When viewing the filesystem partitions in the recovery (TWRP, PBRP, etc) of a Realme 6 there are a lot more than most other Android phones. What I want to know is, what is the purpose of each one, how important are they (or are they even necessary), which partitions should be included in a backup (a backup comprehensive enough that it would be possible to format the device and restore the OS, all data, apps, etc to exactly the point it was before the format), and which partitions are modified when a custom ROM is installed?
WurtleDaTurtle said:
When viewing the filesystem partitions in the recovery (TWRP, PBRP, etc) of a Realme 6 there are a lot more than most other Android phones. What I want to know is, what is the purpose of each one, how important are they (or are they even necessary), which partitions should be included in a backup (a backup comprehensive enough that it would be possible to format the device and restore the OS, all data, apps, etc to exactly the point it was before the format), and which partitions are modified when a custom ROM is installed?
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i accidentally lost my device (realme7) partitions because of spflashtool
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If I install an newer version of a rom, one that has had some changes to the data partition such as adds and deletes, does then restoring my most recent nand data partition over it wipe the new changes or simply combine the two? IOW, will a nand data restore keep my old data PLUS the new data from the new rom or is the new data changes simply over written by the restore?
I have been doing this for some time but now I'm faced with an updated rom with data partition changes that I would like to keep and I'm afraid that running a nand data restore will overwrite all the new rom data additions
Thanks for your assistance. A search for this subject turned up a few hits but none of them answered this question in particular.
alexv59 said:
If I install an newer version of a rom, one that has had some changes to the data partition such as adds and deletes, does then restoring my most recent nand data partition over it wipe the new changes or simply combine the two? IOW, will a nand data restore keep my old data PLUS the new data from the new rom or is the new data changes simply over written by the restore?
I have been doing this for some time but now I'm faced with an updated rom with data partition changes that I would like to keep and I'm afraid that running a nand data restore will overwrite all the new rom data additions
Thanks for your assistance. A search for this subject turned up a few hits but none of them answered this question in particular.
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This all depends on how the custom recovery handles the data partition restore function. Most custom recoveries, CWM and TWRP are using images of the data partition as opposed to a .tar. The image of the data partition will overwrite anything previously on the partition as the process essentially copies back the full partition image made previously.
If a .tar file was being used, the .tar file could be laid on top of whatever was previously in the partition, but I don't think these are being used.
Double checked and TWRP latest open source code version is using images of the data partition opposed to .tar files. This means restoring the data partition will very likely overwrite any previously held information on the /data partition.
https://github.com/TeamWin/Team-Win-Recovery-Project/blob/master/backstore.c#L256
The best way to know for sure, make a backup and then experiment! No better answer than personal experience!
Hope that helps!
Thanks, Joey!
Hi, I'm new to the N9, I've noticed that vendor image is available for backup now in TWRP. Is it necessary to backup vendor image? Or just continue backing up boot, system and data as always.
Thanks, very much
Erik
I don't know, I noticed TWRP leaves it unchecked so I assume it doesn;t need backing up. I am interested in getting an answer too though.
The /vendor partition would only need backing up if you manually made changes to it yourself (for instance, if you use Layers). Otherwise, you can just use the vendor.img from the factory image if you need to restore /vendor
Sent from my Nexus 9
A long time ago while installing TWRP & rooting the tablet using the DirtyCOW exploit, I lost my entire user partition due to it being encrypted.
Currently am trying to switch my root from SuperSU to Magisk Systemless.
I don't want the possibility to lose my user data or /system modifications if anything goes wrong. I made a lot of edits here and there to tweak the tablet to my liking, and would hate to have everything lost.
To preserve its current state, I want be create a full TWRP backup.
I would like to make sure, that the TWRP backup is a full NAND backup that will let me revert to the current state no matter what I do to the tablet. Eg, it acts like a true system snapshot.
- My /data partition is showing up as 0bytes (Unknown Errror 150)
- I read that a /system backup is worthless due to dm-verity. For a working backup you need a block exact system-image backup.
Anyone have a guide on how to create a non worthless backup>? I am on TWRP 3.0.2-0 (ancient I know)
Hi! So, I have a newer Android 10 device with no TWRP support. I think my question is not model specific, so I'm posting generally, but if it matters, it's a OnePlus 7T Pro, bootloader unlocked of course.
