Hi.
Last time I flashed a new firmware I made a backup of the phone. The problem was that I couldn't get it back after flashing.
So, my question is:
How on earth do I make a backup of everything before flashing. And how do I restore it afterwords.
Thanks in advance
Pemell
Hi pemell,
How did you generate the backup? Yesterday I generated a full backup of my Lumia 800 and the command that I executed was the following:
sudo dd if=/dev/sdX of=~/fulldump
This generated the fulldump file (16GB).
David Ortega.
I'd suggest that you back up in two ways: First in Zune and then via the DD. I would suggest that you create a separate backup of each partition in order to make reflashing easier.
davortsan - I didn't update by cab sending so aren't that familiar with these commands. I guess of course I could find out by some testing and reading.
chrisKringel - two partitions? are there two partitions? If the phone had a memorycard I would get where you're going.
kind of strange there are no step by step guide of how to backup pre flashing and restore afterwords. I'm too much of a noob to write it myself.
pemell said:
chrisKringel - two partitions? are there two partitions? If the phone had a memorycard I would get where you're going.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Let's take a computer for example. When you open up explorer on said computer you see multiple HDD-icons. One for the system, one for Music and Pictures and one for games. This doesn't necessarily mean that this computer has 3 physical HDDs as you can split up a storage device into multiple logical partitions. The computer can easily have only one physical drive.
Same thing goes for our Lumias. They have (as far as I know) only one NAND chip that stores all the data. But this chip is split up into 9 logical partitions, containing the bootloader, serialnumber, mac etc. (head over to the Development Section, a few of the early posts discuss the partitions). When you have a Linux at your hands you can use the DD command to dump every single partition. Of course you should only touch the 9th partition later but better safe than sorry. In order to backup with Linux you have to either run the full dump command from above. When you want to reflash the fulldump every single partitions gets reset to the state from when you created the backup. I never tried this but I would not advise to reflash all partitions. I'd rather advise you to create a single backup of each partition. Charge your phone and enter QUALCOMM mode. Plug it into your Linux and run the commands
Code:
dd if=/dev/sdX1 of=backup1.bin
Code:
dd if=/dev/sdX2 of=backup2.bin
... repeat for every number until the following ...
Code:
dd if=/dev/sdX9 of=backup9.bin
X refers to the mount point where your device is connected. You can use fdisk -l to get the right letter. When you need to restore your device you need only partition 9, but better safe than sorry You never know, these additional backups might come in handy sometime...
What do you intend to do? Do you want to have your Apps back after you flashed your phone?
Thanks Chris, a perfect post!
I know that most of the information on the phone comes from the cloud, but some doesn't. For exemple I use the call history a lot and I would like to keep all of my sms+mms. Reinstalling all the apps is, of course, something i would prefer not to do at every update (even though they don't come that often).
I'll look into the information you posted and see what I can come up with. / Pemell
pemell said:
Thanks Chris, a perfect post!
I know that most of the information on the phone comes from the cloud, but some doesn't. For exemple I use the call history a lot and I would like to keep all of my sms+mms. Reinstalling all the apps is, of course, something i would prefer not to do at every update (even though they don't come that often).
I'll look into the information you posted and see what I can come up with. / Pemell
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Keeping the specified data like messages, settings and call history during a reflash is not easily possible. When you reflash (or flash) your phone all the data gets wiped and completely new data is written to the phone. There are some homebrew solutions for texts in the WP7 Dev & Hacking boards that might work, depending on your current ROM. Another thing is that the flash you do when using the methods described in this board is different from a flash in a Nokia Care Point. The official flashing flashes in a certain way that the first boot writes all the phone data in the registry, like the WP activation key and some other serials. This won't happen when you write the file in Qualcomm mode. This could cause problems when you try to restore a backup from Zune. I'm not really sure about this, though.
Another thing to note is that some ROMs are not updateable through Zune, on these ROMs you have to do a manual update or a new flash to get up to date.
I would suggest that you wait a few weeks if you can. Maybe Microsoft will announce a cloud backup for text messages when the introduce WP8. A official backup would be the safest way.
