[Q] How to reload backup image? - Nexus 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I have the 32GB wi-fi version of the Nexus 7. Over a couple of months of use (and changing ROMs a few times), the storage capacity was reading very low even though I only had a couple of apps loaded. I read about how this can be a problem with the Nexus 7 and you can do a full wipe to restore the correct storage capacity. The process recommended doing a backup and storing it on your PC. I did this and then did the full wipe. The device will not boot now (Google screen only). I can get it into recovery mode but I don't know how to get my backup image onto the device. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
P.S.
I have searched the help & troubleshooting forum for two days before posting this. This is a last resort!

i'm surprised searching for "how to restore nandroid backup" didn't yield any results..
you were probably low on space due to all the backups taking up space, each one can easily take up several GBs. you should have tried to move them to PC without full wipe. they're just stored in the sdcard partition, probably in "clockworkmod/backup" or "TWRP/backup" depending on the recovery.
anyway you did a full wipe and then didn't install or restore anything afterwards. so currently you have a blank tablet with nothing installed which is why it doesn't boot .
did you copy or move the backup to your PC? when you full wiped did you only wipe the system and data partitions. i hope you didn't wipe the sdcard partition either way.
- if you copied the backup, just go back into recovery, select "backup and restore" or similar, then click "restore" and select the latest backup.
- if you moved the backup, you obviously need to move it back . within recovery you'll need to mount the sdcard when connected to PC (under "mount" option or similar), then depending on which recovery you use, move the entire backup folder to the correct location e.g. /TWRP/BACKUP/ or clockworkmod/backup. then restore.

The memory wasn't tied up in backups (or anything else that showed in storage). I had removed all but basic apps (ROM Manager, GMAIL, etc) and only kept one backup. It was odd, the available space said 3.4GB but the graph above showing available storage indicated a LOT more! It's like they are reading totally different information. Where I am getting totally stuck at is the computer does not seem to recognize the device when it's connected so I can't get the backup back onto the device. I have installed the appropriate drivers on my PC but still nothing. I really appreciate any help you can give on this!

Related

Keeping Backups ?

Well, first day I got my tab i rooted and such.
Tried a rom (wich wiped everything obviously)
installed a couple of apps then made a backup with Titanium.
decided to go back to stock rom for the time being (wait for more bugless roms)
When i tried to restore my Backups, everything was gone.
question is, Does the backup just go in general internal storage, wich is not calculated as a SD card, so gets formated everytime we wipe??
Im used to backup and wipe, on my phone wich has internal and external SD, so no problems there.
Any input ?
If I understand right, there is no separate storage on the N10. I think /sdcard is basically just an emulated folder sitting on the data partition, so anything that wipes data, will wipe the sdcard. Might want to wait for someone else to give their input on this though.
As for backups, at the most I usually just backup app's (apk files) and put them in a folder on my computer, then just reinstall all of them with Android Commander.

Extract TWRP backup for photos?

