Hello!
I have a somewhat unusual challenge on my hand and am hoping there is a solution, however after days of searching I am unable to come up with a clear or consistent answer. I got a shiny new SM-T580 around the holidays, and immediately set to work on installing twrp, rooting the device, etc. to be able to use it for my needs. My device is OEM unlocked, rooted, has Xposed installed, and has a ton of hard to come by apps installed, as well as a substantial amount of important personal files on it. On Saturday, I went to flash a zip file to install a tool pertaining to ROM modification and the install unexpectedly failed because TWRP couldn't mount my /data partition; I realized I had completely forgotten to format /data after disabling encryption back when I first did everything, and my /data partition was still encrypted.
That being said, I really do need to remove the encryption, but I really need to preserve my data also. To make matters more complicated, I have enabled adoptable storage, and am using a 64gb card formatted as internal storage, with about ~30gb data on it. I have backed up my personal files to the cloud, but now am trying to figure out how to move my apps and app data. Ideally I would like to preserve my entire existing directory structure, as well as home screen configurations, etc. I am left with a few questions that are preventing me from proceeding:
How do I determine which data is stored on the actual external SD card? From my own poking around, it looks as though the external SD is /mnt/expand/aa11a11a-blah-blah-blah/ but I am not positive. If that is my SD card, can I simply move it to a new install? I assume the SD card is also encrypted, as I am guessing the string following /mnt/expand/ is an encrypted serial number or something of the sort. If that is the case, can I simply copy the files from the above directory, and then copy them back in after formatting the card? Beyond this, as far as what is actually stored on my phone, is there a means of backing up and restoring the files and directory structure and having it all still work and point to the right places? I don't know how the system links the adopted storage and just feel like I'm in over my head when it comes to understanding the nitty-gritty of Android file system internals. I would simply backup the whole partition and then restore it but then I would be back to square one with the encryption. I am competent with TWRP, ADB, ODIN, etc and would be very, very happy if anyone could point me in the right direction on this, even if the solution is complex. If I am unable to figure this out before the weekend I am going to have to manually back up all apps and click through 300+ apk files. I do also have titanium backup but I am kind of in a bind with storage space vs backup size. Anyhow, if you made it this far thank you so much for reading and I am looking forward to your replies! :highfive
Edit: This was intended for the Galaxy Tab A forum. Mods, please move this thread to Samsung Galaxy Tab A series Questions & Answers if possible, though the question should pertain to both device series on 6.0+. Thank you!
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Hy guys, there is something I dont understand about nandroid. I flashed my rom, kernel, downloaded apps, change setting, homescreen etc. and now i would like to back it up exactly as it is. I read that nandroid is best for that but it doesnt backup sd card? whats up with that. I look at my sd card with root explorer and there are many folder and files that were made by apps when they were insteled on the phone.Does it backup that also? Also i have many apps, apps2sd, will it make backup of them also?
It won't back up your entire phone onto your phone. It would get really big with all the music, videos, etc, that a person might have. If you have your external card mounted then you can attach via a USB cable to your computer then either with adb or with a file manager copy all of /mnt/sdcard youlle get the important things that nandroid does not. The exception I can think of is that it doesn't seem to back up your modem firmware, so if your partial to a particular one then just have it as a flashable file.
Ok, thanks, so it doesnt backup internal sd card because someone told me yesterday that it does? If i copy the entire sd card to PC and latter copy it back to mobile like that will it work. First i recover nandroid backup, than i format internal sd card and than copy all the files back to sd card.
A Nandroid backup will copy a lot, but it can't copy everything or there wouldn't be room on the device for it to be practical. It is quite supprising how much it will keep; it just isn't a complete backup solution is all.
Addressing your question though, as for copying the entire sd card, you really only need to copy the folder /mnt/sdcard or /sdcard ; the latter is a symlink to /mnt/sdcard
If you try to copy your entire sdcard then it is possible to end up with data from partitions that will take forever to copy and that you really don't want, for example /proc on the phone is just kernel information that doesn't even exist when the phone is turned off. To keep things simple, everything is part of the ROM and kernel except for /mnt/sdcard and in the case of and external sd card, /mnt/sdcard/external_sd but the latter (/mnt/sdcard/external_sd) will be copied along with the first one provided it is mounted when you do it.