Thanks Chris, a good advice.
We are a large urban school district located in southern California that will be soon be distributing approximately 11,000 android tablets to our first grade classrooms. The biggest challenge we’ve had with this project so far is coming up with a way to quickly and reliably clone the devices with all the apps and settings. The approach we’ve been attempting to take is the same as how we would handle PC’s by creating a master image that then gets copied to all the other devices.
Our first attempt at doing this was by using adb backup/restore. This process was less than ideal as it didn’t copy all the settings/preferences that we wanted and still required a lot of manual configuration to get the devices in to our ideal state. The bigger problem we had here was that sometimes it would just hang during the restore. Most of the time it did work but we’ve run in to this restore problem enough that we need something more reliable.
So our current cloning method is using Clockworkmod Recovery. Basically we flash CWM on to the device, make our backup, copy that backup to the destination devices and restore it with CWM. Seems to work great. And it copies everything on the devices so there’s virtually no manual configuration that needs to be done.
However there’s a few caveats with this process. At first we found that it was also cloning the MAC address which of course caused havoc on our wireless network. Through a whole lot of trial and error I found that if I delete /data/nvram/RestoreFlag from the data backup tar the MAC address no longer gets cloned. Thought we were good, but…
The next problem we found when attempting to enroll the devices in to our MDM system. They end up replacing each other because they all show the same UDID and GUID. The MDM app is installed in the backup image but we are waiting until after it is restored to complete the enrollment. I’m not sure if the UDID and GUID is something specific to the MDM or if that’s a global Android thing.
So does anyone know if there something else I can delete from the backup to prevent this? This also raises the question, are there any other items in a CWM backup that should not be copied between devices? Or is there a better method we could use to clones the devices?
The device we are currently using is a Lenovo A1000 (MTK MT8317). After creating the backup I’ve been removing the system and cache tars entirely and only the file mentioned above from within the data tar. So the only parts that get restored are data and boot. Any suggestions are welcome.
ttttttttttttttttt said:
We are a large urban school district located in southern California that will be soon be distributing approximately 11,000 android tablets to our first grade classrooms. The biggest challenge we’ve had with this project so far is coming up with a way to quickly and reliably clone the devices with all the apps and settings. The approach we’ve been attempting to take is the same as how we would handle PC’s by creating a master image that then gets copied to all the other devices.
Our first attempt at doing this was by using adb backup/restore. This process was less than ideal as it didn’t copy all the settings/preferences that we wanted and still required a lot of manual configuration to get the devices in to our ideal state. The bigger problem we had here was that sometimes it would just hang during the restore. Most of the time it did work but we’ve run in to this restore problem enough that we need something more reliable.
So our current cloning method is using Clockworkmod Recovery. Basically we flash CWM on to the device, make our backup, copy that backup to the destination devices and restore it with CWM. Seems to work great. And it copies everything on the devices so there’s virtually no manual configuration that needs to be done.
However there’s a few caveats with this process. At first we found that it was also cloning the MAC address which of course caused havoc on our wireless network. Through a whole lot of trial and error I found that if I delete /data/nvram/RestoreFlag from the data backup tar the MAC address no longer gets cloned. Thought we were good, but…
The next problem we found when attempting to enroll the devices in to our MDM system. They end up replacing each other because they all show the same UDID and GUID. The MDM app is installed in the backup image but we are waiting until after it is restored to complete the enrollment. I’m not sure if the UDID and GUID is something specific to the MDM or if that’s a global Android thing.
So does anyone know if there something else I can delete from the backup to prevent this? This also raises the question, are there any other items in a CWM backup that should not be copied between devices? Or is there a better method we could use to clones the devices?
The device we are currently using is a Lenovo A1000 (MTK MT8317). After creating the backup I’ve been removing the system and cache tars entirely and only the file mentioned above from within the data tar. So the only parts that get restored are data and boot. Any suggestions are welcome.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can try use adb from Android SDK but this method needs root
We did initially try adb but it was inconsistent during the restore phase. Sometimes it would just stop in the middle and never complete. Didn’t try it on a rooted device. So maybe that would have helped…
Anyhow I found the solution to my immediate problem. Figured out what our MDM vendor refers to as the UDID is really the Android_ID. So by deleting that row from the settings database in our master backup image it’ll generate a new one the first time the OS starts after restoring with CWM.
