[Q] Raw root access to NAND memory for backup - Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General

I have a Touch Pro 2 but this applies to any Windows Mobile Phone.
I have searched but surprised to find there seems to be no application which can be installed on a Windows phone which at boot, recursively makes a raw back up of the file system to the SD Card.
This backup could then be written back to the NAND storage memory so that the phone would be in the exact state it was before testing a ROM without having to use various backup programs to get every little thing back the way it was. I.e literally a clone of the phone system memory to the SD card and back.
Please let me know if this is simple impossible and as such I am wasting my time looking
Thanks.

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Related

Backing up my device with spb backup

Ok, I am exchanging my phone tommorrrow because.... well I should do it at least once... LOL, no just some issues... but seriously I am using spb backup and I want to know does this program save everthing and then I will be able to load my programs and files onto my computer when I am done and then load my phone with the same programs and what have you...
sorry I am a noob and don't want to screww this up...
christian15213 said:
Ok, I am exchanging my phone tommorrrow because.... well I should do it at least once... LOL, no just some issues... but seriously I am using spb backup and I want to know does this program save everthing and then I will be able to load my programs and files onto my computer when I am done and then load my phone with the same programs and what have you...
sorry I am a noob and don't want to screww this up...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
in spb backup, you can selesct what you want to backup. if you want to backup your entire phone memory and microsd memory you can. you then specify the save location (specify microsd location) and its done after a few minutes.
when you receive your new pdaphone, just double click the cab file in the microsd and the restore process will begin. Just ensure that your new replacement has the same ROM as the one you have backed up from.
I'm a noob myself, but I will swear by this program. I have had to do a few hard resets with my TyTN and have loaded a specific back up day and voila...everything was great again.
I didn't notice that anything was missing. And heck...even if there was something missing, I didin't feel it.
Ok, but the memory on the microsd card? not the whole sd card right... but the stuff on the phone like any files and what have you that will sync correct... lastyly there isn't a cab file it is a WCE file. just making sure because that is what it made...
oh and one more thing... do you use the unpackage tool from the pc or just use the file on the micro device and place it in the new phone...
in spb backup, you can backup your entire phone with all the settings and apps etc as well as all your files on the microsd card.
spb backup should create a .cab file. to restore, you simply click that cab file and the restore process will begin
jasjamming said:
in spb backup, you can backup your entire phone with all the settings and apps etc as well as all your files on the microsd card.
spb backup should create a .cab file. to restore, you simply click that cab file and the restore process will begin
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe I am crazy but I don't think it does the cab thing... and the file it saved is only 15 megs big... I know my sd card has about 800 megs on it...
can't be that small of a back up could it?
nope, something is seriously wrong.
800mb cannot be compressed into 15megs
jasjamming said:
nope, something is seriously wrong.
800mb cannot be compressed into 15megs
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol lmao... I knew that sounded wierd as heck... but, I don't think it backs up the card. I think just the device onto the card. I don't think this backup program would back up a card because you would have to back it up through the pc... that is not what this does.
my version of spb backup backs up all files - phone mem and sdcard, and places the cab file on he sd card.
not sure which version you have, mine is the latest
how could it compress the file of the storage card and place it on there. If I have a gig card and have used 900 megs... what size file would this possibly create to back up the card and the device. 900 megs is a lot. I am thinking minimum I dunno 300 megs. perhaps 600 megs. Where would this posibbly go to. not the storage device. SPB backup?
OH GEEZ/... I appologize... I am MORON... I was using the full backup selection ASSuMING it meant full back up including card. LOL... NOPE.. you have to choose custom... ahhh so silly.
now I have to remove the musica on the card... but really right now i don't need to deal with the card huh...
also... do you use WMP sync with WMP 11 on the pc... I need to reset my sync... I will post to my other thread so you can see what I mean... it will be at the top.
I have never successfully restored a phone with any of the backup programs availible.
They always miss something (like owner configuration, phone config, e-mail settings and so on..)
i have always done full backup included the sd-card. My reason for doing this was that I were the projectleader for buying and configuring 10 Hermes phones to my Boss's that would look the same, and then be able to restore everything in a flash..
although, this didn't work very good, i went fine as long as I used the backup on my phone, but when trying it on another phone (same model, same rom etc. ) some things would be restored and some weren't
so , just be careful, it might not go well, but then again , it might go very well.
I've never understood the logic behind SPB Backup. From what I understand, it's supposedly possible to back up the entire device, including the SD card, however, from the trial version that I used, it was not possible to save this file on the PC when connected with ActiveSync. So the problem is, if one has a full storage card, and wants to back up their entire device including the storage card, where could the output backup file be stored?
I use SPB Backup and I dont know why I would want to include my storage card in the backup. If I want to back up my storage card I just put it in a cardreader or use sync and copy the entire card over to a directory on my computer. If your device crashes or you just need to do a hard reset, programs installed on your storage card will not be effected. If you have a backup that works, all you need to do is restore from that file. Any program that was installed on your storage card will work fine as ong as you still have the card in your device.
Worked flawlesly... Thanks so much... but I think the card back up is just smarter to just put the whole card on the computer then take it back off...
christian15213 said:
Worked flawlesly... Thanks so much... but I think the card back up is just smarter to just put the whole card on the computer then take it back off...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
glad to see you got it working
brettatk said:
I use SPB Backup and I dont know why I would want to include my storage card in the backup. If I want to back up my storage card I just put it in a cardreader or use sync and copy the entire card over to a directory on my computer. If your device crashes or you just need to do a hard reset, programs installed on your storage card will not be effected. If you have a backup that works, all you need to do is restore from that file. Any program that was installed on your storage card will work fine as ong as you still have the card in your device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is true, but for the same reason, SPB is not a complete backup solution. Do you backup your storage card every time you back up your device internal memory? I have many files that I store on my storage card that are working files - that is, they change in content frequently. Included is an 80Mb SQL Mobile replicated database file. I have actually had a program corrupt my SD card at one point - such that I had to restore it (I did have a manual backup of this, but it was out of date).
At the moment, I still do SD card backups manually anyway, and just use Activesync for incremental backups every time I connect, because it's basically the same as using SPB, and saves having to use a 3rd part program to swap and copy files.
When restoring from Activesync, all I need to do is a soft reset, do a forced refresh of PIM data (contacts, tasks, appointments) from the PC, and everything else is fine. The only thing I find necessary is, after a hard reset, to soft-reset my device on the first 'boot' before the 3 second auto-installation. I don't use a cooked ROM because the programs I like to have on my PPC change all of the time.
Clarify
Just to clarify for me as I am a noob to WM5 and HTC.
If I use SPB to backup EVERYTHING except my SD card (which I can manually backup whenever and often using a card reader and PC), I will have a single CAB file with all settings.
So if I do a Hard Reset and lose everything, then before the 3-sec auto installs from the service provider I do a Soft reset to stop those. Then I run the backup CAB file and supposedly everything will be back to the way it was...meaning all registry hacks, email accounts setup, user info, today screens, ringtones, and other installs like previously installed jars and other cabs I had before.
Is this an acurate description of the SPB program?