The only other exception to what needs to be backed up is a partition called /efs and there are various tutorials with various methods about how to do that. I would follow one of them rather than just copying the data out as its a partition that holds unique information about the phone that it can't function with if it gets messed up. This is more immediately important and I think there's quite simply some apps that will do it for you if you look at the sticky threads here. The files will be on your phone though so you'lle want to pull them off on to your computer for sure.
As for your friend's advice, though, you won't typically ever need more than a Nandroid backup unless something happens to that other data, for example if there's filesystem corruption. If you do a restore of your ROM then it still retains all your music and photo goodies or whatever, app settings get wiped though where they are retained with Nandroid. The only thing that I'd worry about is if the impending update to Ice Cream Sandwhich somehow wipes suff, or if you play around at the command line a lot make a mistake unintentionally. If it weren't for the updates and beta ICS releases we're seeing then I'd simply be telling you not to worry about it, but to back things up and be done with it.
By the way, doesn't Kies back things up? I don't have it so I don't remember but it seems like that's how I initially got things onto it and that it has a sync option. Perhaps this is enough?....
Igor 3 said:
Hy guys, there is something I dont understand about nandroid. I flashed my rom, kernel, downloaded apps, change setting, homescreen etc. and now i would like to back it up exactly as it is. I read that nandroid is best for that but it doesnt backup sd card? whats up with that. I look at my sd card with root explorer and there are many folder and files that were made by apps when they were insteled on the phone.Does it backup that also? Also i have many apps, apps2sd, will it make backup of them also?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Man just do the backup and don't worry about the sd card files/folders. The reason it doesn't back them up is because they stay there anyway. Eg, if you uninstall an app, a folder that was created by it on your sd card is still there. Flashing firmware, including wipe versions doesn't touch the 11.5gb internal storage or external storage.
BTW, most of my internal sd card is used up and 25gb is used up on my external card. If the backup was to include those a 64gb memory card wouldn't be enough.
Between the S1 and S2 I've backed up and restored over 100 times, including after fully wiping the phone (but not formatting sd cards) and the phone always looks and functions exactly as before, including apps.
So, only copy memory card files to PC if you intend to format the internal / external cards or if you are worried you might lose stuff if the memories become corrupted.
Sent from my GT-I9100T
Thanks guys for you help. I dont use Kies also so i dont know and, yes, i format sd card before flashing every rom so i would probably format it also before making restore of nandroid backup. Also when i delete some app a delete a folder created by it on sd card. OK, than i will make a nandroid backup and copy mnt/sdcard on PC so if it ever gets corupted i can restore everything. As for efs folder, Neak kerenl made a backup of that automatic so i just made a copy of that on PC.
Every so often I go though the folders on the sd cards and clean them up a little but I have never formatted the sd cards. I don't really think you should do it with every flash.
Sent from my GT-I9100T
This is not an invitation to flaming, as I am under the impression that several people have tha same problem, so I will try to gather solution/suggestions here. I have the problem when trying out the new 4.0.4. ROMs, every single one of them are missing the capability to access the external SD card - rather unfortunate since I use it to store music, to back up with Titanium Backup and back up SMS, among other things. And yes, I have wiped, I have run the kernel cleaning script and wiped again, both a system wipe and cleaned the dalvik cache. Still no luck. Now I am aware that there are tools to mount the SD card, but after trying Multi Mount SD-Card Lite, Mount /system (rw / ro) and Drive Mount from Play Store, I still come up empty, literally. I have had 5 Android phones and all have been equipped with various ROMs, so I usually know what I am doing. I even pulled out tha SD card and wiped it on the computer and then formatted it/partitioned it IN the phone. It is a big shame, since ROMs like AdyScorpius, Omega's v3 and especially DraginICS and the F1 ROM are tempting and stunning looking. Any help? Please??
mcdanish said:
This is not an invitation to flaming, as I am under the impression that several people have tha same problem, so I will try to gather solution/suggestions here. I have the problem when trying out the new 4.0.4. ROMs, every single one of them are missing the capability to access the external SD card - rather unfortunate since I use it to store music, to back up with Titanium Backup and back up SMS, among other things. And yes, I have wiped, I have run the kernel cleaning script and wiped again, both a system wipe and cleaned the dalvik cache. Still no luck. Now I am aware that there are tools to mount the SD card, but after trying Multi Mount SD-Card Lite, Mount /system (rw / ro) and Drive Mount from Play Store, I still come up empty, literally. I have had 5 Android phones and all have been equipped with various ROMs, so I usually know what I am doing. I even pulled out tha SD card and wiped it on the computer and then formatted it/partitioned it IN the phone. It is a big shame, since ROMs like AdyScorpius, Omega's v3 and especially DraginICS and the F1 ROM are tempting and stunning looking. Any help? Please??