I’m still a little concerned we’re going to find other issues cause by this cloning method later on but I guess we’ll just have to roll with the punches as they come.
In case someone else ever needs to clone devices like this and in the interest of sharing here’s the basic steps we’re following.
1.) Setup the master device as you like with all the apps and settings.
2.) Install Clockworkmod Recovery on to the master device
3.) Boot into CWM Recovery
4.) Mount /data and connect to adb
5.) Delete /data/nvram/RestoreFlag (this step prevents duplication of MAC address)
6.) Using sqlite open the database (this prevents duplication of Android_ID): \data\data\com.android.providers.settings\databases\settings.db
execute: delete from secure where name='android_id';
7.) unmount /data
8.) Create a backup
9.) Boot the device back in to normal mode and copy the clockworkmod folder to your computer. This the backup image you’ll restore on the other devices.
10.) [OPTIONAL] I deleted the system and cache backup files from this folder and also removed them from the nandroid file. There didn’t seem to be anything in these we cared about so removing those speeds up the restore process.
Once you have the backup image here’s how to restore it on the other devices:
1.) Install CWM Recovery
2.) Copy the clockworkmod folder from your computer on to the device
3.) Boot in to CWM Recovery
4.) Restore the backup
5.) Reboot the device back in to normal mode
6.) [OPTIONAL] Complete MDM enrollment
Sorry for the thread grave dig, but thanks for posting info on how to do this. I have attempted cloning in the past and ran into similar issues. My question - is this process the same for Android Lollipop 5.0/5.1? I have some Lenovo K3 Notes I'd like to deploy and cloning would save a lot of time.
Haven’t had the need to do any devices running 5.x versions so can’t say for sure. I would imagine a similar process would work.
But I will provide a bit of an update. Our initial deployment of 11,000 Lenovo A1000 devices have been out in the field since February/March of 2014 and no trouble has come to light using this cloning method. These devices run 4.1.2
Sometime around May 2014 we did another round that was about 300 Lenovo A3000 devices. Don’t have one of these handy and I don’t remember the exact Android version but it was 4.x something.
Then starting in October 2014 we put out another 9000 or so Lenovo A3500 devices. These run 4.4.2
All around so far so good.
For the A3000 and A3500 there were two changes to the process. For step 5 in creating the backup I had to clear the entire nvram directory instead of just the one file. I don’t remember what exactly but there was something undesirable getting copied over. The result of clearing this directory is the first boot after the restore takes a little longer as each app runs through the “update” process at startup. The second change was I could not get CWM to backup and restore to/from the internal memory so instead did it from a micro-sd card. This ended up speeding up the restore process since we didn’t have to copy the backup to each device and instead just moved the sd card with the files already there.
this should be pinned in android dev
also sorry for grave digging? except this should be a maintained topic. why isnt this an ongoing thread?
hello guys, I'm new in the forum, I have a mobile lower-middle-bought band, his name is Master "smartphone 504-4g", owns the mediatek mt6735 cpu 1 GHz, has 1 GB of RAM, Android 5.1, and 4 GB of rOM.
I tried to extract the rom with MTK droid v2.5.3d tool, but at the end of extraction known that there is only the folder / system saved in the PC, and the program has reported to me the error "No space left on device "thing I was aware through consultation of guides on the internet.
now that I broke the phone after trying to install Xposed (bootloop), how can I enclose all the files in the folder / system I have in the PC, in an IMG to flash file with sp flash tool?
Thanks for help
There are ways to uninstall xPosed Framework if you can get into Recovery:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/xposed-lollipop-stuck-bootloop-t3055816
Check Needrom.com for your specific device ROM, if it is a common device, or even uncommon, there may be a ROM there. I've also backed up using that tool, and left with unusable files. If you know your device info, Kernel and Fingerprint, use that info when searching Needrom, usually it's listed with the available ROMs.
