Making a proper back up with TWRP - Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Greeting everyone,
I just got my SGS4 and love it! I just rooted it and have my hotspot working. I was wondering if someone can tell me the proper way to back up my stock rom completely? I have TWRP and backed up BOOT, SYSTEM and DATA and it finished successfully. Is this all I need to do to back up and be able to reinstall my stock rom if I decide to try a new rom and then go back to stock? I just want to be sure. Any thoughts?

Boot, system, data is pretty much enough. I only back those up and never the others (recovery, cache) and it worked well for the 5-10 times I've had to restore. I did backup the efs on its own just in case. Some people like to do everything including cache and recovery but I don't see much point in this.
http://teamw.in/whattobackup

Related

???Can't wipe phone/factory reset???

Ok so here is what is going on with my ATRIX... I have searched for answers and not found any so here I am. I wonder if anyone else has seen this. Please note I am not new to flashing, rooting, romming, etc... This week is my first go around with the ATRIX (or any other moto for that matter).
So I went from rooted 1.8.3, unlocked the BL, and was immediately prompted for the 4.51.9 OTA upgrade. I did this and everything was fine when done. No data loss or issues. I of course lost root and the unlock, so I went to taking care of this.
I rerooted but waited a few days and read more before unlock because of known brick issues. I didnt want to be there!
next I decided to try ROM MANAGER to flash CMW. Flashed but of course needed to unlock BL so I used the auto method by mramirez (auto script for known methods). Anyway no matter what I did after unlock I had to reflash everytime the recovery to be able to boot into it. It would not hold, and after 1 or 2 boots I would be back to android stock recovery.
So then I decided to try a rom or to. Flashed ninja and gingerblur with no issues, wiped data, cache, dalvik and rebooted into new rom with all my data still intact!!!! I wiped again, factory reset from recovery... still there! I did a factory reset from within android... still there!!!!
SO.... next I decided I need to flash moto firmware 4.51.9 to get back to stock. Did this and rebooted. Back to stock YES. Rooted-NO. All data still there!
SO... I reunlocked with the method that should have wiped my device and rooted again, install tenfar's CWM. Rebooted and all my stuff is still there!
Guys I am talking everything, accounts, wifi settings, alarms etc. All this flashing and wiping and resetting and I still retain everything!
Anyone care to take a stab at why?
EDIT: So far this time around CWM has stayed put after several reboots but I have not tried a reset today. (It is kinda nice not losing all that but I am pretty sure I should have lost it!)
You just need to delete the following file first:
/system/etc/install-recovery.sh
then you need to install again CWM as you did before.
What is happen is everytimr you reboot the phone is checking the recovery partitions and if the check is different it will rewrite the stock recovery, so you need to delete or rename that file and that will solve the issue...

nexus 7 wont boot....... kinda

So ive had my n7 for a while and had over 10 different roms that i went through before landing on cookies and cream for 4.1.2 and cyanogenmod for 4.2.1
Well heres the problem. i was getting pissed off at all of the bugs and random reboots and incompatabilities so i fully wiped the device, minus bootloader, and flashed stock 4.1.2, it booted great
heres where it went wrong... i tried flashing cyanogenmod 10 via twrp, letting it use its stock kernel and even trying a different cm compatible kernel after booting failed.
when that didnt work i went back to stock, downloaded cookies and cream, wiped the rom, cache and dalvik cache. still bootloops
so i was like F**k it, and installed stock 4.2.1, booted fine.
tried again with the 2 latest cyanogenmod nightlies, which i know worked fine from before
still just bootloops with no idea how to fix it.
just to be clear, stock works, custom WILL NOT
bump guys, im kinda up **** creek without a paddle, emphasis on the kinda part
I have a similar problem(http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2073977). Pretty much the only way I can get a ROM to stick is if I wipe /data as well. Not sure what's causing this, but I'm working on it. I think it could have something to do with the way that android stores some of it's /system data in /data at times
What's worked for me to flash a ROM other than stock, is to wipe the entire thing, and then use adb sideload to load the ROM.
Hey bro, i saw your thread before, by data, do you mean internal storage or just the system rom itself, because i wiped everything but the bootloader and started from scratch
I'm just talking about /data. An hour ago I noticed that as long as I use the Factory Reset option in TWRP, it will wipe it, and not touch the stuff on the sdcard(it could be just me though, my Nexus seems to be kinda weird). Then I wipe system, and flash whatever I need to.
Alright, one problem though, doing a factory reset deletes everything on the sdcard then when i try to use fastboot to flash cyanogenmod in a zip format it says stuff like android-product-info.txt is missing and whatnot, what do you do?
edit, dont read the part about wiping storage, i had a idiot moment there, ill give it a shot

