URGENT: Factory Reset wiped sdcard - Nexus 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I have a rather urgent issue, in which a factory reset wiped my sdcard. First of all, is that normal? This is my first device with no external microsd, and my first time using TWRP. Before, I had been using various versions of Amon-Ra or CWM, and when I factory reset they never wiped the sd card. Next, whether it was normal or not, I need a way to recover my data. I had around 8 gigs in sdcard before it got wiped.
To give you more background info on what was going on, I had a rooted 4.1.2 16GB Nexus, and I decided that I wanted to try PA. I made a nandroid backup of course, and then proceeded to flash the rom. I followed the instructions on the PA thread, first doing a factory reset followed up by the actual flashing, then a wipe of cache/davlik. After I tried the rom out for a few minutes, I noticed that there weren't any redeeming features to make it worth the time-consuming switch from stock to PA, transferring all my data and setting up my settings once more.
I rebooted back into recovery and factory reset again, and then I went to restore and saw that there were no backups. Suspicious, I went to the install menu, and found my entire sdcard folder had been wiped out. What happened?
Edit: I'm currently still on the recovery, afraid to do anything in case I lose my data forever.

Was your boot loader already unlocked or did you unlock it right before you flashed the ROM?

littleemp said:
Was your boot loader already unlocked or did you unlock it right before you flashed the ROM?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply, especially on Christmas, but I got around the issue myself. It had been unlocked for 2 months now.
I noticed that every time I booted into recovery, it would make a "0" folder and move the contents of my sdcard into that "0" folder. Then the 0 folder would go inside another 0 folder, and so on and so forth. It was a really strange issue because I was unable to restore my backup; TWRP could not find my /sdcard/TWRP/backup folder, because it did not exist! It was in sdcard/0/0/TWRP/backup. I used the built in file manager in TWRP, and moved the contents back into the proper folder. I could then restore, and now I'm feeling relieved.
However, two issues remain; the 0 folders are still there, and storage transfer speeds seem very slow.
Edit: I got rid of the 0 folders by moving my folders out of them and then deleting the 0 folders, but the size of my files seem to have been inflated. What took up 6 gigs before is now taking up 8.8gb. Lol wut? Also, when I hook it up to a computer it tells me that 12GB has been filled. So many discrepancies.

androidwkim said:
Edit: I got rid of the 0 folders by moving my folders out of them and then deleting the 0 folders, but the size of my files seem to have been inflated. What took up 6 gigs before is now taking up 8.8gb. Lol wut? Also, when I hook it up to a computer it tells me that 12GB has been filled. So many discrepancies.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am having the same problem. I think everybody has that problem, because it's caused by jelly bean 4.2 and its new emulated storage.
The only way I have found to get arround it was to copy all files on the computer from the sdcard, then formating the sdcard in recouvery and moving everything back.
Only problem I am having right now is that I can't for the love of it copy my files. Stupid MTP filesystem is really buggy and extremly slow. I constantly crashes or gives me multiple erros. The one I am having at the moment is something about a parameter error.
Very annoying the stupid filesystem under 4.2.
Btw. I can't get the adb pull command to work either. When I tell it to copy system/storage/emulated/legacy (I believe thats where the sdcard is actually loccated, right?!) it doesn't copy a single file.
If anybody could help me I would be very greatfull.

xaboren said:
I am having the same problem. I think everybody has that problem, because it's caused by jelly bean 4.2 and its new emulated storage.
The only way I have found to get arround it was to copy all files on the computer from the sdcard, then formating the sdcard in recouvery and moving everything back.
Only problem I am having right now is that I can't for the love of it copy my files. Stupid MTP filesystem is really buggy and extremly slow. I constantly crashes or gives me multiple erros. The one I am having at the moment is something about a parameter error.
Very annoying the stupid filesystem under 4.2.
Btw. I can't get the adb pull command to work either. When I tell it to copy system/storage/emulated/legacy (I believe thats where the sdcard is actually loccated, right?!) it doesn't copy a single file.
If anybody could help me I would be very greatfull.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had the same fear, emotion and discovery a week ago when trying a new Rom thanks multi users feature .
You may try to switch from MTP mode to MSC in system setting to increase the speed.
Take care of the different tools because as example JROMFlasher will format the SD card for better cleaning. (I had backup!)

