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While I was charging my phone via USB connected to my computer, I made sure it was selected on "charge only," mode and unplugged the USB from my phone.
Then got an error message on my computer saying, "..was not ejected properly..."
Now I can't access any of my photos, videos etc...
How can I recover the improper ejection? Is it even possible or am I SOL and have to reformat the card?
I know the data can be retrieved because I have a program to do it, but I'm wondering if there is anything that can be done to make it as if it never happened?
Not sure if you mean you can't read the card on the computer, or the phone.
Best case scenario - you power off the phone, pop the cover off the back, and remove the MicroSD card. Use a card reader (preferably a USB card reader, but a full-size SD adapter will do if you have the slot) to plug the card directly into your computer.
Then you can back up all the information onto the computer, reformat the card, and put your data back onto it.
When you put it back into the phone, and power it on, it should read fine and you can just keep right on going.
The phone is pretty sensitive, and if anything doesn't finish writing to the card properly it won't read in the phone.
No matter what state it's in, even charge mode only, you should always properly stop and eject the device from the computer. Otherwise you risk this happening every time.
Worst case scenario - the computer itself won't read the card through a standalone card reader (not the phone) and you have to re-format the card losing all your data.
In any case, reformatting the card will make it readable by the phone again.
You may not be able to reformat the card in the phone, and have to do it in a computer. Whenever you can make that happen, the phone will be able to read the card again.
DON'T pull the card from the phone without powering it off completely first.
MAKE SURE fastboot is turned to off in your settings menu BEFORE turning it off to remove the card. Fastboot is a hibernation mode, and removing the card when powered off with fastboot enabled could cause problems - especially if the card has different information on it then when you "turned it off".
Fastboot = hibernation, and it's still using a very minimal amount of power to keep the system at the lowest level of powered on.
Yes, you can turn it off and pull the battery and the card and stuff with fastboot enabled, but sooner or later you will run into a problem - most likely a corrupted memory card.
I really appreciate the quick response and your input. Thanks!
Right now I'm using a data rescue program and it's scanning as I'm typing this...
The SD card is a Lexar 32GB Class 10, yet it's still talking about an hour to do a deep scan. I can see that it's retrieving all the files as it's scanning...good news and as expected, for I've done this many times for friends in the past with diggy cameras.
Before running the scan this was the scenario:
Powered off the phone, pulled the card and put it in the lexar USB adapter it originally came with. The card mounted and read fine on my Mac, but in the folder it only contained very little stuff...it almost looked as if it was a regular stock card with normal folders that would usually come on the stock 8GB. It showed an android folder, picture folder etc...but it had nothing in it.
.
I think once the scan is complete and after backing up all the recovered files, I'll probably just reformat it. It's nice to start fresh anyways...heck maybe it was a sign to a certain degree, although it was my human error...
Question: Should I reformat it in the phone or through Disk Utility via Mac?
BTW: I had, or should say have, over 3,000 pictures on there for my food blog and some videos...was pretty filled up...
Thanks again...Cheers'
Blue6IX said:
Not sure if you mean you can't read the card on the computer, or the phone.
Best case scenario - you power off the phone, pop the cover off the back, and remove the MicroSD card. Use a card reader (preferably a USB card reader, but a full-size SD adapter will do if you have the slot) to plug the card directly into your computer.
Then you can back up all the information onto the computer, reformat the card, and put your data back onto it.
When you put it back into the phone, and power it on, it should read fine and you can just keep right on going.
The phone is pretty sensitive, and if anything doesn't finish writing to the card properly it won't read in the phone.
No matter what state it's in, even charge mode only, you should always properly stop and eject the device from the computer. Otherwise you risk this happening every time.
Worst case scenario - the computer itself won't read the card through a standalone card reader (not the phone) and you have to re-format the card losing all your data.
In any case, reformatting the card will make it readable by the phone again.
You may not be able to reformat the card in the phone, and have to do it in a computer. Whenever you can make that happen, the phone will be able to read the card again.
DON'T pull the card from the phone without powering it off completely first.
MAKE SURE fastboot is turned to off in your settings menu BEFORE turning it off to remove the card. Fastboot is a hibernation mode, and removing the card when powered off with fastboot enabled could cause problems - especially if the card has different information on it then when you "turned it off".
Fastboot = hibernation, and it's still using a very minimal amount of power to keep the system at the lowest level of powered on.
