Hello all,
I have been using LineageOS for MicroG on a Moto G7 power for about two years. This was all great until I forgot I had my phone in my bathing suit pocket and took it into the ocean with me while on vacation. I disassembled the phone, disconnected the internal battery, washed with fresh tap water, and then soaked in isopropyl alcohol for a while. After drying, I tried reconnecting the battery and got no external signs of life. I tried connecting a usb cable between the phone and my computer. Oddly enough, the phone shows up as a ADB device.
I opened a adb shell and tried "cd sdcard" to see if I could get into the DCIM folder to recover my photos. I got the output "/system/bin/sh: cd: /sdcard: No such file or directory". Just for fun I tried to see if I could boot TWRP and do anything with that. I entered "adb reboot bootloader", waited a while and then entered "fastboot boot twrp.img). The phone then showed up on my computer in some kind of file transfer mode. I was now able to see the "sdcard" folder. but the contents were all random characters and I was unable to open any files.
The three questions I have are:
1. Given the info above, is there any way to recover contacts, texts, and photos via any ADB commands?
2. When I was able to view the "sdcard" folder, it was all gibberish. Does LineageOS for MicroG encrypt its folders, or is my data likely corrupted?
3. Given that the phone responds to ADB anf Fastboot commands, what are the chances that the main board and memory are OK and its a just an issue of the screen being dead?
Thanks in advance for any help that you all may be able to provide,
Tim
Is the data on a SD card? Is it encrypted?
The phone is likely toast, if not now, soon.
It was RO or distilled water it needed to soak in, not isopropyl alcohol! Isopropyl alcohol (or any solvent) will as you see, poison the LCD. Water then air dry for LCD phones.
Regardless the salt likely already started the corrosion process*. It will likely fail eventually... it's a killer. Sometimes if you pull the battery immediately/flush it completely out within minutes the device might be saved. That's a big maybe.
*residue left behind on the connector contacts and such is corrosive and hygroscopic. Unless completely removed the corrosion tends to slowly continue.
Given my original post, do you think the LCD display is the only casualty? Replacement screens seem to be about $30. Do you think it is worth the risk to get one? Its not like its a ton of money. I don't know any other way to take control of the phone without a working display. Is there a ADB command that can put it into file transfer mode where I can at least get my photos? I am not looking to achieve a long term repair. Only looking to retrieve my data.
Thanks
P.S. I did hit all the connectors with contact cleaner and gently scrubbed with a toothbrush when I had the phone apart.
tim0477 said:
Given my original post, do you think the LCD display is the only casualty? Replacement screens seem to be about $30. Do you think it is worth the risk to get one? Its not like its a ton of money. I don't know any other way to take control of the phone without a working display. Is there a ADB command that can put it into file transfer mode where I can at least get my photos? I am not looking to achieve a long term repair. Only looking to retrieve my data.
Thanks
P.S. I did hit all the connectors with contact cleaner and gently scrubbed with a toothbrush when I had the phone apart.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Give it a shot.
Not much to lose and it will be an interesting experiment if you get it online again.
Check around the power section and V+ rails on the mobo for damage. There's not much you can do with the BGA chipsets as all the solder joints are beneath them.
I dropped my Buds case in a full cup of coffee, cream and sugar. Broke it down on the spot, flushed with RO water then anhydrous isopropyl.
The battery is spot welded in so that wasn't removed. Drank the coffee. Dried it for a day.
2.5 years later it's still working.
$hit happen...
tim0477 said:
Given my original post, do you think the LCD display is the only casualty? Replacement screens seem to be about $30. Do you think it is worth the risk to get one? Its not like its a ton of money. I don't know any other way to take control of the phone without a working display. Is there a ADB command that can put it into file transfer mode where I can at least get my photos? I am not looking to achieve a long term repair. Only looking to retrieve my data.
