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If one enables full device encryption in Ice Cream Sandwich, am I correct in assuming that that the internal SD of that device is now not going to be available in the CWM recovery mode? And even if it was, the root fs would not be available? If so, this pretty much would make CWM flashing your device near impossible?
Does CWM even work if you use FDE? Or is it planned/
The question I guess is, when do you input your encryption password? Is it some pre-boot step?
I really want to enable device encryption but I can't find enugh details on how it works.
I did read this post on it., but it doesn't really answer my questions. And it is unclear if it encrypts the internal SD, or just the root FS?
http://source.android.com/tech/encryption/android_crypto_implementation.html
No one knows anything about this?
I got a Gnex today from Verizon in the US and I encrypted my phone after I unlocked the bootloader but before rooting. As a result I don't think I will be able to root because it doesn't seem that the modified boot.img that the instructions tell me to use can mount the encrypted system (it sat at the Google logo w/ the unlocked icon for 10 minutes before I pulled the battery and let it boot the stock boot.img) which came up fine.
It seems the only way to decrypt the phone is by doing a factory reset.
That's all I know. That being said, while a custom recovery may work for wiping partitions (such as cache), it would probably be mostly useless until the custom recovery is updated to support the encrypted file systems. I'm a *NIX user and an engineer, but don't have a lot of experience with Android's internals, so take all that with the appropriate sized grain of salt.
Regards,
Chris
Bump.
Anyone experimented with full device encryption / ROM flashing / SD Card? I'm curious about this as well, but not curious enough to experiment.
I dident try it myself, so i dont exactly know, how this works. But i think device encryption shouldent completly block clockworkmod recovery.
I think it could be a problem to make a backup while your device is encrypted. But i think it shouldent be a problem to recover a old system over an encrypted one. Encryption keeps people without the key away from reading data. This dosent mean you cant wright something over it and replace the locked data with some new one. But then you defenitly loose the old data. I dont think you can flash a new ROM or a recovery without a full wipe. You probably gona loose all the data you had on the old system.
But i general i think this is anyway a good think to do when you flash a new ROM.
I think you could give it a try, without briking your phone. But i dident try it, so i cant take any responsibility.
Would any of you happen to know how to get to the diagnostic mode?
ryfly65 said:
Would any of you happen to know how to get to the diagnostic mode?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I sonst exactly know hat diagnostic Mode you mean. Depends hat Diagnose you want to run. Do you want to read the logfiles in your phone, wher you can see what ist doing? You could use the app alogcat. An other way would be to run logcat over Eclipse.
Sent from my HTC Desire HD using XDA App
Hilmy said:
I sonst exactly know hat diagnostic Mode you mean. Depends hat Diagnose you want to run. Do you want to read the logfiles in your phone, wher you can see what ist doing? You could use the app alogcat. An other way would be to run logcat over Eclipse.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I need to edit modem information and enable a diag port for QPST, essentially allowing me to flash it to another carrier.
Is there any new information on this? Any help would be very appreciated!
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
I encrypted mine after flashing the stock ICS 4.0.3 image and rooting. CWM still loads, but when I try to use USB mass storage, windows tells me it needs to be formatted before the SD card can be used.
You can use titanium backup to make backups of your stuff, and restore them to a non-encrypted phone. I have found no other way to unencrypt the phone than factory reset either. When you encrypt, then go to settings > security > encryption, it just has a greyed out area saying "Phone is encrypted", which is stupid and needs to be fixed.
nevarDeath said:
I encrypted mine after flashing the stock ICS 4.0.3 image and rooting. CWM still loads, but when I try to use USB mass storage, windows tells me it needs to be formatted before the SD card can be used.
You can use titanium backup to make backups of your stuff, and restore them to a non-encrypted phone. I have found no other way to unencrypt the phone than factory reset either. When you encrypt, then go to settings > security > encryption, it just has a greyed out area saying "Phone is encrypted", which is stupid and needs to be fixed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So if I factory reset the device from CMW I will not loose my pictures or TB in the internal SD?
What about flashing a new ROM?
Thanks!
I have been playing with ICS + FDE for several days doing different things. First off this is:
Nexus S 4G, running Pete's crespo4g OTA ROM
I flashed with CWM which is still on there and runs fine.
However: /data and /sdcard and /system (?) are encrypted and CANNOT be mounted.