Yes, you can turn it off and pull the battery and the card and stuff with fastboot enabled, but sooner or later you will run into a problem - most likely a corrupted memory card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Firstly, good move on the recovery utility on the card. Probably the most sensible thing you could have done to ensure you get your data back with a minimal (if any) amount of corruption.
I'm running a windows box for everything i'm doing with this phone, and i'll be setting up a linux box as soon as I breakdown my NAS computer to work on android stuff.
I can't speak to mac, i've had very little interaction with them since the early 90's. Windows 3.1 came out and I dropped mac, ever since it's been something i've stayed away from.
I reformat all my cards in my windows computer, then put them in the powered off phone - it boots up and uses the cards fine.
I had one issue where I pulled a card before it popped up and said "safe to remove" on my computer, the phone wouldn't read the card. I pulled it and reformatted in the computer, and when I put it back in the phone it was fine again.
I'd say that formatting in the mac should be fine, try it out and see what happens.
I have used the phone to reformat the memory cards a few times, but it has always been when I did a factory reset on the phone. I would assume that is the same utility in settings that you can use to reformat the card on the phone.
Once you back up your data to the computer, my suggestion would be to reformat the card in the computer, then put all the data back onto it the same way it was before the format.
When you plug it into the phone, everything should be okay then, but check all your apps to make sure they still run right (if any had data stored on the card)
Theoretically this should work fine.
Are you rooted, and do you have a recent clockworkmod backup of your phone?
Edit - you can probably get away with not moving the pictures themselves back onto the phone.
That's a sizeable chunk of data there, USB transfer to the memory card off the computer will work many orders of magnitude faster then using a MicroSD to SD adapter into a card slot.
Backed Up / Restore complete and it pretty much got it all.
If I format it in the computer it should be a FAT32 correct?
I've always wondered about the encryption levels between formatting through the computer vs. SD card inside the phone (formatting)
Not that it really matters in my case (security wise), but do you know if formatting in the computer is better than reformatting w/ SD in the phone?
Would it be safe to say that reformatting inside the phone just does a single / simple pass through of putting 1's and 0's to wipe the data?
Whereas, reformatting in the computer you have different levels of pass throughs depending on the security level you desire.
-
Now taking it a step deeper, for me I've always wondered about the long term stability of SD Cards efficiency in general when doing the maximum pass throughs to erase the data instead of a simple 1 & 0 single pass through...
Kind of like painting a car:
If you paint directly on the bare bone primer sheet metal the paint will last longer without cracks down the road...ie.... cleaner, more organized data on a clean sheet of clusters of data.
If you paint over paint over paint with simple sand downs, then paint again over paint (thick).... over time it'll chip, crack and not last as long .... ie ..... higher probability of data corruption?
I've always had a piece of mind making it a habit to always do a fresh reformat with any SD cards I've had .... with the exception of this one for some odd reason... I guess I was in a rush to use it already to enjoy the Class 10 performance and speed.
I really appreciate your input and knowledge. It's nice to know there's people on here that can post intellectually...I was beginning to worry after reading all these posts with responses with no substance.
btw: You're either a major night owl or over seas being up at this hour? haha...kudos
Cheers...
Blue6IX said:
Firstly, good move on the recovery utility on the card. Probably the most sensible thing you could have done to ensure you get your data back with a minimal (if any) amount of corruption.
I'm running a windows box for everything i'm doing with this phone, and i'll be setting up a linux box as soon as I breakdown my NAS computer to work on android stuff.
I can't speak to mac, i've had very little interaction with them since the early 90's. Windows 3.1 came out and I dropped mac, ever since it's been something i've stayed away from.
I reformat all my cards in my windows computer, then put them in the powered off phone - it boots up and uses the cards fine.
I had one issue where I pulled a card before it popped up and said "safe to remove" on my computer, the phone wouldn't read the card. I pulled it and reformatted in the computer, and when I put it back in the phone it was fine again.
I'd say that formatting in the mac should be fine, try it out and see what happens.
I have used the phone to reformat the memory cards a few times, but it has always been when I did a factory reset on the phone. I would assume that is the same utility in settings that you can use to reformat the card on the phone.
Once you back up your data to the computer, my suggestion would be to reformat the card in the computer, then put all the data back onto it the same way it was before the format.
When you plug it into the phone, everything should be okay then, but check all your apps to make sure they still run right (if any had data stored on the card)
Theoretically this should work fine.
Are you rooted, and do you have a recent clockworkmod backup of your phone?
Edit - you can probably get away with not moving the pictures themselves back onto the phone.