Thanks
P.S. I did hit all the connectors with contact cleaner and gently scrubbed with a toothbrush when I had the phone apart.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Personally i would buy another working phone even a cracked screen one as long as it works and just swap out the motherboard i have repaired and brought back to life a lot of electronics using a spray chemical called deoxit , it was originally used by musicians to clean there electronics on mainly guitars but this stuff ids liquid gold for water damaged motherboards and such . If what you have on your phone is very important to you its worth spending extra money especially for pics as thats 1 thing you can never replace if you didn't back them up . Check out ebay you can find 1 complete for $40 or less . I've had phone repair customers come to me for this same issue on so many different phones which i repair anyway . I always buy a working phone from ebay or craigslist and do the motherboard swap as thats where everything is stored on and always spray Deoxit on board before installing and i get a great success rate !
Replaced the screen and the phone is working again. Unfortunately, the data is lost. Efforts to retrieve anything via ADB resulted in files and folders with names made up of random characters. The files were unopenable. Tried side loading a new copy of LineageOS and that also failed. Ultimately came to the conclusion that my data was toast. Ended up reformatting the memory, side loading a new copy of Lineage, and was still unable to boot. Reformatted again and tried a copy of a stock Motorola ROM and that finally allowed the device to boot. Sucks that I lost my photos and stuff, but was a interesting experiment to see if I could bring the device back to life again.
Is there any app that would do scheduled backups to a removable SD card? I know I could backup through Google, but I do not want to share my data with big tech.
Thanks.
tim0477 said:
Replaced the screen and the phone is working again. Unfortunately, the data is lost. Efforts to retrieve anything via ADB resulted in files and folders with names made up of random characters. The files were unopenable. Tried side loading a new copy of LineageOS and that also failed. Ultimately came to the conclusion that my data was toast. Ended up reformatting the memory, side loading a new copy of Lineage, and was still unable to boot. Reformatted again and tried a copy of a stock Motorola ROM and that finally allowed the device to boot. Sucks that I lost my photos and stuff, but was a interesting experiment to see if I could bring the device back to life again.
Is there any app that would do scheduled backups to a removable SD card? I know I could backup through Google, but I do not want to share my data with big tech.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The folks over on the Motorola G7 Telegram group were awesome for ideas on how to revive this phone.
tim0477 said:
Replaced the screen and the phone is working again. Unfortunately, the data is lost. Efforts to retrieve anything via ADB resulted in files and folders with names made up of random characters. The files were unopenable. Tried side loading a new copy of LineageOS and that also failed. Ultimately came to the conclusion that my data was toast. Ended up reformatting the memory, side loading a new copy of Lineage, and was still unable to boot. Reformatted again and tried a copy of a stock Motorola ROM and that finally allowed the device to boot. Sucks that I lost my photos and stuff, but was a interesting experiment to see if I could bring the device back to life again.
Is there any app that would do scheduled backups to a removable SD card? I know I could backup through Google, but I do not want to share my data with big tech.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah sound like you lost the encryption key(s)
Hear you on the Gookill cloud, it sucks. Trust Google with privacy? No.
An Android app that can do folder/file syncing reliably be nice. Right now I just copy whole folders... that takes a while.
Leave the SD card in the phone* and use it as a data drive. Then back up the SD card using the PC or 2 OTG flashsticks. Leave the SD card in the phone at all times.
If you use flashsticks also make periodic backups to hdds that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC... because things can happen. Flash memory is convenient but less robust than hdd. You can never have too many backup drives. Never encrypt backup drives.
*if the OS crashes it will likely spare the SD card data, but never bet everything on that being so. The second drive provides some extra data security but it's not invulnerable to worms. A near lightning strike, accident or flash failure can also wipe everything.
Related
A little different issue here I think... Ill keep it as short as I can.
Running Viperom1.3 w RCmix kernel. All perfect until last night at 3am, when I dropped my Evo3D in a cup of water (no, not on purpose).
It was not plugged in or charging when this happened, but it was on.