So the other day I restored my rooted phone back to stock everything and unrooted. I thought my photos were saved to my SD card so I didn't think about saving anything when I restored. But yesterday I went to upload a photo and they were all gone! Luckily I made a twrp backup before I restored but I have no idea how to find my photos in the backup. Can anybody help?
Hate to be the bearer of bad news but a twrp nandroid is not going to contain your photos. They're on a part of the sd card a nandroid doesn't backup. Did you have them backed up on Dropbox of anything?
jd1639 said:
Hate to be the bearer of bad news but a twrp nandroid is not going to contain your photos. They're on a part of the sd card a nandroid doesn't backup. Did you have them backed up on Dropbox of anything?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't have them saved anywhere.. Is there a tool that will allow me to still view the data from the saves?
white.noise said:
I didn't have them saved anywhere.. Is there a tool that will allow me to still view the data from the saves?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You had them on your internal? Idk of any tool that can recover them. Someone very familiar with adb may be able to help on how to access the sd card but it won't be easy. There are, expensive, services that can recover them but they'd have to be very important to you.
In the future, set up Dropbox. It's free for a fair amount of storage and it's automatic. Take a pic and it'll upload.
TWRP does not backup photos in DCIM folder in internal memory
jd1639 said:
Hate to be the bearer of bad news but a twrp nandroid is not going to contain your photos. They're on a part of the sd card a nandroid doesn't backup. Did you have them backed up on Dropbox of anything?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks jd. I found this thread because I was doing a search for what TWRP actually backs up. I did a search as I also had noticed that no photos show up in the DCIM folder after a TWRP 'restore' operation, which looked like TWRP doesn't backup photos contained in the internal DCIM folder. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, and was wondering if something prevents TWRP from backing up the photos.
TWRP is definitely a very good backup utility, but I think that some kind of pop-up message (with a don't show again checkbox option) would be nice to warn users that TWRP doesn't backup the DCIM photos. I'm thinking that if the utility has the option to backup data + system + boot, then it should backup the valuable user data - which includes photos in internal memory (- that would be expected).
I'm running stock rooted ICS ROM, and I use TWRP to backup data+boot+system, and I also use KIES to do a backup as well. The TWRP restore gets all the apps back (and most things), and the KIES restore gets back the photos. A nice combo.
kennyTSV said:
Thanks jd. I found this thread because I was doing a search for what TWRP actually backs up. I did a search as I also had noticed that no photos show up in the DCIM folder after a TWRP 'restore' operation, which looked like TWRP doesn't backup photos contained in the internal DCIM folder. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, and was wondering if something prevents TWRP from backing up the photos.
TWRP is definitely a very good backup utility, but I think that some kind of pop-up message (with a don't show again checkbox option) would be nice to warn users that TWRP doesn't backup the DCIM photos. I'm thinking that if the utility has the option to backup data + system + boot, then it should backup the valuable user data - which includes photos in internal memory (- that would be expected).
I'm running stock rooted ICS ROM, and I use TWRP to backup data+boot+system, and I also use KIES to do a backup as well. The TWRP restore gets all the apps back (and most things), and the KIES restore gets back the photos. A nice combo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think it makes sense to not back up the internal user storage. It's the same way it wouldn't back up an external SD, and plus then if it tried to back up all of it then it would add a few more gigs to the backup size and it probably wouldn't fit for many people. Not to mention that making a backup of something on itself is not the greatest idea in the first place (all the others are at least backups of different partitions). Makes more sense to just regularly pull off files to PC before doing flashing and modifying.
DeadlySin9 said:
I think it makes sense to not back up the internal user storage. It's the same way it wouldn't back up an external SD, and plus then if it tried to back up all of it then it would add a few more gigs to the backup size and it probably wouldn't fit for many people. Not to mention that making a backup of something on itself is not the greatest idea in the first place (all the others are at least backups of different partitions). Makes more sense to just regularly pull off files to PC before doing flashing and modifying.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks deadlysin. I know where you're coming from there....know what you mean. I don't mind it if TWRP doesn't backup all user data in internal memory after now having understood what TWRP defines as 'data' in it's 'DATA + system + boot' backup. I now use a combo of TWRP and KIES for backing up. The TWRP does a nice job of preserving most things - apps, call logs, contacts, messages etc, and KIES does the photos, as well as contacts and messages (but KIES seems to have a problem with backing up call logs, but TWRP can handle call logs which is great).
I fully understand the extra memory that a TWRP backup would take (in some cases) if TWRP did have an option for backing up the internal storage DCIM data too. But I reckon that it would be terrific to have such an option where 'data + system + boot' creates a complete image of internal storage information. The reason for this is because I was looking for a utility that would provide a fairly 'complete' one-shot backup of the user environment (photos, logs, messages, contacts, apps etc etc). But for TWRP, it looks like the definition of 'data' at the moment is 'data MINUS photos and possibly some other internal storage things'. This is ok though - since the most important thing is to just understand which user/personal data is not included in a TWRP 'data + system + boot' backup. On the net, I saw a TWRP page that had contents saying 'what to back up?', and on that page, I think that adding extra information like 'which user information/data does TWRP NOT backup?' would be handy. Anyway, the TWRP software is really good. Highly recommended.
kennyTSV said:
I did a search as I also had noticed that no photos show up in the DCIM folder after a TWRP 'restore' operation, which looked like TWRP doesn't backup photos contained in the internal DCIM folder. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, and was wondering if something prevents TWRP from backing up the photos.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same problem with CWM, no photos in the backup. I also thought first that something was preventing CWM to backup everything. And everywhere it reads that this backup would be a nandroid backup and therefore an exact copy of the contents. So this obviously is not correct - looks like a lot of people are copying statements without knowing or proofing.
The folder /sdcard/0 (which actually is /data/media ) is the part which you are allowed to see without root permissions and here is all the data like photos, media, downloads and so on which you created or copied there.
THIS is the way to get this important folder - at least it worked with CWM 6.0.4.7:
Enter recovery mode. Connect Phone to PC. ADB should be already installed. Create an empty folder and change directory to there within command shell. Type in
adb pull /sdcard/0
and voilá, you will have a copy of all the missed data.