That's a sizeable chunk of data there, USB transfer to the memory card off the computer will work many orders of magnitude faster then using a MicroSD to SD adapter into a card slot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
iunlock said:
Backed Up / Restore complete and it pretty much got it all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad to hear you got it all!
iunlock said:
If I format it in the computer it should be a FAT32 correct?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep.
iunlock said:
I've always wondered about the encryption levels between formatting through the computer vs. SD card inside the phone (formatting)
Not that it really matters in my case (security wise), but do you know if formatting in the computer is better than reformatting w/ SD in the phone?
Would it be safe to say that reformatting inside the phone just does a single / simple pass through of putting 1's and 0's to wipe the data?
Whereas, reformatting in the computer you have different levels of pass throughs depending on the security level you desire.
-
Now taking it a step deeper, for me I've always wondered about the long term stability of SD Cards efficiency in general when doing the maximum pass throughs to erase the data instead of a simple 1 & 0 single pass through...
Kind of like painting a car:
If you paint directly on the bare bone primer sheet metal the paint will last longer without cracks down the road...ie.... cleaner, more organized data on a clean sheet of clusters of data.
If you paint over paint over paint with simple sand downs, then paint again over paint (thick).... over time it'll chip, crack and not last as long .... ie ..... higher probability of data corruption?
I've always had a piece of mind making it a habit to always do a fresh reformat with any SD cards I've had .... with the exception of this one for some odd reason... I guess I was in a rush to use it already to enjoy the Class 10 performance and speed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not entirely sure about the different levels of security, or even if there are any advantages/disadvantages to this.
Your painting analogy is a real good one, and as someone who was a painter by trade for quite a few years, it's one I use a lot.
When I was doing memory speed tests in my Nook Color on flash memory, I always formatted the cards in the Nook Color, then again in the computer, ejected and re-inserted the cards before running the test using the computer.
Like what you are saying, it ensured a clean card and uniformity. I'd rather take an extra step that may or may not be unnecessary just to be sure. The focus of my tests at the time were on credibility and reliability of results, and the dual format meant that the cards always were the same.
Windows gets lazy sometimes, and if formatting a card that essentially looks no different then when it started, it might just skip over doing the work - coming from being formatted in the Nook Color meant that windows had to actually do something to the card to make it right, and made sure it would do it's work. Why leave anything to chance.
You're looking at hundreds of thousands of read/writes on modern flash memory before it wears out...a couple of extra formats aren't going to hurt anything when you look at the big picture.
When you're talking about moving a card to a device like this phone, where it's probably not going to come out much, then a fresh format first is probably a wise move. Why contaminate the new device with junk left over from other devices on the card. Everything will work better if you start fresh.
iunlock said:
I really appreciate your input and knowledge. It's nice to know there's people on here that can post intellectually...I was beginning to worry after reading all these posts with responses with no substance.
btw: You're either a major night owl or over seas being up at this hour? haha...kudos
Cheers...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad to be of help, I try to do whatever I can to help out, both online and off. I suffer from severe insomnia, and sleep very little. I have to do something to keep myself occupied, and the internet and computers in general give me something to do when everyone I know is sleeping.
The more I share what I know, the more I learn from other people who come by and add to it. No matter how much you know, someone else, probably many others know more on any given topic. With a board as big as XDA, and such a great community spirit, the amount of information here is just staggering.
I try to put what I know out there as completely as possible as much for myself as others. I'd rather have the tons of learned people browsing these boards add to what I know, instead of covering the same ground. It's one of the reasons I try to be so particular about the details in everything I post.
Something like this phone is especially exciting, because it's a new thing. In a sense, we're breaking new ground with some of the stuff we're doing here, and that amps me up even more.
I have a feeling This thread is going to turn into another in-depth flash memory review like what I was involved with in the Nook Color. Check it out, since you have one of those coveted 32gig class 10 cards and see if you can add anything at some point.
I'm looking forward to picking up some to test out, and figure out what a good way of benchmarking them through the phone will be to get some definitive comparisons. It'd be nice to be able to make suggestions for people who come by in the future about what are the good cards to buy if they want to get the best level of performance out of their phone.
I'm curious to know how it goes with your recovery of the memory card in regards to getting the data back on, and whether it hiccups or not when you put your device back together. I don't have a mac, and being able to tell others who come by that it works, or why it doesn't will be very helpful to the community in general.
Thanks again!
I'm reformatting the SD card now via the Mac using Disk Utility. For giggles I just selected the maximum 7 pass through, which will probably take a few hours. I'll just let it run while I sleep.
