Root and EFS - Nexus S Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi,
I just bought a used Nexus S 9023. Bootloader remains locked. I want to use EFSPro to backup the EFS folder. I can't do this without rooting. Reading through the root instructions, using fastboot oem unlock wipes all data. My question is:
If you root with fastboot oem unlock, it states all data is wiped. Does this include the EFS folder?
Obviously this is a catch-22. Anyway around this or am I reading this all wrong?
Thanks.

hi..
no its not, its only wipe your external storage...
Sent from my Nexus S

endtoosee said:
hi..
no its not, its only wipe your external storage...
Sent from my Nexus S
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice. I guess I was confused about the on-board memory since the phone technically doesn't have an SD Card slot. From what I read, the 16gb is partitioned as 1gb of internal memory and 15gb of "usb storage." So it's only the 15gb that is wiped?

It wipes ALL personal data. This means:
/data partition (all apps and their data)
/sdcard
/cache
The android OS won't change, neither will /efs.

Hey!
I just want to thank you for mentioning EFSpro!
With so many people losing their IMEI lately, I've being looking for a way to back up my EFS folder and this totally did the trick!
Thanks!

ps004ynos said:
Nice. I guess I was confused about the on-board memory since the phone technically doesn't have an SD Card slot. From what I read, the 16gb is partitioned as 1gb of internal memory and 15gb of "usb storage." So it's only the 15gb that is wiped?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes it is, sorry for being late...
Sent from my Nexus S

Related

[Q] G2X, cant mount sdcard on cm7

Hi,
I have a g2x and i recently rooted it using superoneclick and i tried to back up using nvflash
however when i boot into recovery and try to install a zip or do anything with an sdcard, it says cant mount sdcard.
i ended up installing cyanogenmod 7 using rom manager.
but at the moment i cant do anything that involves using the sdcard because it cant mount.
any ideas on how to fix this?
thanks in advance
When you're in recovery, have you simply tried taking out the memory card then putting it back in?
Sometimes the simplest solutions work. It used to not mount my sd card too and just popping it out and back in made it read it.
buru898 said:
When you're in recovery, have you simply tried taking out the memory card then putting it back in?
Sometimes the simplest solutions work. It used to not mount my sd card too and just popping it out and back in made it read it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks ill try it and let you know but how come nothing ever gets loaded onto the phones internal sdcard I still have the 5 gigs that I initially had and nothing is ever loaded onto it including the apps I download, any way I can change this?
EgyptianBoi said:
Thanks ill try it and let you know but how come nothing ever gets loaded onto the phones internal sdcard I still have the 5 gigs that I initially had and nothing is ever loaded onto it including the apps I download, any way I can change this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's the way they memory is partitioned. ~3 GB for the System and Apps, 5GB for other stuff. There's a workaround/fix for CM7 in the development forum (atleast I think there was) but I don't know if it works anymore.
Jufjufjuf said:
It's the way they memory is partitioned. ~3 GB for the System and Apps, 5GB for other stuff. There's a workaround/fix for CM7 in the development forum (atleast I think there was) but I don't know if it works anymore.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right now if I go to storage in settings I have my SD card then I have internal storage with 1.48 gigs and then I have additional storage /mnt/emmc which has 5.21 gigs. At the moment apps installed from the android market go to the internal storage and apps online go to the SD card but I can move them to the internal memory. It seems that at the moment the one place with the most memory can't be used so I'm guessing thats the partition your talking about
o there's no way of changing this partition?
And can you give me the link to that? Thanks
Yaay got the SD card working in recovery it worked taking it out and putting it in again
EgyptianBoi said:
Right now if I go to storage in settings I have my SD card then I have internal storage with 1.48 gigs and then I have additional storage /mnt/emmc which has 5.21 gigs. At the moment apps installed from the android market go to the internal storage and apps online go to the SD card but I can move them to the internal memory. It seems that at the moment the one place with the most memory can't be used so I'm guessing thats the partition your talking about
o there's no way of changing this partition?
And can you give me the link to that? Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're right, I don't believe it can be used (natively for apps atleast, you can always move media and files there). Unless you mount that internal partition to be the external SD card and do a Move to SD on the apps (both are settings in Android/CM7 somewhere) there's not much else you can do. The problem is that some apps don't work on the SD, of course you could keep those on the system partition.
Sorry if my replies are starting to get confusing, it's late here.
I use link2sd which creates a mount point script that uses the extra partition on external sdcard. I used minitool partitioned to create a 10gb ext4 on my 32gb class 10( I'm an app junkie lol). Most if not all apps/games moved with link2sd work flawlessly, I'm happy with it
Sent from my LG-P999 using xda premium
Jufjufjuf said:
You're right, I don't believe it can be used (natively for apps atleast, you can always move media and files there). Unless you mount that internal partition to be the external SD card and do a Move to SD on the apps (both are settings in Android/CM7 somewhere) there's not much else you can do. The problem is that some apps don't work on the SD, of course you could keep those on the system partition.
Sorry if my replies are starting to get confusing, it's late here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks i think i managed to get it! i found the settings i think you're talking about in the cyanogenmod settings and managed to switch the sdcard and additional storage. now the 5 gigs appears as the sdcard and the actual external microsd appears as the additional storage
i guess thats the best im gonna get
thanks a lot!!
d12unk13astard said:
I use link2sd which creates a mount point script that uses the extra partition on external sdcard. I used minitool partitioned to create a 10gb ext4 on my 32gb class 10( I'm an app junkie lol). Most if not all apps/games moved with link2sd work flawlessly, I'm happy with it
Sent from my LG-P999 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks ill try it and see how it workds
d12unk13astard said:
I use link2sd which creates a mount point script that uses the extra partition on external sdcard. I used minitool partitioned to create a 10gb ext4 on my 32gb class 10( I'm an app junkie lol). Most if not all apps/games moved with link2sd work flawlessly, I'm happy with it
Sent from my LG-P999 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Jufjufjuf said:
You're right, I don't believe it can be used (natively for apps atleast, you can always move media and files there). Unless you mount that internal partition to be the external SD card and do a Move to SD on the apps (both are settings in Android/CM7 somewhere) there's not much else you can do. The problem is that some apps don't work on the SD, of course you could keep those on the system partition.
Sorry if my replies are starting to get confusing, it's late here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ya i thought i had everything working but now for some reason, my phone says it cant mount the system. any ideas why?