wiped my entire phone and internal storage accidentily

I was trying to unroot because I have a microphone issue and am within my 14 days. I am not a total noob but I just did a noob move. I've been rooted for a week and had backed up the stock rom with TWRP. I decided to restore the stock rom and unroot to clean it up and bring it to sprint, WHEN disaster struck. I wiped and didn't take care not to wipe internal storage. All that is left is TWRP, The rest of the device is wiped. I want to bring it back but if they see the custom recovery, I think I am cooked. Any ideas. This is Sprint so there aren't any roms out yet?
Well, this worked for me: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2432476
It took me a bit of time to figure out how to do it correctly, but it worked in the end.
It restores everything, so you have to reinstall your recovery, but they there is pretty much no way they can tell the device has ever been rooted.

I think my partitions are all messed up. Please Help

Hey everyone. I recently gave my Rogers note 3 to my wife. two days later she said it was acting up, and it kept saying com.android.systemui has stopped. when I booted into CWM I couldnt do a factory reset, and it was also saying it could open a bunch of directories. I was able to use CWM to restore to an earlier restore, but even then I couldnt do a factory reset, and CWM is still saying it cant open the directories.
After talking with another modder, he has suggested that my partitions are messed up. So, if this is the case, what is my best bet? should I use odin to reflash CWM, and then flash the stock rogers rom? She's not a power user and doesnt care for root. she just wants a working phone that has a stylus pen.
I have downloaded the latest CWM .tar, but can someone please help me find the stock rogers rom? rooted or not, i dont care. I just need help as Im helping her recover from major surgery and working 18 hour days right now so im burnt out.
Thanks in advance.
[SOLVED]
I was able to format the cache from CWM finally. Errors are all gone.

[Q] Help! Stuck trying to upgrade my wife's phone!!

Help! I'm trying to upgrade my wife's 9505 and I'm stuck.
She was running Stock (rooted) kit-kat, and I went to upgrade her to CM12.1
First, being a good boy, I took both a TiBu backup and a nandroid backup.
I did then manage to upgrade to CM12.1, but found a few issues (some missing phone numbers, etc that weren't sync'd with google), so I took a nandroid of CM12.1, wiped, and then restored the stock kit-kat nandroid.
That kinda worked, but some things are playing up - Waze doesn't work, SwiftKey comes up with an error trying to save the language file, the Daily Mail app and Gallary don't show any pictures, etc. Basically, not very usable.
So, I copied off the missing phone numbers, etc. and then thought that I'd wipe and restore the CM12.1 nandroid to get back to where I wanted to be - but it's just stuck at the CM12.1 animated boot logo and has been for ages.
So, I can't go back to kit kat, and I can't get back to CM12.1
Any suggestions/ideas?
It smells like some kind of file-system protection issue type thingy, but I tried the usual Fix Permissions, etc - all to no avail.
Someone please help (I'm really in the dog-house at the moment!!)
Thanks
Sorted! I had to basically wipe everything! Data, Media/photos, the works. Something really got screwed up, but I think I've got it going again now...

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