Whats the best way to upgrade to WM6?

hi there.
Ive a 2 gig sd card and loads of stuff stored all over the place. if i download Windows Mobile 6, whats the best way to migrate everything? will the unit upgrade link win2k does to XP ?
Mark
No. Rom upgrades wipe the device clean. You will lose all files and programs on the device. Files stored on a memory card will still be there but any programs installed to a card may not function after the upgrade.
yup. And usually you need to perform a hard reset before your upgrade process. So, don't forget to backup all your important stuff.
Also, you might not want to restore your files from a wm5 back-up. I tried it and nothing worked correctly. Had to load each program and tweak from scratch so make note of any serial numbers you may have for your programs.

WP7 Rom Backup

Has anyone been able to backup an activated WP7 Rom. Since the WP7 Rom password which is tied directly to the sd card used when the phone is initially turned on prevents easily swapping stuff around, I like to backup my existing WP7 Rom. Then I can flash a Nandroid Gingerbread Rom and then be able to return flash to my stored activate WP7 Rom/SD card whenever I'd like. Sounds good anyway.
hooutoo said:
Has anyone been able to backup an activated WP7 Rom. Since the WP7 Rom password which is tied directly to the sd card used when the phone is initially turned on prevents easily swapping stuff around, I like to backup my existing WP7 Rom. Then I can flash a Nandroid Gingerbread Rom and then be able to return flash to my stored activate WP7 Rom/SD card whenever I'd like. Sounds good anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You mean a program like Nandroid?
And no. That's not possible at the current moment.
That's too bad, what we need is a version of ClockworkMod that works with WP7.
This would be a great tool if someone brought it out.
Have my HD2 now running wp7,activated and not bad at all, loads of apps missing
that I would normally have in my android build.
Wanting to flash back to android but would also like to backup this activated wp7
and then can swap and change as new stuff comes out.
Any mods willing to take this on.
George
maybe by reg'?
hooutoo said:
Has anyone been able to backup an activated WP7 Rom. Since the WP7 Rom password which is tied directly to the sd card used when the phone is initially turned on prevents easily swapping stuff around, I like to backup my existing WP7 Rom. Then I can flash a Nandroid Gingerbread Rom and then be able to return flash to my stored activate WP7 Rom/SD card whenever I'd like. Sounds good anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am positive there could be a way through Regedit.
I carry a 16gb sd and i noticed it showed a little reserved partition of around 20% in the zune software(which allows its tweaking). The tweak ability was gone after reinstalling windows and zune.. and that made me loss the partition and an extra unused 2gb.
Now the main thing is, i reg edited the phone for portable usb capabilities - viewing its content, moving, creating and pasting stuff around. To regain my full gb's, i wud 've copied all contents to pc and formatted it but then realized it contained all call history and EVERY settings made to the phone(on sd) which the reg editing i did didnt give full access to than only the media folders.
Unless ADVANCED reged' is made to make visible all primary phone settings(for easy pc backup) then . . . . . . . . . yeah....'no cant do'
But this is xda. and i hope someone could figure this out

