So I was reading about backing up your /efs folder and I was wondering if backing up your device with CWM through recovery, will that also back up /efs folder?
Thanks!
i dont now this but you can just copy the efs folder and paste it at your computer.its so easy
If you want you can download nitrality apply from market, which can automatically do a backup for ya
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
just copy the files might not be enough, permissions and ownershiop etc is lost. Look in this thread for info how to backup /efs
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1068193
I'm wondering the same thing... Does CWM backup the /efs folder?
No. There are apps that can do same (Hellcat's kTool being one), and some kernels automatically make an EFS backup by default (Siyah for example).
Edit to add - For clarity, CWM will not make a separate backup of the EFS. As it essentially makes an image of the phone, obviously the EFS details will be included (everything is included), but I doubt you can extract the EFS folders/files on their own from a CWM backup. If there is a way, I'd certainly like to know how to do it Would be handy to know, even if I do backup EFS whenever I do a backup as a matter of course.
So as long as I've made backups using CWM and then suddenly my efs folder gets corrupted, a simple CWM restore would repair the efs?
On the other hand... in theory (I would never try this) wouldn't that mean that if I did a CWM restore on a different SII that phone's IMEI would change?
Brgds... /Tubgirl
Hmmmmm....Basically when you restore a CWM backup, you go back to whatever state your phone was in at the time you made the backup.
Now, if you borked your EFS, and if you restored a CWM backup, would this fix this EFS issue. In theory & based on the CWM backup being an 'image', you'd reckon yes it would.
In practice, I'm not about to delete my efs folders & try it out tho
So far as the IMEI is concerned, no, I don't believe it would. Reason I say this is because I know people who have taken a CWM backup of a phone they've had to return for replacement. Got the replacement phone, and restored the CWM backup on the new phone; essentially cloned the old one. And that hasn't messed with the new phone's IMEI.
At the end of the day, people who don't make EFS backups are insane IMHO (you probably guessed that from my sig). Given it takes literally 20 seconds to make an EFS backup with kTool, and another minute to transfer a copy over to a PC, there's no excuse for not making a backup.
Edit to add - Interesting questions/thread BTW I know who could answer these questions definitively for us. Odia. He's the EFS king on here. Can sometimes (often ?) recover IMEI's when there are no EFS folders/files to work with. How ? Who knows. Voodoo maybe ?
Ok, I'm no expert by any means and please correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a complete efs backup include imei?
The reason I'm asking is because suddenly my phone can't make/receive phone calls with my current carrier (other carriers still work). I restored a previously made CWM backup but it didn't help. Today I read about efs and what it contains so I started to wonder if maybe that's where the problem lie. I've only made CWM and Titanium backups so far because I had no knowledge about efs.
Brgds... /Tubgirl
Easiest way to tell if it's an IMEI issue is to check the IMEI. If you have your actual IMEI in settings/about phone, that obviously isn't the problem (whatever you do, don't post your IMEI on XDA. Ever), if you have the generic IMEI 004999010640000, then you've got a problem.
If you do have the generic IMEI, then we can look at options to possibly rectify it (sometimes possible, sometimes not).
If your IMEI is fine, the problem lies elsewhere & you're worrying about nothing There are a million things that could cause the problem you described.
However, no excuse for not making an EFS backup nowish if your IMEI is OK & keeping one copy on your external SD card & another copy on your PC (and even another copy on a external drive if you're really paranoid).
I just used the IMEI example to question whether efs is included in CWM backups or not. My IMEI is just fine but since I'm so reluctant to send my phone in for repair I'm just grasping for straws here Thought maybe my problem was related to efs since I suspect it's not included in CWM backups. Anyway... since I never made a "real" efs backup my question is pure academic. I'm afraid my phone needs to be sent to a service center. System restore didn't resolve my problems either but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't resolve efs problems either.
Brgds... Tubgirl
Did a bit of digging & found this. It would appear EFS is not backed up in a Nandroid backup after all despite it being somewhat of an 'image'. So I guess that answers both our question.
No, system restore more than likely won't solve EFS issues. Normally the only way to fix it short of having Samsung do it is Odia/whatever method he uses (which he won't divulge; and fair enough. I'm sure it's highly technical).