I think I read that the Factory Reset from the settings menu WILL erase everything.
Formatting with ClockworkMod, saves your sdcard files.
I also recommend unlocking asap just for laughs. Even if you don't plan on rooting or Modding... unlocking will ensure your files won't be deleted if you decide to or something happens that requires it
Sent from my Nexus 7 using XDA Premium HD app

Related

Can I remove my secondary partition???

Ok, first off, I'm new to this, I've only had my android for about 1 1/2 months. I've read a million threads and posts to absorb information so I don't have to ask stupid questions like this. However, I've searched and tried several different methods, and none have worked. I apologize in advance because I'm sure the information is already somewhere in this forum, but I can't seem to find the specific information for my phone, Mt3G.
The problem I'm having is that last week I decided to partition my my sdcard so I could see how apps2sd worked. After some trial and error, I got it to work.
1. 64 mb swap
2. 512 mb ext
3 remainder on FAT32
After a couple of days, I started notices lags and also issues such as not being able to upload images to facebook, trouble downloading apps from the market, not being able to receive MMS messages or sending them, etc. Overall, it seems like partitions are causing my phone to lag, run slow and other small glitches, so I would like to remove all the partitions, format the sdcard, and just have one single FAT32 partition, as if it were stock. I no longer want apps2sd.
I've tried 'droid explorer', I've followed the cyanogen tutorial on how to uninstall apps2sd via terminal emulator, I've tried wiping, formatting, everything, nothing works. Every time I reboot my phone, the secondary partition still remains, although it says total space unavailable now, but its still there, and according to droid explorer, the apps are still there. I just want to get rid of everything because as of right now, most of my downloaded app icons don't appear, but when I go to download the apps at the market, they say they are already installed. I dont know, I'm about to just throw my phone at the wall.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. By the way, here is my current setup.
Phone: MT3G
ROM: Cyanogen 4.2.11.1 + Cyanogen recovery 1.4
Instead of Cyanogen's recovery, install Amon_RA's 1.5.2G
It will let you format your SD back to Fat32, or you can repartition it the the three, with just the click of a trackball.
In doing so, you will more than likely have to reflash the rom due to you losing all your apps and whatnot that's also on the ext partition, since you will be deleting it.
Backup all your stuff onto your computer first, as you will lose it all when it wipes the slate clean.
@tazz, hey, thanks for your reply. So let me elaborate, when I originally partitioned my card I had amon_ra on my phone. When I started noticing problems, I went back into recovery to see if there was any way to delete or repartition back to a single FAT32, but I couldn't find anything. I stated to back track and flashed CM recovery back on my phone, wiped, reflashed ROM, etc. Nothing...in fact, it caused even more force closes and still, my apps didn't appear in the app drawer, although according to market place and android explorer, they were installed.
Anyway, I took your advice, reflashed amon_ra recovery back on my phone, but I still do not see an option to partition with a single FAT32. All I'm seeing is the option to repartion the SD card, then it gives me the option to pick swap size, ext size, then the remainder on the fat32. Do I just set the swap and ext to 0? Also, do I wipe at all in this process?
yeah just put it to zero. i was thinking about his 1.2.3.
if you put them to zero, it should work out the same either way.
Hmmm....I must be doing something wrong. Went into recovery, selected 'partition sd', set swap to '0', set ext to '0', remainder to FAT32, flashed ROM, system reboot. Secondary partition still appears when I go into the sd storage under settings. Also, android explorer still showing apps in data folder, and marketplace still shows apps such as astro file manager still installed. I'm lost.
Update: Tazz, I followed your instructions, reflashed ROM, rebooted. Secondary partion still appeared. However, I noticed that the option for 'unmounting sdcard' was available. So, I unmounted and physically removed my sdcard to see if this was causing the problem or if it was something internal. After removing sdcard, I still had my applications showing that they were installed, but not showing in app drawer. I decided to try flashing an older CM ROM, just to see what happens. It worked! After flashing older ROM verision, I reflashed newer version and all my problems were solves.
Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for helping me get rid of my partitions.

SD Card changed format, lost all my apps, can't reinstall. Help!