To restore you have to 1) make a full backup over USB to a PC of the whole SDcard (or at least the important folders).
2) wipe and reformat everything. This isn't just a factory reset, this kills the sdcard as well.
3) mount (hopefully) the newly reformatted /sdcard and blow your backup from the PC onto the /sdcard
4) use CWM to restore a previous ROM.
That's pretty much it, give or take. Not for the faint of heart. However, if you are concerned enough to want encryption, you don't want to just say reboot recovery and voila all your files are belong to us, right?
---------- Post added at 03:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:34 PM ----------
Also, the backup to PC part is just your sdcard. It doesn't back up the whole system. There might be a way to do that via adb, I don't know.
So i am running rooted runnig miui.us rom. I just tried to encrypt phone.. It ran for 2 and a half hours and I got impatient. thinking maybe i shouldnt have done it... Then after a little bit of panic i said **** it if i lose data i lose data... so i powered off and back on hoping i didnt and the rom booted back up with all my data intact..... •••••• Wish I had more to report but im not doing that again until someone can confirm that it works fine...... I have tried booting into cwm yet.. If i have an issue when i need to boot illl report back but if you dont hear from me here then assume I was able too.
Pete's to CM9 - still encrypted
IT does indeed take a fairly long time to encrypt. If I understand correctly it will build the encrypted partition on a loopback (or something like) before erasing the original (by overwriting?).
I've got more to report. I followed my plan (couple posts back) for unencrypting and reflashing my phone. (Nexus S 4g).
The first bits of this worked fine. I was able to flash CM9 onto my phone (works like a champ btw). While the phone was in recovery I mounted the SD and copied my backup back onto it.
However...
When CM9 booted I STILL got the "unlock your device" screen, still the same password, and it decrypted and booted. That was surprising, but not as much as when I looked for the SD card, it said it was incorrectly formatted! The only thing to do was reformat and copy with the phone on and unlocked.
So lessons learned: 1) a factory reset from _inside_the_ROM_ doesn't remove the encrypted partition at all and
2) As far as I can tell, the SD card _is_ encrypted along with /data
I'd be very interested to hear other's experiences, especially someone who can remove their SD storage.
Undoing FDE
First off - Lacking a device with removable storage to test with all I can tell you is that the sdcard is not accessible by any normal means after FDE is enabled without booting into the encrypted system.
"Removing" FDE required three steps beyond normal:
-Factory reset from within the ROM
-factory reset/wipe at recovery and/or format /data
-once into a running ROM, reformat the sdcard
Once all that is done (in addition to normal setup for ROM) you should be able to operate normally again.
problem with encryption on sgs2 with android 4.0.3
I really want to enable my device encryption too, but I can't !!!
the phone start encrypting after he ask me for a new secure password, rebooting and asking again for my password and surprise!!!.... the password is not match ?!?!
I repetead these steps for 3 times but the same result...the password does not match!!! ?
Please, if someone found a trick to repair this inconvenient, tell us in this post steps to be followed.
Regards!
SGS2, Android Icecream 4.0.3
leech2082 said:
So i am running rooted runnig miui.us rom. I just tried to encrypt phone.. It ran for 2 and a half hours and I got impatient. thinking maybe i shouldnt have done it... Then after a little bit of panic i said **** it if i lose data i lose data... so i powered off and back on hoping i didnt and the rom booted back up with all my data intact..... •••••• Wish I had more to report but im not doing that again until someone can confirm that it works fine...... I have tried booting into cwm yet.. If i have an issue when i need to boot illl report back but if you dont hear from me here then assume I was able too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did exactly what you did, and so far everything seems to be intact Thanks!
Hello,
I have strange defect in my phone: after every power cycle phone wakes up in state it was at about February 13 2012. I can not permanently change anything. I also can not change firmware. I even have made full three stage recovery from broken nand write, as described elsewhere here, without changing anything.
What is strange: no warnings or failure notices. Phone is working normally. Flashing is also seemingly working okay. But after restart nothing is changed. Only when I work with big files, random apps start to crash. I discovered this when downloading maps.
My question is: can sgs2 with Android 2.3.3 seemingly work O.K. with totally nonfunctional nonvolatile memory writing?
Because I don't know your history....
Did you full wiped that is
Format cache data system sdcard
Dalvik.
atifsh said:
Because I don't know your history....
