? If the factory reset claims to reset your phone to the state you recieved it in from the factory, then I'm truly scared, since old data would reside in the internal memory, on phones that I've wiped and sold.
Edit: Ohh, just found out, that a tick should be set, when doing the factory reset for erasing data on the internal storage. Missed that. Trying to factory reset the phone again later today, and see what happends.
Edit 2: Well, did the factory reset again with the tick set. Didn't recreate the original files placed on the internal storage by Sony.
Br
Frank
Contacted Sony Support today. They suggested running a repair through PC Companion (PC software). Tried it, and also tried updating through PC Companion. Same result. Took contact again, and was now told that, it's not possible to restore files like sample pictures and videos, unless I send it to a local service center. Since non important files has been removed, needed by the system (also confirmed by Sony Support), I'm clear to start using the phone. Happy days. Hope I don't f*** up the phone again like that, doh.
Hi,
I just noticed strange thing when prowling in ESFile Explorer. My LOST.dir folder "takes" whole 143GB of data. I noticed that when I was cleaning my phone with SD Maid - when scanning it shows "only" 15GB ready to delete, but it finally fail every time. In Disk Usage it also shows so gigantic LOST.dir folder. Nor CCleaner help too. I rebooted my phone twice, but it gave no result.
The last few days I was playing N4S:NL, today it failed a couple times during the loading screen, so I decided to reinstall it. Suprisingly during the uninstallation process it didn't ask me if I want to uninstall data folder of the app too.
I can connect the phone to a PC with no issues, I thought that deleting LOST.dir in Windows Explorer can help, but I was mistaken.
Does any one have some advice what should I do? I would rather not to reflash the ROM or wipe it in recovery.
up
Anyone?
Can't you delete lost.dir folder manually using some file manager? Have you tried formatting the internal storage (Yes you will need to backup your files before doing this)? If this doesn't work, I recommend using a pit file to reconfigure all partitions on your phone, just make sure to backup!
Regards, gsstudios
No, it is impossible to delete it in i.e. ESFile, it fails everytime. Now it became even worse, I got permanent notification, which says that i'm running low on memory and some system functions may don't work. In fact they don't, I can't take a screenshot, some apps fails to run.
Last time I updated CM with this built-in function, it replaced CWM with some CM Recovery. It is poor with its few options. There is no option to backup or flash rom. It's a shame because I have a backup taken just after flashing fresh LP.
I tried to format data/factory reset in there - no result.
After all I decided to switch back to CM11, this time with 4GB pit file. I remember it to be better optimized (it was running smoother on my phone) than CM12.1. The only thing I didn't like was that issue with music stopping to play randomly. Hope it will work flawlessly, but waiting for some stable 6.0 rom
Hi there!
I am completely out of ideas in this situation:
HTC M8 stock, Lollipop
SD card formatted as internal
Android upgraded some apps into it
at the next boot it gives "Android is starting. Optimizing app 13 of 14" on the SD card and it just hangs at 13, reboots, and does not boot at all.
If I reboot the HTC M8 with volume up and power, it boots, checks the SD, and reboots again to do exactly the same.
I believe the problem is the SD is full and it cannot optimize because it has no space to save the cache or whatever it saves at that point.
Any ideas how to fix this?
I believe it would be as easy as interrupting the apps optimization, make some room in the SD and then let it do that. But, how?
Unfortunately, as soon as it finishes checking the SD it goes into optimizing in less than 10 secs and I am not that fast to delete stuff in the SD
Also, the SD is encrypted so I have no way to recover any data elsehow on another machine/device!
Can you use adb to clear some space? Or maybe boot into recovery and clear dalvik cache?
Good ones, Dan!!
I have tried recovery and clearing the cache but I guess it only clears the internal one, not the SD as it is encrypted and decryptable only by the full system active
Instead, the adb path seems feasible. Just got adb up and running.
Now I need to be faster than the optimization process to delete some folder / files, right?
I was thinking the easiest is to get rid of the Tidal folder which has tons of songs!
Can you suggest the commands to use in adb to delete a full folder and the path of apps data? If you know Tidal's, even better
Is this helpful for adb commands? http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1521097
To find the folder location I would use adb shell and ls -l my way from the mnt directory. (Or see if uncle google knows!)
You made it so easy mate, that I switched to the "ask everything" mode
I used a friend phone to discover the path and....
......job done
It is really ugly Android has these kind of issues, though! This is a big system bug