Here's another thing I've always wondered about:
When you install an app or game and let's say you uninstall it, I wonder how much clutter it leaves behind of the original app or game system files?
I'd figure over time all the 'dust' would add up to accumulate to something that may potentially have an impact on the performance of the SD card.
This has always been one of the biggest reasons I love reformatting a SD card when I can. It's like spring cleaning for me....starting fresh on a clean plate.
---
You're contribution is greatly appreciated and brings much value to the forums.
I think I too suffer from insomnia to a certain degree... yikes! It's 2:41PM HST right now...prob won't sleep til 5am ...
LOL, I don't think I've 'Safely Removed' any USB since USB 1.0 or 1.1 days..yeah, I like to live on the edge!
So far I've hooked my phone up to my computer 5 times to transfer MP3s to it. I just pull the plug when I'm done..no problems (yet)
Living on the edge there eh? I'm surprised you haven't had any issues yet...to be on the safe side, I'd make sure to safely remove it first.
Especially if you have important stuff on your card.
Good luck!
token2k6 said:
LOL, I don't think I've 'Safely Removed' any USB since USB 1.0 or 1.1 days..yeah, I like to live on the edge!
So far I've hooked my phone up to my computer 5 times to transfer MP3s to it. I just pull the plug when I'm done..no problems (yet)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
iunlock said:
Living on the edge there eh? I'm surprised you haven't had any issues yet...to be on the safe side, I'd make sure to safely remove it first.
Especially if you have important stuff on your card.
Good luck!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
99.99999% of the time, you do not need to use safely remove hardware for usb mass storage devices (like a usb stick or a phone with an sd storage card). unless you have specifically configured the device to have write caching enabled in device manager (no reason to do this for a phone or usb flash drive), as long as there is nothing being written to the storage device, it's completely harmless.
Well first of all hi to all, and thanks for taking the time of reviewing this,
I cant seem to find an answer anywhere so literally any information on the subject would be apreciated.
I own a ntt docomo fujitsu arrow s, The phone has been working flawlessly for so long
so much that i just never consider even doing a backup, now im literally facing hell
Well ill try to explain my problem also keep in mind im not really good with android, but i fix pcs so i get some stuff.
Okay ill start, one day my phone was working as ussualy and i went to the gallery as always and i had the external storage not available message,
so then i went to storage and it reflected that my internal storage was 0.0g.
So the thing is, apparently my data is still there, my apps are there, my wallpaper didnt switched, just like my ringtones, also if i go to
clean master and in settings-apps my apps and the storage i had before the incident was exact, as in i had 18g of used memory and it still reflects me that,
but certain apps like file explorer dont show anything , i literally dont have anything in my storage, idk what to think of this.
Also ill post some extra information because if anyone have any info i guess you will need more info from my side.
If i connect the phone to usb storage , it reflects me my internal storage is at 0.0g and nothing is inside.
Ive never rooted and never even tried.
I didnt install anything lately that may cause a hardware change.
The phone didnt fall, didnt got wet.
i think the sd card was in the internal storage, as an emulation, i thik idk much about that. (but i never used one, just the internal storage)
If i try to mount an sd it just doesnt happens the only thing i can do sd wise is erase all data in the sd
So basically now idk what to do, i wish i could keep my stuff, idk its still there, i guess the term for this is my storage unmounted, so using adb to mount it back would work?
idk i also did the putting it in tmp and disconecting it and nothing im literally going insane and have slept like 2 hours per day, so thanks for taking your time to atleast review my problem
also sorry for the bad formatting, english isnt my native language.
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Hi guys, I have a situation with my moto g, I have the 8gb version since one week, I've installed a 128gb sdcard on the phone formated as internal storage... During a few days I've no problem with performance at all.... Then yesterday I decided to encrypt my phone and today I loaded 60gb an data, music, photos and videos.
Since then my phone is struggling from time to time to do simple tasks like opening an app or dragging the status bar down... Is nothing like that happens always or with the same apps.... Is random, sometimes I just wanna to unlock the phone and it takes like minutes for the keyboard to come up.
Anyone with an idea of what this might be? Was it the encryption? Should I give the phone time to index all the data?
I know it's not a problem from the SD card, because it's the fastest sandisk that I could get.
Since you asked in the form of a question, I will give you the best answer I can based on your specific questions...