Did you full wiped that is
Format cache data system sdcard
Dalvik.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did. Nothing gets erased. If you know, how Android system works: in your opinion is it possible that system under light usage works O.K. in spite that nonvolatile storage is effectively read only?
Strange issue, but yes in theory, if your storage is busted in a way that it actually works as a read only, but when an application need to write something it fails and crashes.
atifsh said:
Strange issue, but yes in theory, if your storage is busted in a way that it actually works as a read only, but when an application need to write something it fails and crashes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When an application needs to write something it does not fail, at least when it does not write large amounts of data. I can do everyday tasks: add or remove contacts, add few apps (which then actually work), move icons on screens and so on. Is all this possible with NVmemory working as ROM? Because after power cycle all that is gone and all reverts to February 13 2012 state.
Just a thought but have you tried erasing all the contents of your phone?
Using ODIN you can install an odin Cyanogenmod rom, use the pitfile and select repartition. This I believe wipes everything except the 14gb user data portion. Then, just format that under settings.
Perhaps a full wipe would fix it.
MikeMurphy said:
Just a thought but have you tried erasing all the contents of your phone?
Using ODIN you can install an odin Cyanogenmod rom, use the pitfile and select repartition. This I believe wipes everything except the 14gb user data portion. Then, just format that under settings.
Perhaps a full wipe would fix it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's what I think too, but didn't told him because using pit got a high chance of bricking.
And the way he is using suggests he is out of warranty.
MikeMurphy said:
Just a thought but have you tried erasing all the contents of your phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The phone does not effectively wipe at all. After any wiping or installing new roms/bootloaders/pits/anything the phone wakes up in state it was 2012/02/13, except date and time, which is current.
If you have used pit and tick repartition, and still nothing erased, boy your internal storage is shouting get rid of me fast or I'll go dead on you soon.
Or I could be wrong and your phone will out lived you
I am pretty much convinced that my phone is irreparable. I do not look for solution to make it work normally again (although I would very much welcome one if I'm wrong).
I seek an answer from somebody who intimately knows, how Android filesystem works: Is it possible, that phone works seemingly O.K. under very light usage in spite that it cannot in fact write to flash memory? And work like this for 2 months without giving warning/error messages?
I compare my situation to a PC with ram-disk setup and an unwritable hard disk. This would not work long. Can Android?
Hey Zie, you may not get this notification of reply, but I wanted to ask, did you ever reach a solution with you SGS II? I'm on the Skyrocket and the same thing happened to me a few days ago. So far nothing has worked and I just upgraded. This was my second Skyrocket coming from an Infuse 4g.
Can't return the phone because all can tell its a rooted device with a custom rom on it. AOKP Milestone 6. Let me know what u did to get around this if u can....
Sent from my SGH-I727 using xda premium
Hi all, I think that none of you have ever had a problem like this.
Then I point out that fortunately this is not my phone but a friend ...
let's go S2 firmware 2.3.3 Tim
BASEBAND VER I9100XXKDJ
VER KERNEL-2.6.35.7-CL186662 dpi @ I9100AIKE1 ANDROIDBUILDERDELL # 2
NUM BUILD GINGERBREAD.AIKE1
In short, the problem is this impossible to do a factory reset, do not wipe data factory reset, can not change firmware via Odin I tried various versions of both Tim that no brand, nothing to do.
regarding the various attempts to make the root nothing to do does not see the sd card and then can not upload files to sd and perform root through recovery.
The strangest thing, and that if something in the internal memory gate manually after rebooting everything back then all this me angry.
I gave up so I hope your a real help ...
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me ..
Marcello
also
Meanwhile, many thanks to the one person who gave me help, but I must say that I could not solve my problem.
We try to do a bit of clarity on the issue, I have basically a Galaxy S2 in the hands of a friend, the problem is as absurd and that if I try in any way to format the internal memory, the one that you do not format usb to speak ....
Tried all the various methods found on the net that is factory wipe data then format memory by connecting PC, reset to factory settings, I even tried to install a rom updated Brand Tim is that no brand via odin, tried updating via Kyes ...
Nothing I even tried to delete pictures and various files installed one by one, each time you restart back to business as usual.
The thing that impresses me and that if I try to format the memory cell via the usb on the internal management of the settings from just after the formatting immediately returns to the space that was occupied before formatting ...