I dried exterior, pulled battery, opened back, slightly lifted motherboard.
Using hairdryer on warm - low, slowly dried phone. Replaced all, booted, and it worked. Took apart again, and left it in front of fan for couple hours to make sure it all dried out.
All seemed fine today. Working like a champ. Sound, calls, etc all fine. Battery got low and plugged in charger. Got red/green blinking light. Bought new battery (since little color indicator inside phone/battery both show water damage). Still blinking. Did factory data wipe and it cleared that problem. Nandroided back to my Rom and all seemed fine but....
16gb sdcard wont show up when plugged in to computer. Dont get the "charge/disk drive" option. Just simply charges.
Went into settings and manually changed it to "d/d" but doesnt show up in computer.
Clicked/unclicked "ask me" box.
Checked/unchecked USB debugging.
Nandroid "mount sdcard" and computer still not recognizes it.
The card is visible in phones apps (root explorer, meridian, ringtones, etc) and all the files on the card are accessible.
Pulled card, replaced with another sdcard, reformatted within the phone, and same issue.
The cable Im using is the stock HTC cable. I also tried 2 other cables with the same result.
It seems to simply be stuck in charging mode. I dont know what else to try. Im not that knowledgable with adb, if that has anything to do with it. Im not against resetting the phone back to any state - maybe unrooting ?
I guess I should be happy that I even have a working phone after this, huh?
Any help would be appreciated. And of course, I did not get the extra insurance/warranty when I bought the phone (I know, I know...).
Thanks in advance.
I guess you can always load and remove stuff off it from a reader til someone can help figure out a better solution.
If you google micro sd card reader, they are like $6.
Hope that's a suitable temporary fix.
Good luck!
another temp solution would be to use an app called web sharing which i use a lot as not to hassle with a USB cable when i want to transfer files from the computer to my phone
WiFi Explorer, works Great! Also was a FREE app on Amazon app's the other day!
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.dooblou.WiFiFileExplorerPRO&hl=en
Also try Multi Mount, since app's can read the card, maybe Multi Mount will work...
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.rafoid.multimountsdcard.widget&feature=search_result
Your not completely dried out, a hair dryer won't do it. Take the back off the phone remove the battery and put it in a zip lock baggy filled with dry white rice. Let it set in there for 24 hours and the rice will absorb all the moisture safely. Never use a hair dryer, you may have fried something. If you have insurance I would make a claim now. The $100 deductible sucks, but at least you will have a phone that you know will work when you need it. Water damage is water damage and your phone will probably never work 100% again. Why do you think the put those water detectors in the phone in the first place??
Got the phone in a rice baggie now. Took the back off to help speed up the process. Hope this will take care of it.
If not, heres my question. Could this still be a software issue ?
Would unrooting it back to stock correct any error anymore than my wipe/rom re-install?
Thanks
Update.
Tried rice/baggie but didnt improve. It had already been a couple days working before I did the rice thing.
Everything else works perfectly on it, just the USB connection. Tried mounting the sdcard via TWRP and no luck. Flashed another ROM and didnt help.
I must assume since it ONLY stopped after the water dunk, that its a hardware screw up.
Have been using a Wi-fi file transfer program, and ordered a new phone through insurance, so Ill put this behind me. And cups of water away from me.
Thanks all
Received my replacement phone and all works well. Could never get the disk drive to function at all - it just charged. I used a wi-fi file explorer in the meantime, which worked well. Thanks again for all the suggestions.
I accidentally left my phone in my pocket when doing laundry. I caught it pretty quickly, but none the less, it's no longer working.
I have a replacement coming but I have some photos and backups on the broken phone that I would like to retrieve.
I get no power to the phone and it doesn't connect to my computer.
The internal HDD is referred to as the internal SD. Does this mean it's like an SD card, and if I am able to take the phone apart, I should be able to access it like any other SD?