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Click to collapse
Firstly this is in the wrong thread.
Secondly, have you tried going up to the root directory, and making sure it's not under \emmc
I have, and it sometimes is, but isn't this an issue? I mean, as a frequent flasher I am used to ROMs where everything works, so I would say that is in the making of the ROM, which I doubt since the source is a Google project. But even with Directory Bind, I can't link it. It is over my head, I don.t understand why some people have the problem, and most not. And sorry for posting in the wrong forum, can somone move this or close it?
Benny, Denmark
I think most people are used to the SD card being in a different directory now so they don't mention it. For some roms, there is a flashable zip which mounts it back as sdcard/external_sd (or whatever it was called)
Sent from my GT-I9100
I'm having the same issue. When I restore back to Sense 3.6, my SD is back. Not sure of the issue.
Will not mount. I've went to recovery/Mounts/ and mounted there to no avail.
Also popped out the SD and put it back in, no avail.
When I check my 'Music' it says your content is unavailable because your phone is being used as USB storage. Disconnect USB. -- it's not connected to any USB, oddly.
EDIT: my issue was GB-ICS related and flashed this - http://www.htctweaker.com/RezROM/RezROM_oldfirm_patch.zip for ICS and it fixed my mounting issues.
My AT&T Galaxy Note's screen just gave out. It cracked a while back, but it hadn't been affecting performance. Now when it tries to turn on, the top half flashes for a fraction of a second and then it all goes black. This happens whenever the phone attempts to turn on the screen, be it from hold or from power-down: top half flashes, phone goes black.
It's worth noting that all input seems to work fine - but this is useless as I can't see what I'm doing. I've managed to answer calls once or twice, but that's about it.
It is also worth noting that I have TWRP recovery on it, as well as the Flapjaxxx ICS rom that was released over the summer.
As such, I have two main areas of questions to ask - the first being about possible replacements and the second being about backing up / restoring the phone.
------
I've gone and purchased a new Galaxy Note, and what I'd like to do with the broken one if possible is a full backup of its current state - firmware, internal memory, internal and external SD cards, etc. - that I could then flash onto the new Note. Is this possible without being able to see what I'm doing?
Please note that I do realize that I can copy everything off of the internal & external SD over USB. That's not what I'm asking. I'd like to backup everything, firmware included, in a way that I can restore it onto the new phone.
Some ideas that I have include using adb, odin or some other software to backup over USB... using TWRP without being able to see the screen to backup to my external SD card (navigating with the side buttons, i.e. "press volume up twice, lock once, etc."), or something along those lines.
Plug in to PC and copy your stuff..
Hopefully your USB storage will kick in automatically.
Your contacts will restore via Google on the next device sync.
Pictures and other data on the internal emmc partition will need to be copied off, or over to external SD.
I'm hoping you have USB functionality ...g
@gregsarg: Thanks, but that's not really what I'm looking for.
There is a bunch of data (SMS messages, contacts stored on my phone and not on google accounts, call logs, etc.) that are not sync'd to my google account. Further, I am not sure if these pieces of data store somewhere on the Internal or External SD cards - which I can access easily over USB - or somewhere in internal memory, which I have no idea how to do. Even if this data is somewhere on the SD cards, I have no idea where on the cards it would be.
As such, I'm looking to perform a FULL BACKUP of all firmware / memory / SD card contents / etc. I'm guessing there's a way to do this either with ADB or Odin over USB onto my computer, or from TWRP onto the external SD card. As to the latter, although I cannot see what I'm doing I can still navigate the phone with the volume / power buttons, and thus I imagine that I can follow a preset series of presses to perform said backup without being able to see what I'm doing.
Anyone have any ideas along these lines?
I know what you are asking....
And the outcome largely depends on what you intend to do with the device.
