Database Users

Question about backups...

Regarding Nandroid and apps I backed up with Titanium, do those remain on the phone when you wipe to install a new ROM or do you have to put those on your computer and replace them after you wipe?
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Bump... Anyone? Please?
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The backups are kept on your SD card, not your internal storage. So as long as you only wipe your internal storage, the backups etc will remain.

Thanks so much!
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Actually, I just looked at my SD card and no backups are there, just the movie that came with the phone.
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ArbitrageMan said:
The backups are kept on your SD card, not your internal storage. So as long as you only wipe your internal storage, the backups etc will remain.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He's wrong nandroid backups done in Clockwork are stored in /sdcard/clockworkmod/backup/....

I was actually wondering the same thing...

ArbitrageMan said:
The backups are kept on your SD card, not your internal storage. So as long as you only wipe your internal storage, the backups etc will remain.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They are actually contained in the internal storage card but you can specify a diff directory in your external sd card if you prefer, it can be changed in your settings.
Either way they standard wipe only effects the section off the internal storage used by your phones system/data n apps and will not effect the internal storage you put in the"root" folder /sdcard, more specially in your case /sdcard/titaniumbackups (titanium) or/sdcard/backups/apps (astro) should survive.... Nandroid restores, flashes through clockwork of new roms and manual wipes of system, cache or data shouldn't hurt your astro or titanium backups.
Any full reformat of the card or as I understand it reflashing back to stock 2.1 with odin will kill your nandroid restore points but I don't know what effect that level of reflashing will have on your backups but when in doubt back up to a computer is never a bad idea.
Pooped from my Samsung Vibrant using XDA app...
Dont mind the skidmarks...

Thank you!
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

[Q] Clockwork Recovery error

Whenever I try to do a nand backup, I get a message saying there was an error in backing up my /data folder.
Does anyone know why this is happening and what I can do? I'm on Virtuous.

tinpanalley said:
Whenever I try to do a nand backup, I get a message saying there was an error in backing up my /data folder.
Does anyone know why this is happening and what I can do? I'm on Virtuous.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How much space do you have free on you SD card? I like to have 2GB free for doing Nandroids.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

Well, I don't use it for media and I frequently dump out my pictures to my computer. Is there anything left behind when you uninstall an app? I have 2 nandroid backups. And a my backup pro backup I made once. Is there an app that will tell you all the large sized files on your phone's sd card?

No, app uninstalls don't generally clean up data that they save on the SD card. You can check your available SD card space under Settings--> Storage. If it is under 2GB and you don't need both existing Nandroids online, you can copy one off to your computer. They are located in individual folders under:
/clockworkmod/backups
You can copy them back as needed or even from within recovery through the mount options. I keep a library of Nandroids on my computer and generally only keep 1 or 2 on the SD card.
Sent from my HTC Glacier

Does everything in SD Card stay safe while flashing a rom/data wipe?

Like is the internal sd card act as an external and everything in it will remain safe?
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Yes,
A data wipe doesn't remove anything in the /sdcard directory, it will stay safe.
I have recntly installed CM10 and couldnt be happier!!!
**was this answer helpful? please click thanks**

Ok thanks for answering my question could not find anything on the net about it.
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Lord_Xovon said:
Ok thanks for answering my question could not find anything on the net about it.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
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Yeap, it won't wipe anything but the data partition when you wipe data in recovery, you have to tell it to wipe the internal SD card or wipe everything including SD card to do any damage there, wiping data, cache dalvic cache, and system won't harm your SD card.
However, I think a person should make an exact copy of the internal SD card every week or two, by mounting as a disk drive and copying to the computer.
That way if your internal card gets wiped on accident or you have to do a factory reset or something, when its back up and running you can just copy your backup folder contents right back to it.
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using xda premium

Interesting, does this also mean Nandroid ignores /sdcard contents too for imaging? I've held off making a second nandroid backup because I thought all the tv shows/movies I've put on storage would get imaged. It's good if it doesn't!

bomp306 said:
Yes,
A data wipe doesn't remove anything in the /sdcard directory, it will stay safe.
I have recntly installed CM10 and couldnt be happier!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not exactly true. Before I unlocked and rooted, I had about 10 GB of data on my SD card. After unlock however, I found that the SD card was wiped and I had to put everything back on it.
So, if you are not unlocked, back up first. Then while switching from ROM to ROM, your SD card contents should be safe. But it never hurts to back up every once in a while.

Omega360 said:
Not exactly true. Before I unlocked and rooted, I had about 10 GB of data on my SD card. After unlock however, I found that the SD card was wiped and I had to put everything back on it.
So, if you are not unlocked, back up first. Then while switching from ROM to ROM, your SD card contents should be safe. But it never hurts to back up every once in a while.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Flashing a ROM won't format the scard folder
Unlocking will...