Any tips for how I could get the data off the phone before I have to return it would be much appreciated.
Afaik the internal disk is hardwired to the board, you may or may not be able to remove it (e.g. if soldered?) but I would rather bring it to a repair center and see what they can do?
Just out of curiosity, did you try and let it dry for a few days? Either in sunlight or speed things up with a hairdryer (not too close). I'm serious!
Once I had my phone (albeit not the SGS II) fall into water and it didn't work afterwards. A few days later, carefully trying to dry it to the best of my abilities it was working again. I admit it's a long shot but if you're extremely lucky it's worth giving it a try, no? The phone is broken anyways.
It fell in water on the 28th. I did the hair dryer and the rice trials. Didn't even try to turn it on for more than 24 hours.
Ok long story short, i threw my phone at the wall and now it wont turn on. Im not too bothered about the phone, ive had it a while and want a new one anyway, however upon removing the micro sd i discovered that all my pics and vids from the last few years are stored on the phone.
As i cant power it on (i get a constant red led if i connect it to anything) i cant see it on the pc to pull data off, anyone have any suggestions for me to get them pics and videos?
I've took it apart but cant see anything obvious to repair, all i can think of now is putting my motherboard into a working z2
The LED is not meant to stay constantly on when connecting the device to something whilst off. It is supposed to go off after a few seconds. That doesn't sound good.
Have you checked to see if you can boot into fastboot mode, or even flash mode? May not help in this case, but if that functionality is working then the device is not dead just yet.
Also, make sure all needed drivers are installed on your computer. The device will not be picked up properly without them. Install them manually if not.
If you can place the motherboard into a working Z2, which will eliminate many potential areas of failure provided it starts working, then that is the only way you can retrieve your data.
It's impossible to retrieve data stored on built-in storage on a dead device, so what you are asking has no straightforward answer.
Next time, please throw significantly cheaper items at walls, and not modern, uncommon smartphones.
last bit is brilliant advice, problem with that is automated services annoy me and the phone is in my hand already when i gotta put up with them lol
I cant get it to power on at all, not fastboot, flash mode nothing.
I know putting the mainboard into a working z2 might not work but i figure thats my best chance, i think it can be done with jtag tools, but not willing to spend a few hundred quid for something ill probably never use again..... I've also seen some eMMC readers available, but as that involves removing the eMMC chip from mainboard id be even more stuck if it didnt work
Hi,
My S3 screen doesn't come on even with new battery and have tried loads of apps on my laptop - there used to be sound and could see leds's but that has now stopped.
I tried Kies and samsung drivers amd wondershare but it is not recognised on PC. I have someone who wants to borrow it just for its physical appearance but in case my personal date can be recovered by someone else is there a way to permanently damage the internal flash storage so that it is impossible to recover? Which part do I need to damage once opened up?
Many thanks.
After looking into this I think it is the EMMC chip which is the flash storage so I need to remove this I think which contains my gmail and contacts and whatsapp msgs. Can anyone confirm this is correct?
It would be easier to change the password on your accounts..
Before you write it off, remove the battery, plug it into a reliable charger and try holding vol+/- and home while tapping power for 1 second. It must be done WITHOUT the battery in. Try different key combo's. It matters not which combo's, you're just after a response in any form.
If you don't get a response from it then you wont need to worry. The phone will be unrecoverable in its current state, meaning that if anyone wants to waste a lot of time to break into the emmc your data must be worth A LOT of cash. I highly doubt you're hiding government secrets so I doubt anyone would waste time on a "no mark" (no offense intended).
If you were planning on removing the emmc with a soldering iron you might find it much easier to just dismantle the shell of the phone and ship it to the person who wants it, keeping the hardware.
Beamed in by telepathy.
Thanks for the reply. Tried button combo as you stated but no response. Will try remove the emmc.
Hi Everyone,
I am turning to you for help in a dire situation.