[Q] Unsuccessful Nandroid Backup Eats Up Memory Space

Hi everyone,
I have a situation here with my Nexus 4. I am running CWM Recovery 6.0.4.3 and AOKP nightly builds. I was using Stock ROM before AOKP. That time, before I upgraded I was trying to make a nandroid backup. I had around 7GB free space before performing the backup. Eventually the backup went wrong, it said "Error while backing up /data". I don't know what to do so I just reboot and re-run the backup process, but it still gave me the same error. I then boot into my phone and realized something... my free memory space has lessened to around 2GB only! I then decided not to make the backup and just flash my ROM to AOKP. I thought this will clear the problem, but it's not.
So, my question is, how to clear this used space? I checked in the nandroid backup folder and found absolutely nothing there, so it must be somewhere else... Any help would be appreciated! Thanks in advance
james.abcde said:
Hi everyone,
I have a situation here with my Nexus 4. I am running CWM Recovery 6.0.4.3 and AOKP nightly builds. I was using Stock ROM before AOKP. That time, before I upgraded I was trying to make a nandroid backup. I had around 7GB free space before performing the backup. Eventually the backup went wrong, it said "Error while backing up /data". I don't know what to do so I just reboot and re-run the backup process, but it still gave me the same error. I then boot into my phone and realized something... my free memory space has lessened to around 2GB only! I then decided not to make the backup and just flash my ROM to AOKP. I thought this will clear the problem, but it's not.
So, my question is, how to clear this used space? I checked in the nandroid backup folder and found absolutely nothing there, so it must be somewhere else... Any help would be appreciated! Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just as you said, it must be somewhere. Check other folders or even the rood of the virtual SD card. If you still don't find anything you may have to factory reset the device and wipe the SD card partition. Before you jump the gun though, make sure (assuming you're using windows as your PC OS, show hidden folders.
Did you check of have a Clockworkmod folder? Each time you create a backup, it creates a new folder with a new time stamp.
Use a file manager to delete the unnecessary or aborted backups. The backup folder should be visible with having to use an app such as Root Explorer.