So I just traded my iPhone for a rooted MyTouch. It has the Cyanogen mod I believe. Well all of a sudden I could not access my SD card and when I tried to open it on my computer it said 'Wrong Format'. Wouldn't work on the phone either. So I formated Fat32 and thought I could start over.
It still shows my apps installed in the Marketplace, although they were on the SD and deleted. I can't uninstall them, but it thinks they are there, somewhere. Has anyone had this problem? I am relatively new to Android and rooting. I had a jailbroken iPhone before. Thanks!
kinda depends really. I would suggest first going thru recovery console if you are using amon recovery and partition sd card there. With most modified roms you have apps 2 sd so there are actually 3 partions. The biggest is fat32 for data like music, then ext2,3,4 for applications then a linux swap partition to help expand the ram on the phone and if you formated on PC or from settings on phone those partitions are gone. So I would do that first and then try to uninstall from market and reinstall again if not you may need to wipe and restart the device.
How do I get into recovery mode? I tried going to the terminal and using the flash_image recovery /sdcard/imgfile but it says I do not have permission?
Any ideas??
If your phone has been rooted right by the previous owner, you can access the recovery mode by first powering down, then pressing home and power at the same time.
Ahh! That worked! thanks!
I have a variation on this problem and lost my apps and Market, hope someone can help. Started with the SD card coming unmounted randomly, known issue with EVO I guess. Followed the recommendation of reformatting the SD by plugging it into a Windows PC and doing a FAT32 format. I backed up everything I could "see" from SD to C: drive. I am running a custom ROM with APPS2SD feature and Clockworkmod recovery. I'm very new to Linix and Android but, it looks like there is a Linix Ext3 partition that is made by APPS2SD on the SD card and that is where all my apps where, including android Market app. So, upon copying all the folders back to the re-formatted SD I had no apps and no android Market to able to re-download all my apps. I guess Market is like a licensed deal that you can't just get a .apk of and reload it. I do HAVE a current recovery backup that was on the FAT32 directory of the SD card but it appears the the Ext3 partition is not in that recovery file. I tried booting into recovery with Clockworkmod and reformatting the SD again, I tried a "Restore ext3.img" but Clockworkmod comes back with 'sd-ext.img not found" so I am guessing that the Linix Ext3 partition backup was stored IN the Ext3 partition of the SD(?) and the system and data stuff is stored in the FAT32 recovery file. Brilliant idea (not)! I tried a re-flash of the ROM, flashes OK but no apps. Anyway, the SD is properly partitioned now, the FAT32 stuff is back on, I don't know how to look in to the Est3 partition but, I know there is one program there cause I installed a file explorer by downloading and executing an .apk and there was an option to install it to SD. Going to factory reset and starting over again is not an option. Any ideas please?
SOLVED this issue:
apperantly the android market application is called "vendor.apk" and can be downloaded from various sites BUT WAIT, it's not that simple. Apperantly the vendor app has to be specific to your phone (hardware)? On a whim, I downoaded the previous version of my custom ROM (happedned to be Fresh ROM) .zip, I extracted the vendor.apk from the .zip and installed that. Then, I had an apk called MarketUpdater.apk, or something like that, that had installed in the phones system/app from the last Fresh ROM update. I ran this to update the vendor (android market) to the latest version, then I ran that. Did it work? NO, it crashed hen I tied to run market. I then did a re-boot. Did it it work? NO Upon attempting to reboot it got stuck in a loop and froze. Very scary. So, remove the battery and try again. I think I had to remove and re-install the SDcard somewhere in there to get it to a first time boot and, after a re-boot, whalla, come back with a working market. Market remembered all the apps that I purchased and I re-downloaded everything. Of course, I don't know for sure where they are stored right now (SD card or phone??)
And, my original problem of SD card constantly coming unmounted has been fixed.

corrupted CWM nandroid backup? repairable?