I do not know what to do, ask for a help from those who know best the language of Android, so you know if there is a possibility that you have created an auxiliary memory in the form of protection to prevent the loss of important data.
Of course, since fortunately the cell is not my friend but as I said before I riportaglielo at least in the same situation that it took, so I can operate, but with a certain amount of risk because the cell is no longer covered by warranty .
To aid you in advance thank you very much to all of you ...
add
Guys nothing to do, I can not in any way to fix this damn s2 I tried to install more rom via Odin I also tried installing pit csc pda. With. Flag of re-partition.
All times Odin has regularly completed all ok but when you restart the cell and as usual, the usual photo usual programs etc etc..
I think this is really a mystery, as if there is a program that can create an image file of the operating system and every time you start the restore.
I forgot one important thing if you go into recovery, I do not compare external memory or external storage true.
Especially because of this I can not do the fundamental root to try a cooked rom ...
I hope in a help of a wizard once and for all to solve this puzzle.
Thank you all.
I am really confused with this. What actually android wipedata/reset means ?. Is there any problem if i select wipe data factory reset...? if i select this option, is there any chance of losing my internal memory datas like messages, contacts, etc ?
sareeshmnair said:
I am really confused with this. What actually android wipedata/reset means ?. Is there any problem if i select wipe data factory reset...? if i select this option, is there any chance of losing my internal memory datas like messages, contacts, etc ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The wipe data and factory reset option will wipe the /data partition which includes application data, any apps you've downloaded, pictures, music, messages, and contacts that are not stored on your sd-card. In addition to wiping the /data partition it also wipes the /cache partition which mostly contains your apps temporary files, and other system related temporary files. Your contacts can be backed up to your Google account, messages can be backed up with SMS Backup +, and for your other data I would recommend taking a look at My Backup it doesn't require root, if you are rooted Titanium Backup is a very handy tool for backing up your device.
help me as you can please
My phone it doesn't work already and and i don't want to lose any of my data because its really important to me and i didn't do the back up before …..what can i do ? …… pleas help me
problem
meshalSM said:
My phone it doesn't work already and and i don't want to lose any of my data because its really important to me and i didn't do the back up before …..what can i do ? …… pleas help me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
problem???
gohel.vishal said:
problem???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i have the cyanogen room and it was working well…and then,they create a new update for the room…when I'm install it .. the playstore it doesn't work anymore .. so i tried to return to the old version by the sitting > about the phone … when i did it .. the phone restart it self and sticking in the welcome screen for the cyanogenMod…and i don't have any back up before…and i have a lot important emails and numbers that i don't want to lose it what ever it happens…..please help me with this brother
meshalSM said:
i have the cyanogen room and it was working well…and then,they create a new update for the room…when I'm install it .. the playstore it doesn't work anymore .. so i tried to return to the old version by the sitting > about the phone … when i did it .. the phone restart it self and sticking in the welcome screen for the cyanogenMod…and i don't have any back up before…and i have a lot important emails and numbers that i don't want to lose it what ever it happens…..please help me with this brother
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just to clarify do you mean it's gets stuck on the Cyanogenmod Bootanimation or the Setup Wizard welcome screen when you first setup the phone after wiping it or installing a new ROM? Do you have adb debugging enabled (Under Developer Options in System Settings)? Because if you do then you can use that to pull files from your device. Otherwise what you try doing is booting into recovery and trying ADB through recovery to see if you can access it that way, another suggestion would be in recovery mode to do a NANDROID backup of your current setup and then transfer the backup to your computer, extract the userdata.img from the NANDROID backup, and then use Linux to view the content of the userdata.img file (This would be a decent place to start). Otherwise I'm afraid you may be out of luck.
I've recently been getting into more security cautious habits with encryption and what not, due to this whole NSA/Big-brother is watching business... But I have a question (more may pop up as this discussion goes on). Sorry if I seem noob-y, I am still getting a hang of all this encryption business. But here's my first round (regarding just the files being backed up):
If I go ahead and do a full phone encryption with my GN2 where will I stand as far as backups to Dropbox/Copy/Google Drive/etc.?
I currently have photos and such backing up to copy, and I often move backups made through recovery to Dropbox and such. If I were to have photos automatically sync to copy or move system backups to dropbox wouldn't that render them basically useless as I am assuming they move out of the phone encrypted (not being decrypted as they exit).