TWRP write protect issue

I flashed my i9500 with TWRP 2.8.1.0 using Odin and it wrote an undeletable backup onto my internal memory. To get rid of that, I backed up the "BACKUPS" folder and formatted the internal storage only for it now to cause the entire internal storage to be write protected to my android apps. I can copy and delete stuff to it through PC but my apps wont work, those that require to download pics and videos or make backups to the internal storage, web browsers can't download anything to the internal storage yet I now have over 7GB free space.
It's clear TWRP is write protecting the internal storage selectively (first it wrote protected the storage to both the phone and pc, now to the phone only). How should I sort this problem out?
I have also just tried using root explorer to change permissions to the internal storage but it doesn't work. It's failing. Titanium backup shows its own backup folder is unwrittable. It cannot be changed by Root explorer
I just tried fixing permissions in twrp but to no avail. I uninstalled Clean master only to try and re-install it and it won't install now, it gives a failed install error. Kingsoft office continually shows "stopped working" and fails to work completely. All this started with flashing Twrp. I can't view pics in whats app or send them, neither can I edit documents. Any help to rid of this issue will be gladly appreciated.
People please please avoid twrp at all costs!, i have now lost all my data and apps are all failing. I deerly deerly regret why i ever flashed twrp recover in the first place!
I seem to have solved the issue after a very grueling experience.
TWRP has its flaws and it is quite notable here. Here is how I have gotten around the issue:-
Immediately after I installed TWRP I made a system backup of the entire phone as of its state at the time.
I copied it to my pc and tried to delete the backup that TWRP had made. It was completely write protected, nothing could delete it.
I then decided to use TWRP to format my internal storage after backing it up. Then restore the data back which I did successfully.
Little did I know what had happened. TWRP had assigned the internal storage attributes that even Root explorer (paid) could not undo.
The internal storage had become unusable to the system and user apps.
Slowly my apps began to collapse one after the other failing. From frustration I tried to salvage the data the apps held at the time so that I can factory reset and restore but Titanium backup could not access its own folder. That's where all the frustration begun.
I later flashed CWM and accidentally formatted all my data instead of the data partition.. this was now hell.
One last try which was about 5 hours later I returned TWRP recovery, wiped the data partition and got hold of my prior backup with TWRP, restored it and am 9 hrs back from total loss of data. So the internal storage now has its initial attributes prior to the predicament.
Am actually back exactly to where all this mayhem began when I decided to delete the "BACKUPS" folder and there was absolutely nothing else that was wrong, which now I will attempt to delete hoping that I won't experience deja vu.
This is a problem worth reporting to TWRP developers and I don't know how
TWRP recovery Fix Permissions
I couldn't delete back ups from the internal storage at all. I couldn't even copy saved back ups from my pc to my Note 3. I went into TWRP recovery, under Advanced select Fix Permissions
Now I can delete folders in the TWRP main folder with a ES file explorer or on my PC via usb cable.
Never had any problems like this with TWRP on my S4+. For me the backups taken and its folders can be handled just fine, copied, deleted, moved etc. Must be som compatibility issue with your setup.

[Q] Help a (desperate) newbie (how to back-up rom)