This came up in a search, I don't know if it is your device:
http://iris504qdevelopment.blogspot.com/
X-weApon-X said:
There are ways to uninstall xPosed Framework if you can get into Recovery:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/xposed-lollipop-stuck-bootloop-t3055816
Check Needrom.com for your specific device ROM, if it is a common device, or even uncommon, there may be a ROM there. I've also backed up using that tool, and left with unusable files. If you know your device info, Kernel and Fingerprint, use that info when searching Needrom, usually it's listed with the available ROMs.
This came up in a search, I don't know if it is your device:
http://iris504qdevelopment.blogspot.com/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hello, thanks for answering.
I searched in needrom.com for the Rom, inputting the fingerprint, the kernel etc. but could not find anything.
the phone of which you wrote me the link is not what I have.
This is the fingerprint:
Code:
alps/full_x5_g518ql/x5_g518ql:5.1/LMY47D/1456459901:user/test-keys
This is the kernel:
Code:
3.10.65 ([email protected]) (gcc version 4.9.x-google 20140827 (mtk-20150409) (GCC) ) #1 SMP Fri Feb 26 12:20:51 CST 2016
and this is the version of the baseband:
Code:
MOLY.LR9.W1444.MD.LWTG.MP.V42.P7
LMY47D seems to be the version of Lollipop
https://www.google.com/search?q=LMY47D/1456459901&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#safe=off&q=LMY47D
Using only that at Needrom, I found only this:
http://www.needrom.com/download/real-android-5-1/
Sorry, usually searching the fingerprint brings up SOMEthing useful. but in this case, there are absolutely no results.
I found references to the Kernel too, but nothing useful.
ok , I had also tried on google but to no avail .
how can I do then to put it back ?
I considered the idea to buy some one the same , but I do not know other ways to extract the ROM and then perform the flash procedure on the broken device .
What do you advise me to do?
Are there any tutorials on this site about using MTK droid tools? Its not just about backing up the system.IMG file, there should be a boot.IMG and a recovery.IMG, and then you have to create Scatter files. But I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I've used other tools, it seems that all it gave me was a system.IMG. its highly likely that this file contains everything, but it appears that there is an extra step that we don't know about.
Your device may simply be uncommon, especially with the lack of usable info available for it. I've looked up fingerprints before and there is usually some info. Which was why i suggested it.
Give me a few days to research this issue. Also, have you tried device Safe Mode? Reboot, hold both volume up+down as it starts, see if you can get it to boot. If it does, remove xPosed.
Also, do you have any recovery that works? Because you can send the xPosed removal zip through ADB and it will remove xposed. Check my first link.
Sent from my 6S Plus using XDA-Developers mobile app
---------- Post added at 06:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:51 PM ----------
I was trying to replace Kingroot with SuperSU late last night and my device was stuck at the boot screen. But I was able to ADB into the device and run a shell and look around, you might be able to copy the Xposed removal tool that way and then run it
Sent from my 6S Plus using XDA-Developers mobile app
I forgot one detail that I have not written in my previous posts. besides the problem of Xposed I made bull**** to install a rom that I thought was compatible with this device, and the ROM is that of Doogee X5 Pro, which is very similar in characteristics to the my device. only after doing the flash with sp flash tool, the phone will not turn on anymore. Now It is only detectable by usb connection without battery and pressing the volume up button. I apologize if I have not written before.
the recovery of my phone I remember is that stock, and I replaced it with the ever TWRP of Doogee x5 pro, but it did not work.
You bricked it. Time for a new device.
it is very unrecoverable @zelendel?
gae1991 said:
it is very unrecoverable @zelendel?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes it is dead. You messed up flashing something for another device.
I saw on the internet that there is a box to be able to flash the ROM even if the phone is dead. This box is called MTK-box. I have already had experience in the past with the atf-box for Nokia, you say that might work?
I've used ROM's for wrong device on an MT6582 device I had, effectively bricking it. But I was able to find the correct ROM and flash with that, presto, fixed. The problem here, is that we can't FIND the correct ROM.