Anyway, since there's no good custom recoveries for Android Q (none that I know of that can decrypt /data), I was trying to be safe and using a hacked (adb enabled) stock recovery to make backups from the command line. I have a nice tarball created in recovery mode with "tar cvf - /data/". It looks like it was made properly, I can unpack the files on back onto the device in recovery mode, and it's not corrupt or anything.
The problem is that naively trying to restore it back to my /data partition (e.g. tar xvf) after a wipe causes two problems:
1) after rebooting to recovery, the /data partition just looks encrypted again. If it was working properly, stock recovery can decrypt /data
2) normal system boot just bootloops.
If anyone has tried manually saving and restoring /data from a tarball, I'd appreciate any tips on getting it to work.
My best guess is that the ext4 encryption keys are the culprit - since after a factory reset the device creates new encryption keys, I think I need to figure out how to restore 99% of my backup without overwriting the fresh encryption keys that were created after wiping. I think I need to combine the new encryption keys with the other files in my tarball backup. If I can get past that, I might have to worry about things like SELinux xattrs as well, but one thing at a time.
If any experienced Android hackers know how filesystem encryption works in Android 10, I would appreciate a map of which files should not be overwritten. For example, I'm thinking I should probably avoid restoring some of these files:
Code:
/data/unencrypted/key
/data/unencrypted/key/encrypted_key
/data/unencrypted/key/keymaster_key_blob
/data/misc/vold/user_keys
/data/misc/vold/user_keys/de/0/keymaster_key_blob
/data/misc/vold/user_keys/de/0/encrypted_key
/data/misc/vold/user_keys/ce/0/current/keymaster_key_blob
/data/misc/vold/user_keys/ce/0/current/encrypted_key
/data/misc/systemkeys
/data/misc/keystore
/data/misc/keychain
/data/system/recoverablekeystore.db
[edit] spoke too soon
I ended up doing something janky and wrote a little shell script to repack the files from /data/data and /data/app into files that Titanium Backup could understand. I also figured out how to restore my SMS messages from /data/user_de. That was enough to recover the things I cared most about.
Still begs the question of what's the best method of doing backup and restores of /data on Android 10 when you don't have custom recovery but you do have Magisk, root, and stock recovery with adb. I want to keep hacking and playing with this phone so gotta figure something out.
I like Titanium Backup, have used it for many years, but the maintainance hasn't really kept up with Android development, theres a lot of gotchas like it hangs trying to restore multi APK packages. I still want to figure out something more seamless like a nandroid backup solution even if its from the command line. At least until TWRP eventually supports Android 10.
try backing up data partition in a external storage live usb or sd card
DrWowe said:
I ended up doing something janky and wrote a little shell script to repack the files from /data/data and /data/app into files that Titanium Backup could understand. I also figured out how to restore my SMS messages from /data/user_de. That was enough to recover the things I cared most about.
Still begs the question of what's the best method of doing backup and restores of /data on Android 10 when you don't have custom recovery but you do have Magisk, root, and stock recovery with adb. I want to keep hacking and playing with this phone so gotta figure something out.
I like Titanium Backup, have used it for many years, but the maintainance hasn't really kept up with Android development, theres a lot of gotchas like it hangs trying to restore multi APK packages. I still want to figure out something more seamless like a nandroid backup solution even if its from the command line. At least until TWRP eventually supports Android 10.
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try backing up data partition in a external storage live usb or sd card, first you for encryption, then restore from external source after formatting phone storage
Hi. I hope this is the proper place to post this. I've been away from playing with phones for almost 5 years (Couldn't even remember my password here!) due to being very busy with my business. So I feel like a total noob again!
I have successfully unlocked the bootloader and rooted my Oneplus Nord N10 5g using TWRP and Magisk. Now, before I go any further I want to take a Nandroid backup. Do they still even call it that?
In the unlocking and rooting process there were dire warnings about not formatting certain partitions. I would have to refer back to my notes to see which ones but that is irrelevant to my question right now.
I boot to TWRP, go to backup and I have the following options: Metadata, Boot, Recovery, Data, Modem, EFS, and Super. Is it safe to backup and restore all of these? I have no intentions at this time of installing a custom kernel, eventually some different rom's maybe. I'm just looking for a complete backup where I can restore the entire phone in the event of a total fail.
Thanks, and it's great to be back playing with phones again!
So it seems a lot changed with Android 11. The partition Super is now a partition that contains other partitions if I read correctly. If I include all partitions in the backup, would it be safe to restore them all? Or is the Super partition the container for all the other ones? And if so, is that what I need to backup for a full nandroid backup? Really need to figure this out before I flash any other rom's to it.