Database Users

[Q] Noobish question on CWM , partition sizes and restores

So, if I have a ROM (CMYLXGO's Stock Desire) w/ 425 MB system partition and I back it up with CWM , then install another ROM with 150MB system partition (installing the 150MB partition prior to install of course), do I need to repartition back to the 425MB prior to restoring the 425MB partitioned backup?
Common sense would tell me yes, BUT, I figured I would ask just in case I am wrong!

JWhipple said:
So, if I have a ROM (CMYLXGO's Stock Desire) w/ 425 MB system partition and I back it up with CWM , then install another ROM with 150MB system partition (installing the 150MB partition prior to install of course), do I need to repartition back to the 425MB prior to restoring the 425MB partitioned backup?
Common sense would tell me yes, BUT, I figured I would ask just in case I am wrong!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, you definitely need to re-partition.

Thank you - thats just what I needed to know!

JWhipple said:
Thank you - thats just what I needed to know!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
glad I could help....

What will be the problem if i dont perform repartition?

I had been wondering if a nandroid backup would restore old partition sizes, since it backs up everything, but yeah i guess it makes sense that it can't change the size of the recovery partition, since that's what cwm is running from at the time of backup/restore. But does nandroid restore system and cache partition sizes?
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

huggs said:
I had been wondering if a nandroid backup would restore old partition sizes, since it backs up everything, but yeah i guess it makes sense that it can't change the size of the recovery partition, since that's what cwm is running from at the time of backup/restore. But does nandroid restore system and cache partition sizes?
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, the restore just loads the partition contents into the partition, it doesn't adjust the sizes, or recreate them,, just loads the backed up contents into it.

[Q] What's the best way to backup the data partition?

Since the unlock process can wipe the data partition, I need to back it up.
What's the best way to do this? Should I just use Root Explorer to copy the entire /data directory to the external sdcard? Or is there a better way?
Will the appropriate ownership and permissions be preserved?
And do I need to backup just "/data/data" or do I really need to backup the entire "/data"?

I believe that Clockwork Recovery Mod is designed to do some kind of full image backup including /data...

quordandis said:
I believe that Clockwork Recovery Mod is designed to do some kind of full image backup including /data...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Doesn't help me since the idea is to backup /data before unlocking.

Haphim said:
Doesn't help me since the idea is to backup /data before unlocking.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Once you are unlocked there is no going back. What is the point of backing up /data before hand? Unlocking will not erase any data on the phone.

The guide referenced by the main Pudding thread (http://briefmobile.com/how-to-unlock-the-atrix-4g-bootloader) says that the data partition will be wiped.
Is that incorrect?

Haphim said:
Since the unlock process can wipe the data partition, I need to back it up.
What's the best way to do this? Should I just use Root Explorer to copy the entire /data directory to the external sdcard? Or is there a better way?
Will the appropriate ownership and permissions be preserved?
And do I need to backup just "/data/data" or do I really need to backup the entire "/data"?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try to root your phone first, then use titanium backup to backup all your apps data
Enviado desde mi MB860 usando Tapatalk

I was under the impression from the guide that the entire data partition would be wiped, not just apps data.

well /data simply holds your homescreens and your app data does it not?
You can't preserve your homescreens cross-roms, but you can use tibu to backup and restore app data.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe thats how it works.
Cheers

"Use titanium for apps (it will backup apps and it's data)
Mybackup Root for Sms/MMS/Bookmarks/settings "
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1136261

[Q] Resize rocovery partition

If I resize my recovery partition on my HD2, is all data on my SD card lost? and would i have to reflash a new NAND ROM?

Repartitioning your internal memory will not affect the data on your sd card in any way.
Yes, you would have to flash a new ROM, or restore a backup.

so i take it the recovery partition clockwork uses it not on that sd card
which leads to my other question, if my rom requires a 169mb recovery and i use a 400mb recovery, will it work?

yes it will work, but you will waste 231mb of rom space. This is because you will set a system partition of 400mb, and load into it 169mb of files, BUT once the rom is running, all your user data, installed apps, etc get put into different partitions. Nothing will use the extra 231mb in the system partition, so it will be completely wasted and unuseable.