A screen replacement to include the digitizer, will not touch your rom chipset, and data loss should not occur.
But if you plan to replace the device, then your only real option for backup of data would be through Kies software , which allows backup of all device data prior to a restore process.
Additionally, you should copy all current files from internal device memory (emmc) to the computer before doing anything in kies.
External memory (SD), is self contained once the card is removed. But a good copy is advisable also.
Of course, a nandroid backup takes precedence over all other options, but in this case, I do not see how a blind backup is possible.
I can give you the backup step sequence for TWRP, but I cannot promise a successful backup without optical proof. However, I am willing to try...g
Regarding ADB....I do believe a full file copy (or dump) is possible, and can be done using Odin as well , but using that dump for a restore to the new device later may become problematic.
As the file placement into secondary device partitions may prove to be different , making the push of these files difficult .
By far, a blind nandroid , or kies backup is preferable.
Hi there, noob speaking... (at least in terms of Android)
Let's start with the fact that I bought rooted phone with Cyanogenmod alredy installed which is my 1st Android device. That way I omitted few steps of learning how to root, how to flash it, etc. not to mention that I'm not a Linux guy, so even the way system handles folders and files is new for me. As the problem is more phone-related than system-related I'm posting it here, on XDA.
I'm trying to learn how to partition an "internal SD card" to make it work with Link2SD. I've found lots of tutorials how to do this with an external memory card, but there is not much info about doing the same with internal storage. I've found a tutorial for a diffrent phone, but I'm worried that droid devices seem to be very diffrent and simply retyping everything without understanding what I'm actually doing may cause more harm than good.
My biggest objection is the fact that I'm alredy using my internal SD and beside various media files (photos, music, etc.) there are lots of system, or app related stuff there. There are folders like .android_secure which as I guess store app-related files (or even parts of apps that I moved to SD with build-in feature). If this was Windows, I'd simply back up everything, format it, partition into "general storage" and "app memory" and put backed up files back directly onto new partition only worrying to keep correct letters assigned to new partitions. I'm preety sure that doing same in Android (by copying everything to PC and back to phone) would not work because all those permisions, or am I wrong?
Anyway - Any advice how to do this?
Additional question is related to accessing whole phone memory via PC connected by USB. I know that Android phones are made with security in mind and "system" partition is hidden when connecting USB, but there should be some other way than browsing everything from some phone apps with root permissions. I'd really like to browse my phone both for educational reasons and to check what really takes up space on my "system storage". I'm suspecting that some app went crazy eating lots of space, because once every time I uninstalled something my storage after few minutes was again at 20mb level and it continiued for some time.
BTW: Is there any reason why having about 200mb empty space for apps is not enough to install or update some small applications, while other install even when just 100mb is left?
Tl;dr:
-How to partition internal SD to make it work with link2sd while there are some system/app files on internal SD alredy?
-How to browse "system memory" from PC via USB?
-Why some apps don't install when there is still 200mb+ free space?
Greetings!
I have an LG V60 which is carrier unlocked, though it is the T-mobile variant and it just so happens that T-mobile is my service provider.
When I purchased my V60, Android 10 came installed and within a few weeks the Android 11 push had started. I have a ton of apps on my phone and a bunch of data, so I bought the largest SD card available at the time, which was a SanDisk 1 TB SD card. I immediately configured adoptable storage without any issues whatsoever. I enabled the option under developer options to allow apps to be installed on external storage even if the manifest file says otherwise. My upgrade to Android 11 was a piece of cake, and life was pretty good.
Fast forward to two days ago. T-Mobile started putting pressure on me to in install Android 12, so I cleaned up my V60 and let it rip.
My phone booted up with Android 12 and the only glitch I noticed was a warning about my SD card being ejected and that I should insert it again if I wanted to use it. It was still installed, so I physically ejected the card and reinserted it. The system remounted the 600GB partition I use for general storage, but I noticed some very important apos seemed missing.
After hunting around a bit, I realized that the mount point for the adoptable storage partition was not shown. I then used Termix to get to a shell and tried to run sm to figure out what was going on. Much to my disappointment, I can't locate the sm utility after issuing a find command from Termix. Note that my device is not rooted.
I ask pretty much at a loss about what to do. I don't know enough about how all this stuff works internally, so I'm reluctant to copy sm from an earlier version of Android and just see if it works.