I highly suggest contacting the seller, was it DHgate? Try to find out. I bought a brand new iPhone 6S+ 1:1 clone from a seller named iBaby888, and I bricked the device while trying to use SuperSU Me. I contacted iBaby and she pointed me to the correct ROM which fortunately had JUST been posted at Needrom by [email protected] I even Bricked it again 2 nights ago, using Vicki Bonick's KR2SU script. Boom, flashed again.
Any device can be reverted to stock I believe, it's just a matter of having the right ROM. Now in the case of using MTK Droid Tools, I think you missed a step:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2730031
5. Start MTK Droid Tools, and connect your phone with the USB cable to the PC. (if Windows install some drivers, then let it install them automatically).
6. Now on the first page of MTK Droid Tools, it should display all infos about the phone when you connect it.
7. If the sqare is Green, then you have root shell and ready, if its not green, press the ROOT button to the right in MTK Droid tools.
8. Click the "IMEI/NVRAM" button and then Backup to backup your IMEI/NVRAM, the backup files will be inside of the MTK Droid Tools folder.
Also you can manually write down your IMEI number just in case it should be lost.
9. Now go to the tap "root, backup, recovery" (in MTK Droid Tools).
10. Click the Backup button, and it will create a complete backup of your ROM. (in the end it will ask, if you want to pack it, just answer no)
11. When it is finished then also click "To prepare blocks for FlashTool", that will convert the backup to be compatible with Spflashtool. (choose the files.md5 inside the backup folder)
12. After the backup is done it will be inside "backup" in the MTK Droid Tools folder. And inside it there will also be a new folder called "!Files_to_FlashTool" Inside there the files for Spflashtool is. So when loading your backup with Spflashtool you must load the scatter file from inside there.
13. Now to install CWM (clockworkmod recovery) In MTK Droidtools, choose "To use boot from phone" and click the "Recovery and Boot" button. It will ask you a lot, just say yes every time, and it will end of sending CWM recovery to the phone and reboot into it on the phone. After you see CWM on the phone you know it is done. You can switch the menu with the volume keys, and the power is the select button.
14. Inside CWM you can also do a complete backup of your phone (remember to have enough space, you can do the backup to the internal storage OR to the SDcard - try "backup" if that fails then choose instead "backup to external sd" or vice versa). I recommed doing that because CWM makes another backup than the one made with MTK Droid Tools. So if you should get problems or loose something, you can always run your CWM backup into your phone and it will be as before.
15. After your done the backup, copy the backup also to a safe place on your PC. Just in case!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There may be a way to convert the backup you made.
I used ROMdump on one of my Goophones, and it created 3 files: config.gz, system.info.gz and system.tar. The System.tar file is a large archive. I suppose I have to convert this into somehting that SPFlash can use, but from what I am reading, I think files like this are supposed to be flashed from Recovery. If you can connect while the device is powered off, you may be able to ADB into the device and start a shell, copy the files in and then start s flash. I have only started working with ADB so I'm not clear on it.
I think best bet, contact the Seller of the device, if that wasn't you have the person who ordered the device send a message, ask if they have access to the ROM, sometimes they will offer to send it to you via Skype, iBaby888 offered that for me, but I found the exact Rom I needed on Needrom. If they don't have it, you can ask for the rom over there, make a post identifying the device and just say "need ROM", provide the fingerprint and Kernel if you do that.
gae1991 said:
I saw on the internet that there is a box to be able to flash the ROM even if the phone is dead. This box is called MTK-box. I have already had experience in the past with the atf-box for Nokia, you say that might work?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
SPFlash and other flashing tools all work that way, even Odin, the device must needs be powered off and in some cases the battery removed. They even have tools to reset the device, if your device does not have a reset button hidden somewhere, the developers of the Flash tools sometimes tell you to disconnect the battery, but in the case of a device not having access to the battery, there is the reset button. Always trip that before each attempt to Flash.