Can I encrypt while rooted?

I'm running the stock ROM rooted. I have the bootloader locked still and CWM installed. Ideally I'd like to encrypt internal and external sdcard. Thanks
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium
PS sorry if this has been answered but xda app has no way to search a specific subforum
fbiryujin said:
I'm running the stock ROM rooted. I have the bootloader locked still and CWM installed. Ideally I'd like to encrypt internal and external sdcard. Thanks
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium
PS sorry if this has been answered but xda app has no way to search a specific subforum
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No if you do you wont be able to flash anything in the future
fr8cture said:
No if you do you wont be able to flash anything in the future
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm alright with not being able to flash anything for now, plus isn't there a way to remove encryption? I don't care if removing encryption wipes my data, I keep everything backed up to a pair of SANs in my home. (Yes I'm that guy that has an enterprise environment in his own home, because he can)
fbiryujin said:
I'm alright with not being able to flash anything for now, plus isn't there a way to remove encryption? I don't care if removing encryption wipes my data, I keep everything backed up to a pair of SANs in my home. (Yes I'm that guy that has an enterprise environment in his own home, because he can)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just went through this process... I encrypted my phone's internal SD because my company email needed it encrypted. If you do this, your SD card becomes useless unless you encrypt it as well. I suppose if you have everything backed up separate from your device AND external SD card you could do so. But from my understanding there is no way to reverse encryption easily. I had to reflash a stock ROM using odin and then restore from my thankfully un-encrypted external SD card.
What is your reason for encrypting?
dynamite972 said:
I just went through this process... I encrypted my phone's internal SD because my company email needed it encrypted. If you do this, your SD card becomes useless unless you encrypt it as well. I suppose if you have everything backed up separate from your device AND external SD card you could do so. But from my understanding there is no way to reverse encryption easily. I had to reflash a stock ROM using odin and then restore from my thankfully un-encrypted external SD card.
What is your reason for encrypting?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That sounds complicated and annoying. I record my phone calls, and I'd rather keep them encrypted, considering the recorded ones are related to business. I could just store the recordings on the external SD card. You said you can't use external SD if the internal is encrypted, unless you encrypt both, but can I encrypt just the external SD card? It's probably a lot easier to decrypt the external SD card, since I can just stick it in my computer and format it, or would Android not work properly if the SD card suddenly came back blank, and not encrypted? Thanks