If you need to send your phone in for warranty service, do a format cache, data, system, & sd card in CWM. Then flash a stock rom in Odin, then use a jig to reset the flash counter.
Obviously once you root a phone and/or run non-stock firmware on it you void your warranty and should have no expectation of warranty service, but many people have been able to get same by doing the above. But in saying that, there have been people on here who have followed these steps & been 'found out' in any event.
Unless it's a case of actual damage to the phone caused by use or whatever, if it's a hardware fault, you might be able to get away with it.
WHich method do you use to backup your efs?
I use Siyah kernel which automatically makes an EFS backup & dumps it in the /data/.Siyah folder. There are also apps which enable you to make a backup, I've used kTool in the past & there are others (names of which escape me; search on here/Google Play).
I'd recommend kTool (search for it on here/Google Play) as it isn't kernel or rom dependent, it backs up EFS to /sdcard/efs.img & also allows you to verify the backup. You can then transfer a copy onto PC, external drive or whatever in case the worst ever happens. Quick, easy & no fuss.
Thanks a bunch... I'll search for it.
No probs
Tubgirl said:
Thanks a bunch... I'll search for it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I saw this thread was about CMWbackups, and have a quetion about it. decided it's better to ash here than start a whole new thread
The CMW backups; does it backup EVERYTING?
So if i forexample have some movies on my external SD card, and then takes an CMW backup..... Next i delete everyting on this SDcard, and then flash the CMW image,,,,, will my movies then be back at my SD card? Will they be back at any other place at the phone? or will they be totally gone?
Nikolaiim said:
I saw this thread was about CMWbackups, and have a quetion about it. decided it's better to ash here than start a whole new thread
The CMW backups; does it backup EVERYTING?
No as said it does not back up EFS .
It takes an image of the firmware OS and applications on the internal sd card .
So if i forexample have some movies on my external SD card, and then takes an CMW backup..... Next i delete everyting on this SDcard, and then flash the CMW image,,,,, will my movies then be back at my SD card? Will they be back at any other place at the phone? or will they be totally gone
Gone Gone Gone .
jje
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If i have a siyah backup of my esf (a tar.gz and a img.gz) what do i have to do to restore my esf folder?
Search for/read the kTool thread on here.
Has anybody tried this i9000 efs back-up method on the i9100.In theory it should work.It seems super simple so would be good to use.Im mainly asking if anyones done the back-up as they state in the video at the bottom that to restore you only need to copy/paste/overwrite the back-up folder with a root explorer so am lookin so an easy safe and simple way to back-up to phone and PC.If it works then it would also help alot of other people out.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=881162
here is the link given in the video for the rar file from the MobileTechVideo site
http://www.mediafire.com/?w5oxsdo6r53ou1s
As i said just the back-up and not the restore or generic imei cos its not the same model so maybe only the video needs to be watched.So basically a 14min video that you only need to watch about 6min.Not much time to eat pop-corn.Sorry
EDIT:Crap,Ive just realised Ive put this in Q&A and not General."MODERATOR PLEASE!!"
and secondly Ive spelt i9100 wrong!!
just incase anyone wants to know why i havnt tried it myself its cos my phones at the service centre
I just use HellcatDroid's HC-kTool to backup my EFS folder.
It can be found here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1182922, just press backup and you have a backedup efs folder .
Bloomfield87 said:
I just use HellcatDroid's HC-kTool to backup my EFS folder.
It can be found here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1182922, just press backup and you have a backedup efs folder .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My phone is in the service centre because of this app.Im not sure if it was me or what went wrong.I pressed the back-up button and made a back-up and after a flash started to have problems with conectivity so i hit the restore button.It opened a warning saying that it was a dangerous process and asked if i wanted to continue,I hit yes and everything went to the ****ter.That little round no connection symbol appeared in the top right hand corner and sim was not recognised.Typed code to check IMEI and it had disapeared.Went into efs file in the root of my phone and it was wiped completely clean.Not one single thing inside.Same with the back-up on internal-sd.Seems that the restore had formated my efs folders root and back-up.No idea what happened so know im a mission to find other options although i do like the KTool cos its so simple to use.Maybe it was just me and not the app.Not sure.