The photos would be unusable anywhere besides my phone right? So moving them off my phone to share vacation photos for instance would be impossible, and if my phone were to crash they'd be irretrievable? Making the backup process pointless.
Wouldn't the back up be rendered useless as well, exactly when I might need said backup? If my phone were to ever crash or die for some reason, I would lose the encryption key, would even be able to do a full system restore through the recovery? It would seem that the encryption key wouldn't be kept with those back up files, so while it might place everything back in its correct place, it would still be unreadable. Or does it maybe keep the key in system files somewhere so that a full backup would restore the key as well?
And my second round of questions (regarding recoveries and what not):
I am also under the impression that I would not be able to flash through custom recovery either as the internal SD would be inaccessible from the recovery being it doesn't have the encryption key. I am currently running OmniROM and it is in a nightly stage still for my phone. I wouldn't be able to update nightly would I? I am assuming since it basically flashes/overwrites system each time, that I would be losing my encryption key and making everything besides system unusable then right?
And what about downloading ROMs to flash/update directly to my phone? As I download them from in browser or another app and they go to the default /downloads folder they would be encrypted. They wouldn't be accessible from there in recovery, but if I were to try and move them out of internal SD to the external SD they would retain encryption and still be inaccessible? So the only way to download ROMs and updates would be from PC and only move them to the external SD?
Overall, this seems to be crippling a lot of the way I use my phone...
Bump?
Sorry, this is already getting buried and I kinda want to know what's going on before I go ahead and do this...
Zombtastic said:
I've recently been getting into more security cautious habits with encryption and what not, due to this whole NSA/Big-brother is watching business... But I have a question (more may pop up as this discussion goes on). Sorry if I seem noob-y, I am still getting a hang of all this encryption business. But here's my first round (regarding just the files being backed up):
If I go ahead and do a full phone encryption with my GN2 where will I stand as far as backups to Dropbox/Copy/Google Drive/etc.?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not (yet) an expert on this, but when you've encrypted your device, it encrypts the file system on your internal memory and SD card. You have to enter a PIN/password when you turn on your device (and when it times out) to gain access. When the correct PIN is entered at boot time, the file system is available as normal - the underlying data is still encrypted, but the file system can unencrypt it in "real time" for use by apps and the system.
So that means that Dropbox et al all see your files as normal, and any copying you do from your device to something on the net (Drive, Dropbox, a server, etc.) works as normal - the data appears normal to the apps and is copied as normal. So photos would copy across as photos, music as music, etc.
Think of it like this: You can't speak Urdu, only English. There is a book you own that is written in Urdu that you want to tell someone about. You find a translator to read the book and tell you what it says. He reads the first page in Urdu, translates it in his head to English, and tells you what it says. You then tell your friend what it says (in English, of course). Your friend writes down what you told him, in English, then tells you something in reply. You tell your Urdu translator what your friend said (again, in English). Your Urdu translator then translates (in his head) what you said from English to Urdu, and writes it down in the book in Urdu.
At no time do you understand Urdu, nor does your friend. Your friend doesn't even know the book is written in Urdu and doesn't care. He never sees it or accesses it directly. If anyone ever steals your book, they can't read it unless they can read Urdu. The book is only useful to you and your friends if you have an Urdu translator sitting there in the loop. (the analogy is imperfect and incomplete but you get the idea).
So, getting back to your phone, if you have it encrypted, the underlying file system deals with translating things on the fly if you've given it the correct password at boot and login time. No apps ever know about the encryption - they just see data as normal (unencrypted). So any app that wants to copy a photo to Dropbox just sees a normal photo - it never sees the underlying encrypted data. But if you don't enter the correct password at boot time, the phone can't boot, and anyone trying to access the data on the phone won't be able to read it unless they know the password.
Does that help or confuse?
Zombtastic said:
I currently have photos and such backing up to copy, and I often move backups made through recovery to Dropbox and such. If I were to have photos automatically sync to copy or move system backups to Dropbox wouldn't that render them basically useless as I am assuming they move out of the phone encrypted (not being decrypted as they exit).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm, this does my head in a bit but lets untangle it:
- you boot into Recovery. The Recovery you're using (obviously) understands encrypted file systems (some versions of CWM do, some versions of TWRM don't for instance - see near the end of this post for a bit more on this). So when you boot into Recovery and enter your PIN/password, it can then read your file system. You can then do a Recovery-based backup of your file system (or individual files, though I'm not aware that you can do this). The backup it creates is written to the encrypted file system and thus encrypted with the same encryption keys used for everything else.