[Q] Internal memory partition

I see that question was yet asked but no reply was given.
Nexus S has 16GB of internal memory splitted in two partitions, one for /system (1GB) and one for /sdcard. (15GB)
My gf has a few app installed (that neither can't move to usb storage) but its internal partition is full. /sdcard partitions is almost empty.
If i'm right, these partitions are not needed anymore since ICS is out (on my galaxy nexus there's no usb storage at all). I wonder if there's a way to merge these two partitions on nexus s with ICS installed.
I read somewhere that these params are hard-coded inside kernel (sounds strange). Did cyanogenmod or any rom changed them to increase internal partition or delete usb storage?
Is there a way to change partitions size in other way?
trikko said:
I see that question was yet asked but no reply was given.
Nexus S has 16GB of internal memory splitted in two partitions, one for /system (1GB) and one for /sdcard. (15GB)
My gf has a few app installed (that neither can't move to usb storage) but its internal partition is full. /sdcard partitions is almost empty.
If i'm right, these partitions are not needed anymore since ICS is out (on my galaxy nexus there's no usb storage at all). I wonder if there's a way to merge these two partitions on nexus s with ICS installed.
I read somewhere that these params are hard-coded inside kernel (sounds strange). Did cyanogenmod or any rom changed them to increase internal partition or delete usb storage?
Is there a way to change partitions size in other way?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
bump
anyone?
ben303 said:
bump
anyone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I Was wondering this as well after going to jellybean 4.3
Im noticing apps like chrome and hangouts are HUGE and cant be moved to USB so the internal storage is rapidly being phased out almost forcing you to upgrade your phone.
I think I read though that the SD storage is actually SD storage physically and the internal is its own physical hardware.... I could be wrong tho.
I was looking for a way to repartition and pretty much this is what I gathered so yes we are screwed. Pretty much ALL non google apps now have to be moved to USB everytime I redo my phone.
and like the usual annoying fate of search results I typed all that out and foudn THIS
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1656794
seems risky tho
Ill just wait for some reviews on the nexus 5

[Q] Swap internal with external SD card?

Hi, is it possible to swap the internal sd card with an external one? I have a rooted Sony Xperia J with locked bootloader. It is running Jelly Bean. I have a SanDisk Micro SD. Help?
How do I do it?
doperthancoke said:
Yes it is possible. But I recommend you not do that because it is quite dangerous, as it might hardbrick your phone.
Sent from my C1605 using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, thanks for the fast reply. So, how do I go around doing it?
Ok, but...
doperthancoke said:
Well.... The thing is, you'll be fine as long as you dont mess up. But its very easy to mess up. For example: if you wipe internal storage while using the mod, your phone is hardbricked. Another note: Various users have ran into problems while swapping internal and external sd (disappearing, corrupted apps, and your phone and apps might become sluggish if your sd card read/write speed is not fast enough,etc....).
There's a way around this, but its not quite the same thing. If you have large apps that store its data on internal sd (examples: games like Asphalt or large dictionaries), you can use apps such as "FolderMount" or "GL2sd" to move the apps' data to external sd and link it to internal sd (You're fooling the system into thinking that the data is in the internal sd, when its actually in the external sd). Of course, by using this method, you will not actually be swapping external sd with internal sd. And the apps are not moved, just the DATA of the apps.
If you don't care about the risks and the method I suggested above isn't good enough for you, and you still want to do it, search "vold.fstab swap external sd and internal sd xperia j" on the forum.
(Don't say I did not warn you!)
Sent from my C1605 using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, I kinda screwed up. I did what they told me to, but when I rebooted my phone, my external SDcard was not mounted and my internal one was un-mounted! Hence, I have access only to the apps in my phone storage... I did a backup and tried to flash the stock firmware but Flashtool told me that a folder could not be found and flashing failed... I still can use my phone, but alot of apps are gone. ;_; I can't even access Whatsapp! Any advice? Also, I do not have access to Root Explorer, and when I plug in my phone to my computer, 1 error message comes out: The process android.process.media has stopped. Any help? Plus, are there any good suggestions for common and cheap smartphones? Thanks for helping!