I've recently dipped my OnePlus 7T Pro a bit too much into the water, and turns out, waterproofing works both ways. To cut it short, the device is operational, boots into the OS, but immediately freezes on boot completition. I've taken it to a repair shop, and they said, that the whole device is rusted on the inside, with zero chance of fixing.
I've managed to boot it into recovery mode, hoping that I can somehow pull my personal data.
The device itself has unlocked bootloader, and running the latest hardened LineageOS, rooted with magisk, and of course, the lineage recovery as well.
I can enable and access adb inside recovery, but I only see the option to mount the system partition, and adb pull only pulls system if I run it. I've tried to mount the data partition, but somehow it is empty (in adb shell, which is in root mode, I've ran mount /data /data and same with sdcard, but adb pull / still only produces system, not my personal data. I am somewhat of a noob, so there is a major possibility that I've did something wrong, my google-fu failed me.
I would be glad, if anyone could suggest anything to recover my data somehow.
Thank you for reading, and Have a Great Day!
The cpu and memory chipsets are likely BGA form factor. If the corrosion is underneath them the outlook isn't good. Is the phone completely dry now?
If there's any doubt disconnect the battery and liberally flush with anhydrous isopropyl alcohol. Pull as many connectors as possible first, carefully, and take a few pictures before doing so. Then displace as much of the alcohol as fast as possible. Use clean, dry low pressure air if available, carefully. Put in a warm 80-100F, dry room with a fan on it for at least a day. Stand it or the pieces on end.
If no one here has a recovery solution that works try disassembling it and cleaning the corrosion enough to make it bootable. It may be on the pins of the ribbon connector contacts. Maybe a peripheral assemble like the cam is killing the boot. You may be able to use a toothbrush to carefully remove enough to get it operational for a short time. Use small amounts of water then anhydrous isopropyl alcohol as a final wash/drying agent.
If you had caught the water contamination immediately it may have been salvageable using anhydrous isopropyl alcohol to dry it. The device must be powered down and battery must be pulled asap. Energized exposed metal accelerates the corrosion process greatly. Once corrosion forms on the power buses, contacts, BGA pads, etc it becomes unrepairable. Salt water is extremely corrosive, fresh water not near as bad.
Thank you for your suggestions blackhawk!
Unfortunatelly, the repair shop already went through with these practices, they've used deoxidizing agents, cleaned up the mainboard as good as possible, and disconnected everything but the battery and screen from the mainboard, still no luck.
It was in fact thermal water, so maybe somewhere between fresh and salt, due to high mineral concentration.
I do not know what could causes the system freeze, as recovery/fastboot runs fine, and the whole boot process completes.
I'll still holding my hope out for someone with some recovery/adb magic.
Just a bit of an update, I've also posted this to the 7TPro TWRP Thread in search of answers:
Since no answers came, I tried to flash TWRP over the Lineage Recovery, which in turn, works, abeit, with flaws, since I simply cannot decryt the data partition. I know that the password is correct, still, no luck.
I hope it's a good sign, that I can see the folder structure/files at least encrypted, but another issue is, with TWRP MTP mount, I cannot copy those files from the phone to the PC (errors out on copy).
Right now I'm wondering, is there a TWRP version for this phone that could decrypt my data? (A10)
Tested: 3.6.0_11 & 3.6.1_11 both FBEv2 and FBEv1 no luck. FBEv2 is the correct one as, my ROM is custom:
[CLOSED]EOL [ROM][Unofficial][10.0][microG][signed]hardened LineageOS 17.1 Oneplus 7T Pro
This thread is deprecated, please look at the 18.1 successor thread. This thread is dedicated to provide hardened Lineage-OS 17.1 builds with microG included for the OnePlus 7T Pro (hotdog) with current security patches. Features of this ROM...
forum.xda-developers.com
Also the FBEv1 shows 0MB data, and cannot mount it even in the encrypted format.
Any help is apprecated, Thank you all in advance!