It's basically the same thing, I'm sure OP can flash the device, but we can't find the stock ROM anywhere.
with respect to paragraph 11 forgotten, the program in my case has not created any file called "files.md5", the guide I've read (which is the same that you posted you) I knew I would have to be after the backup, but so was not . In the folder "backup" I only have the folder "/ system" with subfolders "app", "priv-app" etc.
I remember also that the program at the end of the backup asked me if I wanted to compress zip, I clicked "no" and in the right part of the program I read "activities ended in error," I read above and I see the another error "no space left on device", and the guide I've read this error occurs with only the devices with 4 GB of ROM for perform the backup also in the device. anyway thank you for helping me.
my phone id dead
please if you can help me too.
I have an allview phone that has a mediatek mt8735m processor is(dead)does not start,but when I plug it into the usb port of the pc,the your pc recognizes it but does not stay connected
what could I do about it?
Hello there,
I'm wondering if there's anyone knowledgeable to point me in the right direction. Coronavirus (or I) messed up the build.prop file in a Chinese-made JTY-K107 (MT6580 architecture) tablet and now stuck in a soft-brick state. I cannot use adb push or adb sideload (doesn't detect device probably because I had attached another MT device, a Huawei on the PC before and that is the device I pulled the build.prop from to mess with the bigger tablet and now all seems jumbled driver-wise on my Win 10). In any case, I am able to copy to the SD card an update.zip but factory recovery installation is not possible ("installation aborted" - signing issue?). I tried these two zips inside which the original build.prop files are now nestled. It's maybe the commands/scripts that are at fault or it's some signing issue (that hopefully can be tackled). I don't know. I am very reluctant to think about flashing ROMs at this stage. (Porting MT-architecture ROMs are not exactly easy or risk-free, from what I have seen around other threads/forums.)
The link to the folder with the non-working update zips I pulled from other sites or threads (not knowing how I should go about building these files from scratch on my own):
https://app.box.com/s/7byabibx2j0jfo2zlgmg0oi0ca66vkyn
Thanks very much for any info (or possibly a fix of the zips to make it compatible with MT6580 to install the update).
Cheers,
Zoltán
@zanodor
IMHO a simple factory reset may solve your problems.
jwoegerbauer said:
@zanodor
IMHO a simple factory reset may solve your problems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Today I was thinking, people like overcomplicating things: there must be some easy solution. I actually had done that out of frustration (knowing that I had a Titanium Backup on SD) but the boot issue persists (I tried again but all I see is the Android logo for minutes now).
I thought maybe there was a way to repackage my full Titanium Backup into a zip that could be used in Factory Recovery for a restore solution? I perused the net in vain for that too.
I really don't fancy reinstalling Win 10 to fix the driver issues or trying on one of my Linux machines (I am a noob on those too).
Thanks for the answer, anyway.
In the end I managed to restore the tablet (took me 2-3 days of looking around). I'm only writing this up so others facing adb probs can solve their issues on their MTK-built devices. (Actually probably this will work on any device that is not Samsung or whatever old famous brands.)
The first thing to do was sorting out VCOM drivers. There's a Nigerian-sounding guy whose forum Hovatek I followed for tricks on how to go about it (had to download and install Virtual Serial Port Driver to sort out connection issues in Miracle Box/Thunder). Whenever you have some problem, I suggest you include Hovatek in the search string, cause chances are he has a tool and a tut.
Using Miracle Thunder and acting on Hovatek's instructions I made a copy of my firmware. All I really needed was the sytem.img, of course. My bootloader being fine (messing up your device with build.prop only results in a soft brick), it didn't need fixing. Using Assayyed's Kitchen and Hovatek's tutorial again I unpacked the system.bin I extracted with Miracle (which must be all the time used with virus protection off) after renaming system.bin to sytem.img. I exchanged the build.prop and repacked system but didn't wait for the update.zip to be made, instead I took the img file I wanted in the Kitchen. Then tried SP Flash tool to flash system.img on the device but I had issues with the scatter file. So I downloaded a firmware from Boycracked or whoever and used that scatter (in the meantime I overwrote the system.img with mine). I flashed device, turned on the tablet and voila. I hope this helps peeps out there with similar issues.