Im trying to restore a copy of my droid x system from this AM.
but as its copying the Data portion, i get into a file that it hangs on part of "casino" a .jpg, causes the whole thing to lock up and stop responding.
Anyway I can fix this backup? I have another backup but it restores the whole data section in 2 minutes...it doesnt seem to work either (((( Help!
apparently karma is not my freind this week
my backup was cut short due to lack of space on the SD card and CWM didnt notify me
kodakeos said:
Im trying to restore a copy of my droid x system from this AM.
but as its copying the Data portion, i get into a file that it hangs on part of "casino" a .jpg, causes the whole thing to lock up and stop responding.
Anyway I can fix this backup? I have another backup but it restores the whole data section in 2 minutes...it doesnt seem to work either (((( Help!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have any other backups you can restore to? I would recommend taking a backup of where you are at right now, even though you obviously want to restore to an earlier point.
If all of your backups are having the same issue, you may have a corrupt SDcard or a corrupt file that is sitting in your /data partition. This is not a definite, so don't freak out, but if you see the same result with many/all backups, I would look into this.
If you can deal with wiping your /data partition... I would take a backup of your current setup, then wipe /data... Then try restoring that backup... If it works, then I would be inclined to believe that one jpeg file may be corrupt, and is causing problems for any backup that has that file in there...
This is just a speculation from the info you have provided and around 6 years of IT work....
EDIT: NEVERMIND! It looks like you posted again while I was typing up my guess, looks like I was off! LoL
yea i was basically able to salvage most of it between the system of one, with the data of another. so im about 75% back to where i was.
obviously i need to either a: keep less stuff on my SD card, or B: use my spare 2gb card for backups...
One thing you may want to try if you are running out of space from lots of Clocwork backups...
Create a folder on your PC/Mac and copy off the folders in the yyyy-mm-dd-hh-mm format and copy your backups from your SDcard onto your computer. Then you could delete them off of your sdcard. When I started making a lot of backups I was running out of room and copied some off. Then I deleted them off my sdcard. I have tested moving them back on, and restoring one that was on my PC, and didn't have any issues!
Just a thought...

[Q] reboot problem / full wipe

Hi there,
i'm having some trouble with my S4, i9505.
I installed Resurrection Remix last weekend, and it hasn't been stable ever since. (cm-Resurrection_Remix_LP_v5.3.2-20150127)
In the beginning it would hold out for a few hours, but it started to reboot more and more frequently.
Finally, it would start to reboot, even whil rebooting into the recovery. Very annoying, and very hard to do anything.
I managed to restore to a nandroid backup from October 2014, but there's another problem.
I had installed that rom early in October It's Cyanogenmod 11.x.... Not sure exactly which version. I used the installer provided by cyanogenmod.org. That one has served me well for a long time, but lately I was having memory issues. I couldn't install new apps and even updating no longer works. I have >4GB free on my external SD, but installing apps to SD didn;t work. Moving apps to SD to make space was no go either. I kept getting "insufficient space" The operating system showed less than half the space on the internal memory was used. Lots of space left, but no space for apps apparently. ES file explorer doesn't think there's much space left on the internal SD. a few 100 MB max.
That's what tirgered moving to RR, but clearly that did'nt work well. I did a factory wipe from the recovery and cleared the cache.
What struck me is that the factory wipe isn't very thorough. Lots of data from apps was still accessible when Resurrection Remix was still behaving.
I tried to install cm-12-20150420-OPTIMIZED-FINAL-jflte.zip, but the installation quickly aborted saying it couldn't mount /system.
I managed to put my nandroid on the SD card and restored to the old situation, but the memory problems are still there.
In short, any idea what could be causing this behaviour?
and is there a way to do a complete and absolute wipe, so that any errors that may have accumulated over time will be erased?
I get the feeling that some link or redirection is wrong and the installs that I do get botched just a little bit.
Cheers,
Everything you are using is old and highly outdated.
1. Flash the latest TWRP from here:
http://teamw.in/devices/samsunggalaxys4internationalqualcomm.html
2.
Download the rom from my signature.
3.
Flash away and it will work fine.
Cool. Thanks. Will try that!
M
Hmmm. Didn't fix it.
OK. So I did that. ... As my phone thinks it's full, I had to do the install using terminal emulator.
Once that was done, it was smooth sailing.
Just started up again. But I only can get a few of the apps I used to have. I'm getting "device memory full" again.
I did the wipe function from twrp. Including wipe of Dalvik cache.
The "storage" item in settings says I have 397 mb available of 9.13gb, but visually the free space looks about 4 times larger than the .75 or so gb of data used by apps, etc.
Any ideas?
Menno
Mainow said:
OK. So I did that. ... As my phone thinks it's full, I had to do the install using terminal emulator.
Once that was done, it was smooth sailing.
Just started up again. But I only can get a few of the apps I used to have. I'm getting "device memory full" again.
I did the wipe function from twrp. Including wipe of Dalvik cache.
The "storage" item in settings says I have 397 mb available of 9.13gb, but visually the free space looks about 4 times larger than the .75 or so gb of data used by apps, etc.
Any ideas?
Menno
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The memory full mesages is displayed when your internal storage is full. TWRP never wipes your internal storage. Delete the files manually or in TWRP select advanced wipe and select /data partiton.
Lennyz1988 said:
The memory full mesages is displayed when your internal storage is full. TWRP never wipes your internal storage. Delete the files manually or in TWRP select advanced wipe and select /data partiton.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow! thanks.
I went into TWRP and used the file manager.
Browsed around a bit and found a folder in /Data which belongs to Clockworkmod. The Cyanogenmod filemanager doesn't get there.
It basically had copies of all the nandroid backups I had made. with Clockworkmod. Not cool. I had made the backups to SD card, so apparently CWM forgot to delete these, or so.
Anyway, I deleted those folders and I'm back in business.
Cheers!
Issues after OtA
So..... just posting on my original thread. Hope someone is seeing this.
Last clean update went well... Apart from a few minor issues the wifi and bluetooth stability.
But since mid August my phone was nagging me about a new update being available. So I went for it finaly. Did OTA update 2 days ago.
Did not go well.
Gmail broken, Google Play crashing and bad wif stability.
Read around a bit on this forum.. Decided to do a clean install. MUCh better! :victory:
But... 2 issues remain...
1. my wifi doesn't seem to want to connect when I want it to. I always had issues with the wifi not connecting when the wifi strenght was not perfect, but since the August update, I can be standing right next to the AP and it's not connecting. My AP shows up right on top, and it just says saved. When I tap it and press connect, nothing happens. It does randomly connect every once in a while, for a couple of minutes... It works perfectly, great bandwitdh... and then nothing. It's not my AP. I'm posting from my laptop which has great connectivity. I put in the neighbour's wifi. Same thing.
2. How do I get rid of the Google search bar on top of the screen. Can't find it in the settings.
Oh. and when I switched over to cM12, I seem to have lost root access. How to get it bacK?
Cheers,
Menno