Hello all,
Firstly, please bear with me if my question seems simple... I have flashed a couple of roms without problems, have recovered a bricked mobile and have generally messed around without too many disasters - unless you count the many hours spent setting-up my mobile after re-flashing... and this is the point... I will give a background and then questions will follow...
background:
I have finally found the rom for me (Albe 95 v2 btw - highly recommended, the guy did a truly grand job) and since I reckon that sooner or later I will become "restless" again and want to re-flash or mess around, I would like to make a back-up of my complete system... not app-by-app but do the backup in such a way that I get a single .zip file at the end of it all, and no matter how badly I might mess things up further down the road I can always return to my current status with in a flash (sorry for the poor pun)...
should be easy, right? well I've tried following some simple steps with clockwork mod (basically trying some of the functions in the backup directory, where there is an option that says something that amounts to "make a zip") and just now for the second time I've had a failure... after seemingly working and copying files for some 5-10 minutes it suddenly stops, says there was an error, and that's it... time to exit cwm and reboot... and that's when the real problems begin...
upon exiting CWM, i get a weird message (something about maybe losing root, and having to fix it before exiting)... after exiting (I selected the option to "fix it" btw) upon reboot the mobile works fine (rooted and all) except one detail - the sim card doesn't receive signal anymore... this happened just the same way first time round and I want to know what I´m doing wrong.. I did read some guides about making a backup and they seem easy enough when I read them, but then this happens...
so question #1 - can somebody point me to a newbie-friendly, step-by-step, idiot-proof guide for how to reach my holy grail in the form of a zip file?
...all this brings me to question #2:
after installing the new rom, there is some 3Gb left of memory... after a day or so of using, theres about 700mb left... I formatted the SD card and wanted clockworkmod to backup directly onto the sd_card... is there an option for this? there is simply no way I will ever be able to free up space on the internal memory alone...
question #3 - where does all that space disappear??? and speaking of space disappearing, after clockworkmod did its partial backup, the internal storage was reduced from some 700mb to under 300... now even if the phone is strictly speaking working, I cannot so much as update an application, or download a new one... unfortunately this is where my ignorance shows, as I understand that the internal storage is split in two sections, but I have no idea how (if?) I can access the "main" one, where CWM is presumably writing its files and which I guess by now is chock-full... what can I do here? where does CWM hide its backups (and yes, I´ve searched around and read somewhere that its supposed to be in a directory such as Data/Media/clockworckmod, but I cannot find it... and I can see the hidden files...
in fact, out of 9Gb of internal storage, the directories & fiels I can see amount to a pitiful 1,3Gb, and yet if I check space available in system settings I get 300 Gb!!! that means I have a good 7,4 Gb of storage unaccounted for! that's not even considering that total space of internal card is 9gb, not the 16gb that it should be... in other words, I can account for almost exactly 10% of my internal storage... what the hell????? either my internal memory is made of dark matter or I need a charitable colleague on this board to explain to me what is going on... or maybe suggest a link that you learned from back in the day when you were a newbie...
that's it... for now... sorry for the extremely long post, but I am frustrated, as I have to flash this bugger, again...
Thank you in advance for any help, info, and advice...
P.
1. Not in a zip file. The backup feature in ClockworkMod and all other custom recoveries is what we call a nandroid backup. They generally are backed up and restored using the appropriate functions, and not via a flashable zip file.
2. On the Galaxy S4, the internal storage is labeled "sdcard0". Thus ClockworkMod apparently thinks it's a MicroSD card. Looking at another device running a current version of CWM, it doesn't appear that you can select the location. If you want to be sure the backup is made on the MicroSD card, change your recovery to TWRP 2.8.4.0. You can select where the backup goes on that recovery.
3. You likely made multiple backups with ClockworkMod. An odd thing, at least the the copy of ClockworkMod on my tablet, is that if you delete backups, the space itself is still allocated to the backups that no longer exist. To free up this space, in the backup and restore menu is an option to "free unused backup data". Horribly misnamed, if you select this option you should see your space return. In addition, keep in mind that Android stores hidden files and folders on the internal storage. If you download large games, you may find yourself running out of space as the game stores parts of itself on the internal storage in a hidden directory.
Once you get your space back, switch your recovery to TWRP so you can select the MicroSD card.
Thanks for your answer strephon.... but now i need to understand the next steps and to avoid a re-re-reinstall, i would like to ask what version of TWRP should i use?
I have Rashr to help me get this recovery app but i have a list of options to choos from and none seems correct...
if i run Phone Info, it tells me the following:
- device type: jflte
- Product name: kltexx
...but on rashr none of the TWRP versions seem applicable... the closest would be jfltexx (ver 2.8.5.0 )... there is also a ver 2.8.4.0 but also in this case only for jfltexx... is this what i'm after?
Please note that CWM and Philz both have jflte versions... maybe i should try Philz? Does it let me do nandroid backup on my Sd card?
Again, thanks in advance
You probably will have better luck using the TWRP Manager app, but the version you want is 2.8.4.0, for jfltexx. Philz is a derivative of ClockworkMod, but I don't know if it has the same limitations.
Thank you man... got twrp and ran the backup. Looks like just what i was after...
Much obliged ?
...now that i've managed to get the backup done i would like to make sure about one point :
This will work if i mess install a new rom and for whatever reason i want to revert to my backed up rom... but what if i brick my mobile?
Thats happened to me before and i downloaded a rom which I flashed using Odin and with the phone in download mode... is there a way i can merge these files in a zip (or whatever format )that i can then flash with Odin?
If you brick and need Odin, you won't be able to use these files in it. However, if you have to install a ROM via Odin, you can afterward install the recovery and restore from the nandroid backup. The backup would then restore the S4 back to the state it was in when the backup was made.
...but is there no way of doing that in one step only? I mean just as someone prepared that rom to be flashed via odin can i not create one myself? There's gotta be a way. ...
platypus78 said:
...but is there no way of doing that in one step only? I mean just as someone prepared that rom to be flashed via odin can i not create one myself? There's gotta be a way. ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What you want is not possible.
You won't brick your phone, it's almost impossible.
If a situation like you describe emerges, then just flash a custom recovery trough Odin and restore the backup.
Damn that sucks ?
But at least its cleared so thanks for that...

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