abdalla21 said:
so i take it the recovery partition clockwork uses it not on that sd card
which leads to my other question, if my rom requires a 169mb recovery and i use a 400mb recovery, will it work?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
is there any sense rom that will work on a 150mb recovery? if so please share the link

Very unlikely. Why not just change the size?

samsamuel said:
Very unlikely. Why not just change the size?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
bored on my help desk job, was gonna mess with my rom,but if im goin to resize i rather do it at home....lol
think im gonna try the bliss rom, any takes on it?

well you could always flash the rom, play with it, then when you get home, do a cwm backup, change the part size, reflash the rom, then in cwm do an advanced restore and just restore the sd-ext and data partitions. hey presto, system size changed and any settings you configure today will be restored into the new flash.
CAnt comment on the rom, i only use typhoon.

abdalla21 said:
so i take it the recovery partition clockwork uses it not on that sd card
which leads to my other question, if my rom requires a 169mb recovery and i use a 400mb recovery, will it work?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
CAUTION; the CWM partition make it is for the SD and it WILL ERASE ALL DATA ON SD , for partition internal memory u have to use other tools on a PC (my favorite its HD2 toolkit)
Enviado desde mi HTC HD2

Typhoon has a nice stable sense rom.?
Send me a link
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

Typhoon is a cm7 rom. Cm7 roms don't have sense.
I CAN highly recommend it, though. I've been on an older version typhoon for over a month now, and the only bug is the occasional failed video capture. Annoying, but doesn't happen often.

[Q] /system.tar backup and sd card partion

Hello,friends i need two solution from you people....
1.how to backup entire /system folder for using it in android kitchen working rom.
can i backup with root explorer or use some commands in terminal emulator..
i think terminal commands will bakup it in .tar and will not change anything in the files
so please give me the commands to backup system on sd card.
2.secondly what value to put while partioning sd card using rom manager....
thanks in advance.

rohitzz said:
Hello,friends i need two solution from you people....
1.how to backup entire /system folder for using it in android kitchen working rom.
can i backup with root explorer or use some commands in terminal emulator..
i think terminal commands will bakup it in .tar and will not change anything in the files
so please give me the commands to backup system on sd card.
2.secondly what value to put while partioning sd card using rom manager....
thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't know number 1,
I have a SD card partition of 1024 MB and 32 MB swap. I can install 500 apps . So I guess these values are more than enough

rohitzz said:
Hello,friends i need two solution from you people....
1.how to backup entire /system folder for using it in android kitchen working rom.
can i backup with root explorer or use some commands in terminal emulator..
i think terminal commands will bakup it in .tar and will not change anything in the files
so please give me the commands to backup system on sd card.
2.secondly what value to put while partioning sd card using rom manager....
thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. nand backup via CWM or Amon_RA recovery
2. don't use ROM Manager (EVER for ANYTHING), either make the partition via recovery or via the built in tools
---------- Post added at 12:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:19 PM ----------
QuantumFoam said:
Don't know number 1,
I have a SD card partition of 1024 MB and 32 MB swap. I can install 500 apps . So I guess these values are more than enough
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, 1024 goes a long way but if you got a big SD card you might want to go for twice that and swap isn't just not needed, it's not even used unless you make a separate script to use it which ISN'T included in most roms.

Which kind of built in tools?
Sent from my Blade using xda premium

QuantumFoam said:
Don't know number 1,
I have a SD card partition of 1024 MB and 32 MB swap. I can install 500 apps . So I guess these values are more than enough
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why anyone don't know 1. Step!!!
Sent from my Blade using xda premium

rohitzz said:
Why anyone don't know 1. Step!!!
Sent from my Blade using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Jinxxed posted it above

Tar will only backup what is inside the system partition . For a more complete backup one needs backup of all partitions and boot loader with recovery. It possible only by a tool like CWM.
Also for a phone with 512 MB RAM one doesn't need swap. It mai actually degrade the performance.
My Idea ZTE Blade has only 256MB RAM, I am using CM7.2 . In manage applications total of free plus used is only 128MB. So I enabled swap using m2sd, it's 256MB, actual usage varies from 80MB to 130MB.
My phones performance is greatly improved.
Sent from my Idea Blade