Aside from reverting back to Android 11, which I'm pretty sure is doable, but by using the firehose driver, an engineering bootloader, and QPST, I am at a loss about what to do.
I just can't believe that LG/T-mobile could be so inconsiderate as to not identify adoptable storage configurations before proceeding with the installation of Android 12. I am locked out of many of my most important apps, the most noticeable loss is AquaMail, which I rely on heavily to manage several email accounts.
Any thoughts on how to proceed? I really hope there's a silver bullet that will get me out of this logjam.
I would be grateful if anyone out there who understands this stuff better than I do (which isn't saying much because I know just enough to be dangerous, it seems) can help me out of this bind.
Thank you!
Here's some additional information that I learned since I posted my issue yesterday.
Adoptable storage, or at least the "sm" utility used to manage it, *IS* actually present on my device. I forgot how tightly the file systems have been locked down, so the 'sm' until is only accessible from a shell started by adb. So, the fact that I couldn't manipulate adoptable storage from Termux is not really an issue at all; it's expected.
That said, I am still having trouble with adoptable storage. Here's what I know:
sm list-disks shows disk:179,0. This is consistent with other installations.
sm list-volumes shows, among other things, private:179,3 unmountable. Previously it showed private:179,3 mounted 8hex-4hex-4hex-4hex-12hex, and that gnarly file name corresponded to the mountpoint /mnt/expand/8hex-4hex-4hex-4hex-12hex. The filesysyem was ext4 and it was /dev/block/dm-3. That is where my adopted storage was located. Now the device can't seem to access that filesystem at all.
Any thoughts? I really hope there's a stupid-easy fix to this, or I'm going to lose a ton of data.
Thanks!
Just thinking out loud, but have you tried the card in a PC so see if you can backup the data before you do anything.
I would go so far as to say, you DEFINETLY CAN back up the data. Use dd to make an image of the card. If you are tight on space you can pipe it into gzip but I would recomend just leaving it uncompressed as its easier to access the files in the image if you need to later. I run zfs with compression so it doesnt save much space anyway. Allways make two copies. I dont mean make one image and copy it. I mean, image it twice. If your REALLY paranoid or its really really important to you (like it contains all the blackmail pictures on your boss, your bitcoin and those videos you made with your really hot ex-gf), you image it twice on different computers.
You can find the procedure on google. If you dont have a pc with linux you can find a recovery disk or live cd distribution.
Greetings,
Sorry for taking so long to respond. I can mount the SD card on my PC, but what's visible is my 800GB encrypted exFAT partition which normally mounts on my V60 as /storage/abcd-wxzy. What's not visible is the ext4 partition that normally mounts on my V60 as /mnt/expand/8hex-4hex-... My PC has software on it to automatically mount ext4 partitions (Linux Filesystems for Windows by Paragaon Software) and it works fine. When I examined the partition in a sector editor, it shares nothing in common with other ext4 filesystems, which leads me to believe that it is encrypted.
So basically the upgrade from Android 11 to Android 12 seems to have made my adopted storage volume completely inaccessible. I have tried unsuccessfully to downgrade from Android 12 to Android 11, but that was a complete disaster. I am not sure if there is a proper method to downgrade from Android 12 to Android 11. I'm sure LG tries to prevent downgrades, but I have seen examples of operating system downgrades previously, just not from Android 12 to Android 11 on the LG V60, specifically.
I am at a loss. I fear my data on the adopted partition is lost, which would be horrible.
By the way, I can and have imaged the physical partition on my SD card that contains the ext4 partition that is used as adoptable storage, but I can't do anything with it because it is completely unrecognizable. I'm still going with the theory that it's encrypted.
I beg anyone who has any insight on how to get past this to please share what they know. I'm getting desperate. I can't possibly believe an upgrade from Android 11 to Android 12 would kill my adoptable storage volume. That just doesn't make any sense :-(
Thanks!
pqcracker2 said:
so I cleaned up my V60 and let it rip.
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Click to collapse
do you mean factory reset? if yes your data is 100% gone
the encryption keys are all stored in the userdata partition so if that partition got formatted somehow (be it bootloader unlock or sth else) they are lost, and even if they are not lost itll be hard/impossible to get to them as android 11/12 locks down read access to the userdata partition extremely