- You boot the phone back up as normal and enter your PIN/password, and start up Android. You then use Dropbox to copy the Recovery backup files to the cloud. So the question is, "Are these files encrypted?" and I think the answer is, "No". Why? Read the rest of this post and hopefully you'll work out the same conclusion. But I'm pretty sure that the data that ends up on the Cloud is not encrypted.
One general comment worth pointing out as an aside (sorry, this paragraph isn't really related to the above but I wanted to point this out somewhere and its still useful) is that each time you encrypt your phone, it creates a unique encryption key - even if you give it the same PIN/password to use. So if you're forced to rebuild/reflash/wipe your phone in the future, it won't be able to access any data that is still on there (in internal or SD memory) since it won't know the previous encryption key. So you'll have to wipe all data and start again. And at that point, if you choose to encrypt your fresh, newly initialized phone, it will have a new, unique encryption key that won't work on any encrypted data from previous. So if for instance, you plug in an SD card that was encrypted on your phone in an earlier ROM, it won't be readable even if you know the correct PIN/password, since your phone will be using a different underlying unique key.
Zombtastic said:
The photos would be unusable anywhere besides my phone right? So moving them off my phone to share vacation photos for instance would be impossible, and if my phone were to crash they'd be irretrievable? Making the backup process pointless.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, if you're following this, you'll now understand that moving your photos off your phone could be done two ways:
- while you're using the phone as normal (ie. you've booted it, entered your PIN/password, and copying your photos to Dropbox via an app while you're logged on. If you do it this way, you're simply copying photos as normal that can be viewed as normal in Dropbox.
- by copying backups generated while in Recovery. But Recovery will be firstly mounting the encrypted file system successfully (if you gave it the right PIN/password and your version of Recovery supports encryption), which means it can read your photos as normal files, then backs them up into its own normal Recovery file/folder structure and writes them to your encrypted file system, so the underlying data is encrypted unbeknownst to Recovery. Then when you boot up your phone and log in successfully to Android, you can access that data as normal (and unencrypted). So when you then copy it to Dropbox, all you're copying is normal Recovery-created backup files. The copied data won't be encrypted (unless Recovery encrypts them itself, independently, which I don't think it does). So you could copy this data to anybody's phone, so long as they were using a compatible Recovery version and probably compatible ROM.
Zombtastic said:
Wouldn't the back up be rendered useless as well, exactly when I might need said backup? If my phone were to ever crash or die for some reason, I would lose the encryption key, would even be able to do a full system restore through the recovery? It would seem that the encryption key wouldn't be kept with those back up files, so while it might place everything back in its correct place, it would still be unreadable. Or does it maybe keep the key in system files somewhere so that a full backup would restore the key as well?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think your logic is correct. The backup would be useless if the phone loses the encryption key, which it would do if you re-initialized your phone and/or did a new encryption. So you can only recover your backed up data if you haven't done either of those things. A solution to this is to use backup software that runs on your phone (Titanium Backup) that gives you the option to encrypt your data. Some caveats to this approach should be obvious:
- you firstly need to decide if you trust your backup software's encryption
- you need to use a strong password and be able to recall it months/years from now when you go to restore your data
- you need to copy your backups off your phone (such as onto your SD card, cloud, dropbox, etc.) in case you lose your phone.
Zombtastic said:
And my second round of questions (regarding recoveries and what not):
I am also under the impression that I would not be able to flash through custom recovery either as the internal SD would be inaccessible from the recovery being it doesn't have the encryption key. I am currently running OmniROM and it is in a nightly stage still for my phone. I wouldn't be able to update nightly would I? I am assuming since it basically flashes/overwrites system each time, that I would be losing my encryption key and making everything besides system unusable then right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tricky - if you flash/update your phone with a new ROM, you will probably be OK so long as you haven't wiped the part of your phone's storage that holds the encryption information. I don't know where this is. But the nightly updates I do to my phone don't normally touch my data - all my apps are still there and it boots identically to the way it did before I updated it. HOWEVER, its possible that an update may force me to wipe my phone for some reason - the update may fail, it may contain significant changes, or I might screw something up. I probably end up completely wiping my phone at least once every 2 months just because I like to play with the latest and greatest ROMs, or I screw something up. So if that happens, I'm going to lose the encryption information and thus would lose everything on the phone.