rahulsa said:
Tar will only backup what is inside the system partition . For a more complete backup one needs backup of all partitions and boot loader with recovery. It possible only by a tool like CWM.
Also for a phone with 512 MB RAM one doesn't need swap. It mai actually degrade the performance.
My Idea ZTE Blade has only 256MB RAM, I am using CM7.2 . In manage applications total of free plus used is only 128MB. So I enabled swap using m2sd, it's 256MB, actual usage varies from 80MB to 130MB.
My phones performance is greatly improved.
Sent from my Idea Blade
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. CWM will use TAR to make the backups so it's the same thing, to make a clone of the partition you'll need to use cc.
2. It won't degrade the performance in any scenario, it MAY be unnecessary and unused though.
3. That's not swap, that's using an extended partition to store data, what you're looking at is internal storage and more specifically the internal partition /data

Jinxxed said:
1. CWM will use TAR to make the backups so it's the same thing, to make a clone of the partition you'll need to use cc.
2. It won't degrade the performance in any scenario, it MAY be unnecessary and unused though.
3. That's not swap, that's using an extended partition to store data, what you're looking at is internal storage and more specifically the internal partition /data
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Ok, new learning for me.
2. Good to know this. I was bit worried initially with my 256MB swap size. As I saw 0 or 32 MB swap in many posts. But after 2 weeks I confirm that it was the best thing I did for my Blade. Yes it was even better than using sd card's ext4 partition for more space. Low RAM was a bit serious issue for me than low space.
3. I know swap and ext partition are different. I have 256MB swap and 2 GB ext-4 on my class 4 16GB.
Also understand that using m2sd one can mount /data on ext-4 (r mount) and /sdext on internal nand.
Sent from my Idea Blade

rahulsa said:
1. Ok, new learning for me.
2. Good to know this. I was bit worried initially with my 256MB swap size. As I saw 0 or 32 MB swap in many posts. But after 2 weeks I confirm that it was the best thing I did for my Blade. Yes it was even better than using sd card's ext4 partition for more space. Low RAM was a bit serious issue for me than low space.
3. I know swap and ext partition are different. I have 256MB swap and 2 GB ext-4 on my class 4 16GB.
Also understand that using m2sd one can mount /data on ext-4 (r mount) and /sdext on internal nand.
Sent from my Idea Blade
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
3. Just nitpicking but the way it works is to mount data to /sd-ext/data, /sd-ext is just the mount point for your ext partition (which may be ext2, ext3 or ext4 depending on how you configured it during partitioning and how you mount it). Depending on how you do this you can have data, app, dalvik-cache and app-private mounted to /sd-ext/[folder] (this is the common way of using it when you use my script and S2E).

Jinxxed said:
... Depending on how you do this you can have data, app, dalvik-cache and app-private mounted to /sd-ext/[folder] (this is the common way of using it when you use my script and S2E).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
May I know your script name?
Using your script which of above should be moved last, I mean with swap already might take a portion of sd card i/o and hence i fear, may make overall speed very slow.
Or for enabling all of them should i upgrade to faster sd card?
Currently I am happy with swap and apps on sd card, rest all on int. nand.
Sent from my Idea Blade

rahulsa said:
May I know your script name?
Using your script which of above should be moved last, I mean with swap already might take a portion of sd card i/o and hence i fear, may make overall speed very slow.
Or for enabling all of them should i upgrade to faster sd card?
Currently I am happy with swap and apps on sd card, rest all on int. nand.
Sent from my Idea Blade
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
S2E-Swap-Jinxxed.zip is the name, you flash it via recovery. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/54672755/S2E-Swap-Jinxxed.zip
It's basically a set of init.d scripts for proper configuration of swap, mounting of sd-ext and the S2E application to move apps, data and cache (you can choose what you want to move and what you want to leave on your internal nand data partition) to sd-ext.
It works on all roms that don't have S2E support from the get go including all ICS variants and JB.