This is probably a multitude of issues... first, setting up your SD card as internal storage will typically show down performance, although sometimes not noticably. Second, you encrypted internal storage (your SD card) this slows down your system as well. Third, you loaded 60GB of data, music, photos, and videos, which will take a VERY long time to index and put into the Storage and Media databases, and there databases also reside on the internal storage, which access to has been slowed down significantly due to being on an SD card and encrypted. These 3 things combined will likely give extremely poor performance, for a time at least.
My first question would be how long has it been since you loaded that 60GB of data? On an idle device it would take several hours (maybe days) to index it all and update the databases...
Thanks, I might have precipitated myself in thinking that something was wrong, yet today the phone locked it self a few times, one time the process system stopped responding... I will wait until tomorrow if the problem persists I will try deleting the biggest folder ( music 40gb) and if I see some improvement I will add the music in steps.
I'm pretty sure it was the encryption. My phone, with a similar setup (1GB/8GB phone, 64GB SD as internal storage, reasonable amount of media) also showed a gigantic speed loss when I foolishly enabled encryption. I tried to work with it for some days until it became clear the situation wouldn't get any better. After a factory reset, formatting the SD again as internal and copying the media again, the phone feels even faster than it was out of the box.
I've also my phone encrypted for quite a few months now (did this already on lollipop), with actually no real complaints. However since a few days I've noticed huge performance hits as well. I'm also considering a factory reset...
Thanks for all inputs , I have restored the phone without encryption and everything runs smoothly again.
Hey folks,
Bit of a long story, short version is "Phone seems wiped, did I mess up? If not how is it possible?"
I've been passed a device with a report that it had an important video file on it that was accidentally deleted, and tasked with seeing if the file was recoverable. I was also later passed the only SD card (2gb) in the owner's possession.
Phone first. I followed instructions to root the device and rip an image of the data partition. This did mean uploading the root zip to the phone, a risk I undertook before discovering you can get a temporary root. I don't think that act accounts for what I found.
I used these two [1] [2] links for guidance. Ripping the data took many attempts but I did eventually get a 32gb-ish image down the wire. The image seemed to mostly be zeroes viewed in hex editor. Video-wise, recovery software found only operating system background videos of clouds. There didn't seem to be any user data on there at all. Recovery seemed to run very quickly with image stored on an SSD. As I say, even if I'd overwritten the video file header with the root zip, there'd have been other data on there, seems to me. Other photos. Other videos. Perhaps I ripped it wrong. Ripped on a windows machine. Is ripped even the right word, I'm not very good at this and a bit stressed
Did I get the wrong partition? Wouldn't be 32gb then though, right? I ripped mmcblk0 and mmcblk0p37 or whatever seemed to be mounted as the data partition, various times, and got similar results regardless of the resultant file size (i.e. stop half way through, data is mostly zeroes, get the whole image, it's mostly zeroes, all ripped images contain the OS video files).
Did rooting / flashing recovery wipe the data? Seems unlikely. I did start the phone by accident at one point (reboot from recovery seemed not to acknowledge my holding down the volume / power combo to get back into recovery) and OS claimed to be "upgrading all the apps" so I powered it down straight away. This is the terrifying moment for me, did something I do kick off an OS process that wiped the phone?
Owner claims never to have done a factory reset, and in any case that doesn't wipe data anyway right? Only file table. So data would still be there. But like I say they don't claim to have wiped phone, only accidentally deleted files. Even automatic OS upgrade would leave data intact. Flashing a mod would do it I guess but that's not happened.
SD card next, it's labelled "BLACKBERRY" and owner did have a bb once. They say the card was in the phone, I figured maybe phone was using sdcard instead of internal memory for user data but the card is essentially blank, it's like it has never been used since it was formatted by the blackberry. No data on it, just 6 folders. Recovery software finds literally nothing. Seems like a dead end. Ripped on a mac using dd.
Possible that the owner had another sdcard at some point but they cannot recall having one.
Also possible I ripped the data wrong? I used sudo dd to get it, then ran Disk Drill on the mounted .dmg, which is 2gb, the size of the sd card.
dd would not substitute zeroes for unallocated filetable areas, right?
So this leaves me with so many questions about how we got to this point with no data, but mainly I want to sanity check what I've done here so I can be more confident I haven't wiped the data I'm trying to recover myself. Then it'll be a case of digging deeper into what happened to this phone between the video being taken, the video being deleted, and the phone arriving in my hands.
Thanks in advance to anyone for literally any input!!
I've asked the owner to trawl their cloud drives for HTC backups, hopefully they had daily backup linked to one of their clouds. Otherwise, I guess I'm at a loss...