Of course, I can always restore my apps and data via Titanium Backup, since I back up my stuff quite often and then copy it to Dropbox.
Zombtastic said:
And what about downloading ROMs to flash/update directly to my phone? As I download them from in browser or another app and they go to the default /downloads folder they would be encrypted. They wouldn't be accessible from there in recovery, but if I were to try and move them out of internal SD to the external SD they would retain encryption and still be inaccessible? So the only way to download ROMs and updates would be from PC and only move them to the external SD?
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Hmmm - good question. A simpler question is, "Is my encrypted file system accessible while in Recovery?" I believe the answer is, "Yes, if you use CWM, No if you use TWRM". But I say that because from what I've been reading, some versions of CWM/TWRM can/can't handle encrypted devices. But you'll already have sorted this out at the time you're trying to encrypt your device anyway since the encryption process involves rebooting your phone into recovery I believe - and if you're not using the correct supported Recovery, this step will fail. But if you are using a supported recovery, this step will work, and therefore logically I'd assume that you can access your encrypted file system while in Recovery in the future. I'd imagine Recovery would prompt you for your PIN/password in order to mount the encrypted file system.
So assuming the above is correct, you would be able to access the newly-downloaded ROMs while in Recovery and thus can flash them. But of course, Caveat Emptor with flashing the new ROM - if it forces you to wipe anything, you may end up unable to access any of the data.
Zombtastic said:
Overall, this seems to be crippling a lot of the way I use my phone...
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From what I've been researching, you won't have a problem anyway, because I haven't come across anyone that has successfully encrypted their phone using a custom ROM. Strangely, this ability seems to be unwanted by XDA people. My tinfoil hat tells me that there are people ensuring that this ability continues to not work on custom ROMs until/unless a backdoor capability is found. Hopefully I'm wrong on many counts.
douginoz said:
From what I've been researching, you won't have a problem anyway, because I haven't come across anyone that has successfully encrypted their phone using a custom ROM. Strangely, this ability seems to be unwanted by XDA people. My tinfoil hat tells me that there are people ensuring that this ability continues to not work on custom ROMs until/unless a backdoor capability is found. Hopefully I'm wrong on many counts.
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Amazing post by the way! It does seem very helpful.
BUT it's very funny you mention it not working. Because that's exactly what happened. After not getting a response here or in the ROM's forum for a few days, I decided to just take the plunge and do it. I was just planning on testing everything out my self and figuring it out as I went. The first time it seemed fine, the encryption went through it seemed.
Being as I didn't know any of the info you just enlightened me with, I did fear that nothing was truly encrypted though. Everything was transferring to my computer with a drag and drop and working fine, so I was afraid (without evidence) that nothing was truly encrypted. I asked on the ROM's forum again (still waiting for an answer).
That night, my phone was left plugged in charging, yet some how had turned off in the night. I awake to my phone asking for an encryption key. I enter my key in to no avail. Nothing works and my phone is left unable to boot. It was utterly denying my password. I had to reflash. I asked about that in the forums as well, whether that was normal or if encryption was maybe not implemented yet, etc. The dev running the nightlies for my device has responded to the forum multiple times but not to me. Another user mentioned it might be that it is now merged together as a Galaxy Note 2 ROM and not specifically a T-mobile Galaxy Note 2 ROM (might be possible. Idk.).
Now, I have tried to re-encrypt. Multiple times. But I cannot for the life of me get it to even start now. Every time I go to start the encryption process it shows me the fullscreen image of the android unzipped horizontally (at which point it is supposed to reboot and start encrypting) and it hangs/sits there forever. Not rebooting, not anything. If I hit the back button, the image disappears and it goes back to my phone. Working perfectly fine, like it never even started doing anything. I am not doing anything differently. I don't know what could be happening to stop it from even getting as far as it did last time. Unless the devs maybe started working on it and have disabled it for the time being/screwed it up worse, I dunno.
Not you got me crafting a tin-foil hat...