Sorry if this sounds noob, but when you connect the nexus 7 to the PC, is the "internal storage" the internal sd card? I got a little bit confused when devs say place certain .zips into internal sd card, but i couldnt find the exact folder name when transferring files from PC to the nexus 7.

bomp306 said:
Flashing a ROM won't format the scard folder
Unlocking will...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I unrooted my N7 before getting it replaced, flashed it back to stock, and it formatted the sdcard folder along with everything else

zeiloz said:
Sorry if this sounds noob, but when you connect the nexus 7 to the PC, is the "internal storage" the internal sd card? I got a little bit confused when devs say place certain .zips into internal sd card, but i couldnt find the exact folder name when transferring files from PC to the nexus 7.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes that's considered the internal sd card
Sent from my Google Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

Omega360 said:
Not exactly true. Before I unlocked and rooted, I had about 10 GB of data on my SD card. After unlock however, I found that the SD card was wiped and I had to put everything back on it.
So, if you are not unlocked, back up first. Then while switching from ROM to ROM, your SD card contents should be safe. But it never hurts to back up every once in a while.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unlocking factory resets.
Flashing a rom in recovery doesn't factory reset and implies that the OP is already UNLOCKED, Rooted and has installed recovery.

Nandroid location?

Just rebooted my phone (rooted s4 w/ twrp recovery, stock rom) and it said that my sd card failed (64 g samsung pro) and would I like to re-format. So I did.
Which obviously erased all data. That is where my nandroid backup WAS.
So, I did another nandroid on both the newly formatted sd card AND one on the internal memory. This obviously ate up alot of precious space on the phone.
Any advise or input would be welcome.
Will it just get deleted from the internal, when I flash a new rom?
Thanks
Sent from my SPH-L720 using xda app-developers app

Only if you format data. ... I believe
Sent from my SPH-L720 using xda premium

As a precaution, I'd highly recommend backing up your nandroids to either your computer, or to the cloud (or both).
If you choose to backup to cloud, from my experience: box didn't work for me (because of the individual file size being too large - had to use copy or dropbox)
Edit: Oh, and the next time you have the same issue with phone recommending a reformat, try to unmount, and mount it again. (throw a reboot into the mix if that doesn't work) - it solved the "bad sd card" issue when I had it.

[Q] Halp! Deleted external SD card?

First of all... I wanted to start this post off by saying yes, I know I'm an idiot.
Now that that's out of the way....
A few weeks ago, I got so excited to flash a custom ROM, that somehow when I ran TWRP and backed up my system to the external SD card, I also wiped my external SD card. Because I'm an idiot. I don't know how or why it happened really. I just know it did.
I had previously saved EVERYTHING to my external SD card, thinking that was the safest place for the data... and now the past two years of my life documented in photographs are gone.
I have tweaked out on running custom phone software since the days of the original Razr and flashing Alltel firmware on it... and this is the first major screw up I've ever done.
Now... does TWRP back up that data somewhere, somehow? Or is it just system data/apps that get backed up? If TWRP didn't save it somewhere, is there possibly somewhere that the contents of my external SD card were MOVED upon installation of the custom ROM?

ircphoenix said:
A few weeks ago, I got so excited to flash a custom ROM, that somehow when I ran TWRP and backed up my system to the external SD card, I also wiped my external SD card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You should never store your sole backup copy on the same device as is being backed up as you probably realize now.
Anyway, it's not clear from your post if you were storing a redundant copy of your backup on your external SD card or if you had configured TWRP to use your external SD card as the primary folder and therefore sole backup copy. The default location is usually /data/media/0/TWRP. Try a search for TWRP folders using a root aware file browser. With any luck you will find a backup on your internal SD card.
If not, then the only way to recover would be to try a data recovery program on your external SD card. Unless you do Google /cloud backups as well?
.

Recuva does most of the work well, and there is an option to restore the directory structure too if you poke around in the settings. Puran File Recovery works where Recuva did not in recovering some images and videos.
Both I have tried after an accidental format of the SD card from the phone settings.
They are both free desktop software.
Important to take not not to copy any files over to the affected card, or even your recovered files as well. Only do so when you are sure you have recovered all that you can onto a desktop folder.
Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

fffft said:
Anyway, it's not clear from your post if you were storing a redundant copy of your backup on your external SD card or if you had configured TWRP to use your external SD card as the primary folder and therefore sole backup copy.
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Click to collapse
The second scenario is what I believe I did. And I think when it created the backup, it wiped the external SD to suit it's needs. Problem being that the Nandroid backup wanted 6 gigs ish of space, and I had 4.5 or so remaining on the internal SD.... don't know what stuff I had on there... but *shrug*
Markuzy said:
Recuva does most of the work well, and there is an option to restore the directory structure too if you poke around in the settings. Puran File Recovery works where Recuva did not in recovering some images and videos.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the tip. I will try both of these. I think the nandroid backup wrote over the areas on the SD where the pictures were stored. You'd think it would pick the empty space before the occupied space... but I guess since it wiped it clean prior to backing up, it was ALL empty space. *sigh*
Thank you both very much for your help.