Upgrading SD card without losing config

Hey there,
I was just wondering if we are able to change an sd card without losing the configuration and apps.
Is it possible to make an image of the complete old (small) sd, then restore this to a bigger one with resizing the data partition to fit the bigger sd card.
Anybody tried this?
thanks,
Neo
It's a good idea,but have a lot of data in sd card now.
Have anyone try it that just flash wp7 on HD2 or other dev.
Sorry 4 my English
Hmmm, intresting idea, i would say the first step is to try a complete copy, i mean, lets assume you have a 4GB SD card, go get another one and ghost it to the new one, exactly the same partitions and content.
if that works the next step would then be trying to edit the partition table to increase its size to a bigger card.
If thats possible i think the only other sticking point would be the OS its self
Someone has had an intresting experience on here which may suggest WP7 has some kind of recovery/safe mode, basically the chap did something to his SD card, he restarted and all of his apps an data were all gone, restarted again and it was all back again.
it was almost as if WP saw there was a difference, stopped its self to check everything was ok then carried on as normal.
Dont for a second assume you can back up your data doing this though, a hard reset on the phone would render the data on the card useless

[Q] Android on SD and partitions etc NO CARD FOUND

Hello,
I am looking for some advice with regard to a speciifc problem I have with my HD2 which is running Android from SD using haret.exe etc to start the system from within Windows Mobile 6.5. The android files are currently held on a 8GB sandisk card. I have prefered this method of using android basically because I find it useful to remove the SD card and create a backup of the files onto my PC, which gives me peace of mind before installing new tryout software, just incase something goes wrong, I know I have the option to go back to a working system very quickly by reloading the files back to the SD card from the PC backup.
Recently I have been thinking that it might be easier if I could backup the files using the phone directly, so I decided to buy a 16GB card in order to partition it into two virtual 8GB drives and load my existing android os files onto one partition, whilst using the second partition to save a backup of android. I thought I should be able to create a backup of android from within WM6.5 instead of having to remove the card and rely on a PC all the time to do this job.
So, using MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition, I formatted and partitioned the new 16GB SD card, I used FAT32 for each partition and proceeded to copy my android files to the first partition of the new card. I installed the card into my HD2 and started the phone up which booted into WM6.5
From within WM6.5, I used the file explorer and could see both partitions appearing as separate SD cards, the first containing all my android os files etc, and the second partition was empty of course. Just as a test I thought I would try a copy and paste of a couple of files from the android partition to the empty partition, and this worked just fine. I thought to myself I am onto a winner here : ) Read on....
With that I decided to boot into android by clicking on haret.exe.
The system started to boot as normal and everything appeared to be going very very well. Booting completed and the system was ready to use..... Then I thought I would have a look around and see if it was running ok. OH DEAR.... It was reporting that it couldn't find the SD card, even though it had booted from it ! All my files and folders inaccessible and any programs that had been moved to SD card wouldn't start up or were missing from the list of installed apps. I still cant understand why the system has booted from an SD card that it cannot find once the system has booted......
This whole excercise was basically motivated by the need to be able to backup and restore the system from one partition to the other without the constant need to remove the SD card and do the job from a PC. (Constant removal of the SD card is starting to bother me incase I end up wearing the card slot out)
So basically my question is can this be done using my existing android install? (I wouldn't want to start again and install from scratch because the system is highly customised, and has took me a long time to get where it is now) I want to be able to have two partitions on my SD card, one which boots, runs android and holds all my files associated with android, and a second parition which I can use to create and restore a backup from within WM6.5.
This is not a desperate requirement, but I feel it would be a lot better than needing to rely on having my PC to hand all the time. This idea has come from my longstanding history of creating backups using GHOST and similar applications in Windows XP. I would like to do the same with my phone. Obviously I would still periodically make a backup to the PC for safekeeping but it would be more convenient to do it with the phone itself.
Any advice on where I am going wrong would be very useful. Also if you can suggest any other ways of making a strong reliable backup that makes an image of 'EVERYTHING' as is from within android directly, please let me know. I have had a look at Titanium backup, but not sure if it would make a mirror image of 'EVERYTHING' the way I would like to do it (like Ghost does in windows). The way I am doing it at present works fine, except for having to constantly remove the card and rely on having a PC about.