Bloomfield87 said:
I just use HellcatDroid's HC-kTool to backup my EFS folder.
It can be found here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1182922, just press backup and you have a backedup efs folder .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My phone is in the service centre because of this app.Im not sure if it was me or what went wrong.I pressed the back-up button and made a back-up and after a flash started to have problems with conectivity so i hit the restore button.It opened a warning saying that it was a dangerous process and asked if i wanted to continue,I hit yes and everything went to the ****ter.That little round no connection symbol appeared in the top right hand corner and sim was not recognised.Typed code to check IMEI and it had disapeared.Went into efs file in the root of my phone and it was wiped completely clean.Not one single thing inside.Same with the back-up on internal-sd.Seems that the restore had formated my efs folders root and back-up.No idea what happened so know im a mission to find other options although i do like the KTool cos its so simple to use.Maybe it was just me and not the app.Not sure.
EDIT:Maybe it would have worked if i was on his kernel but it says that you dont have to be so i dought that was the problem.
I got stuck in flight mode yesterday and I can't get out of it.
I have seen i need to restore the efs folder but i don't have a backup.
Is there anyway of getting a backup of an efs folder?
If not how can get my phone back to working order? does it have to be returned to manufacturer?
Would I need to put my phone back to stock as it is now rooted if it needs to go back to samsung?
I have a full backup of my phone on kies if that works?
martyd1901 said:
I got stuck in flight mode yesterday and I can't get out of it.
I have seen i need to restore the efs folder but i don't have a backup.
Is there anyway of getting a backup of an efs folder?
If not how can get my phone back to working order? does it have to be returned to manufacturer?
Would I need to put my phone back to stock as it is now rooted if it needs to go back to samsung?
I have a full backup of my phone on kies if that works?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Search is your friend.
I searched this forum and found some intersting threads:
Here a user had the same problem and wrote how he could solve this issue => http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1261948&highlight=efs+restore
Here is a tool to backup (&restore) efs folder => http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1308546&highlight=efs+restore
And another user seems to have solved a similar issue => http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1331701&highlight=efs+restore
Good luck !
yeh i found all those posts and have been reading them carefully.
Only thing is i don't think i can find the nv_data.bin file anywhere.
I have ES File Explorer installed and i looked in the EFS folder but it says it is empty!!!
when i used the EFS Pro it worked through it, i got a .img file at the end of it which is 20MB but i can't seem to view anything in it...
ok now im getting somewhere i found the nv_data.bak so im going to use the articles again and have another go.
I didn't realise you had to use the .tar for the efs backup to view the files
after playing around unnecessarily with roms it seems I messed up my IMEI.
by checking if IMEI is valid via dialer, i got a number which starts with 0049, which as I understand is bad. I have done a little reading on ESF backup and restore, but the ways to restore EFS always require backup from the same apllication...So I searched for a backed that maybe occoured automatically, so I found one in the root internal storage folder and discovered a folder named "esf_backup", probably created during rom installations, the question is can i restore the tar.gz file in this folder? Or has my phone been messed up way beyond repair?
thx upfront
Yes you can, read the hundred or so other exact same posts to find out how.
Have a look at EFS Pro.
jje
If it's not .img you can restore by simply copying whole efs from backup to phone by root explorer
sent from the state where marijuana is NOT illegal !
So this has probably been asked before but I haven't actually found a consistent answer. My EFS partition is getting borked up a lot, but usually I was just able to get the phone up and running by copy pasting my EFS backup with ES File Explorer. This time, though, even if I did, the contents stayed the same. I mean, it said it was successful, but it hadn't really been. So I tried copying them over with terminal. No dice either. Then I tried with another file manager, and when I entered the folder, it showed a lot more files than it usually did, like nv2.bak . I read up and it said that was a backup of the nv_data, so I renamed it and the other .bak's there and deleted the old ones and it restored my baseband, but gave me a generic IMEI. I still can't copy paste my backup and since my network works even with the generic IMEI, I stopped fighting with it. But I'm worried it's just a bomb waiting to explode. Is there any method that could help me restore my backup, and any reason why this is happening? :/