Jinxxed said:
S2E-Swap-Jinxxed.zip is the name, you flash it via recovery. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/54672755/S2E-Swap-Jinxxed.zip
It's basically a set of init.d scripts for proper configuration of swap, mounting of sd-ext and the S2E application to move apps, data and cache (you can choose what you want to move and what you want to leave on your internal nand data partition) to sd-ext.
It works on all roms that don't have S2E support from the get go including all ICS variants and JB.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To deactivate mounts2sd-4.6.2 script and use your script.
I did following after getting your answer as PM.
I deleted 10mounts2sd script from \system\etc\init.d\ .
While observing S2E-Swap-Jinxxed.zip, I realized that it contained s2e.apk in /system/app.
So I actually installed s2e from from market to get latest version.
Then to enable swap and other optimizations, I added following lines in begining of 20userinit script present in /etc/init.d .
mount -o remount,noatime,nodiratime,relatime,barrier=0,nobh /system
mount -o remount,noatime,nodiratime,relatime /data
swapon /dev/block/mmcblk0p3
So I got what I wanted and also learnt many things in the process.
Also experimented with /etc/sysctl.conf by adding vm.swappiness=50 (initially 70).
---------- Post added at 08:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:26 PM ----------
Jinxxed said:
1. CWM will use TAR to make the backups so it's the same thing, to make a clone of the partition you'll need to use cc.
....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I backed up my Blade using the latest ClockworkMod 5.0.2.0 .
CWM backup up saying done, but with a message.
It said it did not backup up /sd-ext or external ext2/3/4 partition.
So I was worried to use app-to-ext scripts or programs.
Now I successfully used tar to backup sd-ext and restore it on a faster (class 4 to 6) sd card.
But I would like know if there is any new version of CWM for Blade 6.0.1.2 with or without touch, which backs up ext2/3/4 without any issues.
If yes, I would upgrade my CWM.
It saves time to use CWM, compared to tar.
Thanks in advance.

TWRP Format Data

Hi all sorry for asking a dumb question, but would "format data" button inside TWRP's Wipe section (the button above factory reset) also delete a TWRP backup?

the_hatrix said:
Hi all sorry for asking a dumb question, but would "format data" button inside TWRP's Wipe section (the button above factory reset) also delete a TWRP backup?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If your twrp backup in microsd card then it will not delete.
"Format data" will delete ( system/data/cache/dalvic cache/internal storage)
If you are planning to clean your device to install new clean rom then Make a backup of current rom and all your data in microsd card/usb drive before you do this.

So if the backup was in the internal sd it would have been deleted then right?

the_hatrix said:
So if the backup was in the internal sd it would have been deleted then right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes it will be deleted
Go to my files and copy entire TWRP folder from internal storage to microsd card if you need your backup.

Thanks!

Format data
Trex888 said:
If your twrp backup in microsd card then it will not delete.
"Format data" will delete ( system/data/cache/dalvic cache/internal storage)
If you are planning to clean your device to install new clean rom then Make a backup of current rom and all your data in microsd card/usb drive before you do this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, please can I recover files from internal sd after Format data ? I wanted to root my phone to recover files with disk digger and I followed a thread including Format data to root android phone and now I'm trying to recover all my lost files. If you have any advise please let me know if I have a chance .
Thank you !

infostar said:
Hi, please can I recover files from internal sd after Format data ? I wanted to root my phone to recover files with disk digger and I followed a thread including Format data to root android phone and now I'm trying to recover all my lost files. If you have any advise please let me know if I have a chance .
Thank you !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After FORMAT DATA there is nothing there to recover.
Everything has gone, sorry.
Only if you had made a TWRP backup, stored in the external sdcard, then you could restore it and get your DATA files back.
But in that case also, your personal files(pictures, music etc) are not included in this back up.
Only APPS data, meaning files that make apps working, are restored this way.
ALL your personal data, are stored in the internal storage.
If you have performed a DATA format, nothing is there anymore.

infostar said:
Format data
Hi, please can I recover files from internal sd after Format data ? I wanted to root my phone to recover files with disk digger and I followed a thread including Format data to root android phone and now I'm trying to recover all my lost files. If you have any advise please let me know if I have a chance .
Thank you !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you can recover data if it was not overwritten, even if it was deleted. You can use special software.

Which options do we need to select to backup existing ROM? And to do a recover in case of device failure.
Boot? System? System Image? Vendor? Vendor Image?

Maybe a dumb question but: If you format data, can you boot in current rom?

Treeager said:
Maybe a dumb question but: If you format data, can you boot in current rom?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, you can't lol. Format data wipes everything on the storage of the device. You better install a rom after wiping everything or you will get stuck in bootloader / bootloops.
In some a/b slot devices, if you don't have a rom installed, your custom recovery is also wiped because it usually resides on the boot.img.