Oh by the way the android version on my SD card is Froyo 2.2 incase this matters (I have never bothered upgrading because it works and does what I need it to do)
Many Thanks
Tony
Brookbond said:
Hello,
I am looking for some advice with regard to a speciifc problem I have with my HD2 which is running Android from SD using haret.exe etc to start the system from within Windows Mobile 6.5. The android files are currently held on a 8GB sandisk card. I have prefered this method of using android basically because I find it useful to remove the SD card and create a backup of the files onto my PC, which gives me peace of mind before installing new tryout software, just incase something goes wrong, I know I have the option to go back to a working system very quickly by reloading the files back to the SD card from the PC backup.
Recently I have been thinking that it might be easier if I could backup the files using the phone directly, so I decided to buy a 16GB card in order to partition it into two virtual 8GB drives and load my existing android os files onto one partition, whilst using the second partition to save a backup of android. I thought I should be able to create a backup of android from within WM6.5 instead of having to remove the card and rely on a PC all the time to do this job.
So, using MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition, I formatted and partitioned the new 16GB SD card, I used FAT32 for each partition and proceeded to copy my android files to the first partition of the new card. I installed the card into my HD2 and started the phone up which booted into WM6.5
From within WM6.5, I used the file explorer and could see both partitions appearing as separate SD cards, the first containing all my android os files etc, and the second partition was empty of course. Just as a test I thought I would try a copy and paste of a couple of files from the android partition to the empty partition, and this worked just fine. I thought to myself I am onto a winner here : ) Read on....
With that I decided to boot into android by clicking on haret.exe.
The system started to boot as normal and everything appeared to be going very very well. Booting completed and the system was ready to use..... Then I thought I would have a look around and see if it was running ok. OH DEAR.... It was reporting that it couldn't find the SD card, even though it had booted from it ! All my files and folders inaccessible and any programs that had been moved to SD card wouldn't start up or were missing from the list of installed apps. I still cant understand why the system has booted from an SD card that it cannot find once the system has booted......
This whole excercise was basically motivated by the need to be able to backup and restore the system from one partition to the other without the constant need to remove the SD card and do the job from a PC. (Constant removal of the SD card is starting to bother me incase I end up wearing the card slot out)
So basically my question is can this be done using my existing android install? (I wouldn't want to start again and install from scratch because the system is highly customised, and has took me a long time to get where it is now) I want to be able to have two partitions on my SD card, one which boots, runs android and holds all my files associated with android, and a second parition which I can use to create and restore a backup from within WM6.5.
This is not a desperate requirement, but I feel it would be a lot better than needing to rely on having my PC to hand all the time. This idea has come from my longstanding history of creating backups using GHOST and similar applications in Windows XP. I would like to do the same with my phone. Obviously I would still periodically make a backup to the PC for safekeeping but it would be more convenient to do it with the phone itself.
Any advice on where I am going wrong would be very useful. Also if you can suggest any other ways of making a strong reliable backup that makes an image of 'EVERYTHING' as is from within android directly, please let me know. I have had a look at Titanium backup, but not sure if it would make a mirror image of 'EVERYTHING' the way I would like to do it (like Ghost does in windows). The way I am doing it at present works fine, except for having to constantly remove the card and rely on having a PC about.
Oh by the way the android version on my SD card is Froyo 2.2 incase this matters (I have never bothered upgrading because it works and does what I need it to do)
Many Thanks
Tony
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android looks at storage (and cards and file systems) differently. Assuming you created the partitions okay, you would have to use the Linux mount command (sorry, more reading).
A simpler way to accomplish your goal would be to have everything in one partition on the card. Create a folder and call it "Backup_Folder" or some other name meaningful to you. You will be able to copy/paste in Windows or Android.
Having said that you might want to read more about NAND installations when you have time. It would likely run better and give you more choices. Although a learning curve, once mastered it is as simple and safe as what you are now doing.
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