If the lost data cannot be scanned by the recovery tool, they has been overwritten. But fortunately, the owner to cloud drives for HTC has backup file.
Thanks bobii. What's confusing is that the data I retrieved seems mostly to be zeroes, which wouldn't be the case if it had been overwritten. Unless it was overwritten with zeroes, which as far as I know would only happen if you flashed a brand new OS or intentionally wiped the data partition, both processes I think that the owner would remember doing.
Well, this is rather vexing.
I've been hard at work trying to backup / transfer data from my extremely old Samsung Galaxy S5 that seems to be coming to the end of it's useful lifespan. The S7 was next, but aside from running out of internal storage, I thought I still had time on that one (I wasn't experiencing a lot of slowdown or any crashes).
I went out for a couple hours (taking my newer phone), and when I came back, I saw my S7 on the insert the pin code screen. When I put the correct pin code in, the "unlocked padlock" stays on the screen for ages, before the phone restarts and I am shown the pin screen again (if I insert the wrong pin, it says so, so I am sure that I am not inserting the wrong pin).
So for the first time in my life, I am dealing with a spontaneous boot loop. This device has never been rooted, had a custom recovery installed or even the bootloader unlocked (it's the Exynos version, so presumably it would have been possible, but I decided that I wanted *one* unrooted device just in case, and given Knox, I decided that this was the device that will remain unmodded).
Anyway, that's for the story, but the question is, is there anything that I can try before the nuclear option (factory reset etc.).
Fortunately most of the photos are on the MicroSD. There are perhaps two or three apps that I would have liked to backup (they did not have a convenient built-in backup system) but I am just wondering if there is anything I might be able to do at this point? For instance, would wiping the cache be an option? Or is there anything I might be able to do with adb?
(Note: The device is running on Android 7)
Thanks.
Don't set security passwords for device access as you are the one most likely to be locked out.
If the boot loop wasn't caused by a hardware failure it's likely a app you loaded. Launchers and power management apps are prime candidates. Leave at least a couple gb of headroom on internal storage.
A factory reset is the easiest solution. Be careful what you load next time... take out the trash.
Use the SD card as a data drive, all critical data and everything you need for a reload goes here. No apps. Only apps, and the temporary download folder go on the internal memory.
The DCIM folder can be set to the SD card as well, but there can only be one DCIM folder and don't change its name. If a second backup folder is used on the SD card instead do not name it DCIM.
ApkExport can be used to make installable copies of apps for transfering them and added the data drive as well, no Playstore needed.
Do not use Kies or SmartSwitch when going between different type devices or OS versions. It can cause issues.
Cut/paste critical data, verify the data is readable and all there. Don't trust Kies or SmartSwitch with critical data.
Never clone data drives.
Never encrypt data drives.
Regularly redundantly backup the SD card data drive to at least 2 hdds that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC.
Thanks for the reply.
1. No app was recently installed (past couple of weeks)
2. Hardware failure? Maybe, but it is rather out of the blue. Phone has not displayed any unusual behaviour, it hasn't been taken out of the house for a week or so (it is really in the process of getting retired). And I would like to ascertain it.
3. I am aware I can just nuke the whole thing with a factory reset, but before taking that easy option and effectively lose some data I'd like to retrieve if possible, I would like to other options.
And rather than tips on what I should've done or can do next time (much of which I am already doing), I am looking for advice on anything I might be able to try -before- nuking the whole thing.
For instance, could the log-files (there are quite a few of them) provide hint in what went wrong? Any option of re-installing the OS without wiping the data partition? Since I am on a fairly old version of Android I may also have the option of doing a minor update. That kind of things. I am thinking that there might also be the possibility that the system files somehow got corrupted and perhaps a re-install or system update might be worth trying.
I am basically looking for options that will not, for the time being erase the data partition. If it comes down to it in the end, then fine, but that is the last option not the first.
It sounds like it got spontaneously corrupted. Perhaps a flash memory cell failure. If so it may or may not be "self healing" with a factory reset or a reflash.
If you have ADB access you may be able to fix it.
Otherwise your options are limited to what's on the boot menu.
Try doing a hard reboot (simulates pulling battery).
If you try booting it a bunch of times it may go into go safe mode. I've seen that behavior in Android 9.
That's extent of my skills, sorry.
The reason why I posted how to prevent data lose is because sometimes that's all you can do.
Internal memory data I consider expendable, the SD card data... potentially expendable.