[Q] Can't mount internal storage TWRP

So, things have massively escalated today and my phone appears to be soft bricked. Joy. I'll run through what happened.
1. I encrypted my phone using the built in tool in Cyanogen Mod. After it rebooted, it was glitchy and I lost a load of apps, the phone really wasn't working well. Rebooted again, but no improvement.
2. I went into TWRP (2.8.x) to restore my old backup, which was on the SD card. After the initial wipe of the internal storage, the log showed
E: Can't mount storage
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
and the restore failed.
3. I reboot and phone goes straight into recovery mode as there is no OS installed (the recovery wipes the internal storage first). Internal Storage is now showing as '0 MB'. I cannot find a way of mounting this storage anymore. Have tried factory reset (doesn't work because file system isn't mounted), and rebooting a few times but no avail.
* There seem to be some options about flashing a .pit file using odin, but I do not have this file. My phone is the Note 4 SM-N910F Model. If I can do this through Odin then maybe this will resurrect the file structure and make this storage mountable?
* There may also be another option using ADB but I still don't know what commands to use.
Any help would really be appreciated as it seems there is some possibility of a fix. That being said my hopes are not that high...
I believe I may have fixed this. I would like to keep this up here in case in helps anyone in the future, I would imagine this is only useful for people who have encrypted their device. I'm not an Android expert so can't be responsible for any damage to devices or data loss etc.
It seems that the encryption must have gone wrong somewhat and this is likely to have impacted on the file system.
Although I couldn't wipe on the device, I was able in recovery to FORMAT data (not just wipe). Go to the wipe menu, then format. After this, reboot into recovery again and you should be able to mount again. It rebuilt the filesystem too.
This should be a quick fix that may help a few people with the issues with not being able to mount the file system. I hope this can help at least one person!
I managed to restore from my backup after and phone is now working. Thanks anyway!
Is there any way to set the default storage of play store apps to the sd card?

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