Moto G 2015 - Photo Recovery

Hello Everyone. I have a MOTO G 3rd Gen with a 32 GB Class 10 Sandisk sdcard. I originally posted this issue on the Lenovo Forum MOTO G 3rd Gen - Photo Recovery (can't post a direct link just yet), where they suggested that I look here for advice.
I originally used my sdcard for portable storage, although I had to periodically move my photos from internal storage to the sdcard, I was satisfied with the operation of my phone. However, as I added a few apps, I started to have some issues with running out of space in internal storage IIRC.
Earlier this year, it appears that I picked up a virus, which caused Chrome to always want to open to what seemed to be a malicious page (don't recall exactly what now). I decided to do a factory reset using the Settings option to return to a clean installation of Android. I decided at that time to configure the sdcard as extended internal storage, and the process appeared to work properly.
A few months later, I started getting messages informing me that an app update failed because I had run out out storage. After some investigation, it looked like most (all?) of my apps were continuing to use the built-in internal storage rather than the sdcard's extended storage. I tried uninstalling my apps an then reinstalling them - hoping that reinstalled apps would take up residence on my sdcard but they did not. However, it looked like I had uninstalled a few too many programs and my phone lost a lot of its functionality.
One of the functions that it lost was the ability to connect to my PC with the USB cord. Another was the ability for my google contacts to sync with the phone. Yesterday, I tried everything I could thing of to back up my data but I could not figure out how to get the USB to work properly. I decided that I would do another factory reset and removed the sdcard as I knew a reset would wipe all of my data. I removed my sdcard but the factory reset through Settings did not work this time and I instead had to do a hard factory reset. My phone is now working properly with a minimal number of installed apps.
When I reinstalled my sdcard, my phone does not recognize it and wants to format both as portable and internal storage. I was hoping that it would pick up where it left off.
As a last resort, I thought I might have to format my sd card and then try to recover deleted image files. Do you have any advice about recovering the photos on my sdcard?
The last reply on the Lenovo forum was:
When you formatted the card as internal/adopted the card was encrypted amd the key was stored on the phone in a secure location. A reset has deleted the key.
Your data on the sd card is not recoverable as the card is encrypted and the key is lost.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Essentially, when I configured my phone to use my sdcard as extended internal storage, all I ended up with was encrypted portable storage. I would rather that there was a 3rd option for having unencrypted extended internal storage.
How would I get this into the Android developers suggestion box?
TP380Z said:
The last reply on the Lenovo forum was:
Essentially, when I configured my phone to use my sdcard as extended internal storage, all I ended up with was encrypted portable storage. I would rather that there was a 3rd option for having unencrypted extended internal storage.
How would I get this into the Android developers suggestion box?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, you ended up with encrypted internal storage... The fact that you didn't understand it is the real issue.
Adopted storage is tied to not only the device, but the current installation... When an sd card is adopted as internal storage, a encryption key is generated semi-randomly and the file system is of the card becomes ext4 and encrypted, the system is decrypted automatically on boot because the key is stored in the phone. If you factory reset, it wipes your internal storage, which in this case is your sd card, and you would be fine. If you remove the card and factory reset, the key is gone forever and you have to reformat the card for it to be usable. So everything you were told in the Lenovo forums was correct, and the files are no longer recoverable by any known means.
your SD card would be nolonger useful , sorry to break this to you bro..
if your card is now encrypted state, i heavily doubt it would work again..talking of recovering photos,when encrypted.. HELL NO! it cant..
what i do is :
i always keep my memorycard as Portable, but not as internal to avoid such problems..
incase if i have formatted as internal, then while formatting or resetting.. i would take full bakup, and then Format as portable, then carryon resets..
i know these encryptions would give such a pain..
next time takecare of these issues..
suggestion: what i do is i install Googlephotos, it takes a backup of every photo & video which i have in either SDcard/internal .. so i would take necessary files while taking backup, to save time..
next time you try using GooglePhotos, it takes backup when i keep my phone in charge, (note: my internet is unlimited- so its ok for me)
acejavelin said:
No, you ended up with encrypted internal storage... The fact that you didn't understand it is the real issue..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the very thoughtful reply. I thought that I understood my two sdcard formatting options but I obviously did not. When I first installed my sdcard, I selected portable storage as I did not want my sdcard to be encrypted. Only after discovering that the internal storage of my phone was inadequate for my very limited number of installed apps did I switch to encrypted adopted storage.
If I understand you correctly, the reason that the adopted storage storage is encrypted is because the internal storage is encrypted.
My expectation was that the phone would seamlessly treat the adopted storage as internal storage so I am still at a loss to understand why my phone would not automatically install apps into the available in the adopted storage.
TP380Z said:
Thank you for the very thoughtful reply. I thought that I understood my two sdcard formatting options but I obviously did not. When I first installed my sdcard, I selected portable storage as I did not want my sdcard to be encrypted. Only after discovering that the internal storage of my phone was inadequate for my very limited number of installed apps did I switch to encrypted adopted storage.
If I understand you correctly, the reason that the adopted storage storage is encrypted is because the internal storage is encrypted.
My expectation was that the phone would seamlessly treat the adopted storage as internal storage so I am still at a loss to understand why my phone would not automatically install apps into the available in the adopted storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, anytime the SD card is adopted as internal storage it is encrypted... This is a privacy/security measure by Google and is not optional and it doesn't matter if your original internal storage was encrypted or not. Adopted storage basically brings the SD card into the "internal family" and it cannot be used elsewhere. Period (OK, yes, I know there is a way to get the encryption key and mount the volume in Linux, but it is still not perfect).
The reason it still wasn't treated as you expect is probably 2-fold... First, the Moto G3 has a tendency to miss the last step of adoption, called data migration, which is the act of moving existing data to the card and it needs to be initiated manually in many cases. Until this is done, the card is not used by Android except when you specify it because it doesn't think the card is ready yet. This can be done in Settings - Storage then selecting the 3 dot menu and Migrate Data. If this option doesn't appear or is grayed out, then the migration completed successfully (or you are using the card as portable storage, obviously).
The second reason is apps themselves... some of them have not been fully updated to the API standard used by Marshmallow and just don't honor the request to use the card as internal, and Android has a facility to allow this to happen for compatibility. It just uses the internal storage of the device so the app works. Some apps specifically request to be only on real device internal storage for whatever reason as well.
nandakis4 said:
your SD card would be nolonger useful , sorry to break this to you bro..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. Your sympathy is appreciated.
nandakis4 said:
if your card is now encrypted state, i heavily doubt it would work again..talking of recovering photos,when encrypted.. HELL NO! it cant..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I put my sdcard back in my phone just now and it did not recognize it. However, when I went to Settings > Storage and USB, I had no problem formatting it as portable storage.
nandakis4 said:
what i do is :
i always keep my memorycard as Portable, but not as internal to avoid such problems..
incase if i have formatted as internal, then while formatting or resetting.. i would take full bakup, and then Format as portable, then carryon resets..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I expect that this will once again cause me to have app storage space issues. I only ran into problems with data backups once I started uninstalling apps. I had hoped that uninstalling and then reinstalling apps would then cause the phone to correctly place them into adopted storage. I cannot believe that I was so careless as to not have downloaded my photos earlier but here we are.
After apparently successfully formatting my sdcard as portable storage, I went back and converted to adopted internal storage (also apparently successfully) just now. I've re-installed MS OneNote and my phone is reporting that is taking up 85.70 MB in Internal Storage. When I go to Storage and USB, I see that 44.46 MB is used of 28.32 GB of SanDisk SD Card and 3.00 GB of 4.53 GB is being used of Internal Storage. When I reinstall 63.40 MB MS Word, I see that I'm now using 2.97 GB of Internal Storage and 173 MB of SanDisk SD Card.
[As of 1:50 pm, my phone is now reporting using 3.00 GB of Internal Storage and 137 MB of SanDisk SD Card.]
It looks like adopted internal storage is working properly. I never previously suspected that there was a problem with adopted storage and installed several large apps. The storage space problem surfaced only when there was a MS OneNote update that would not install because of insufficient internal storage space.
nandakis4 said:
suggestion: what i do is i install Googlephotos, it takes a backup of every photo & video which i have in either SDcard/internal .. so i would take necessary files while taking backup, to save time..
next time you try using GooglePhotos, it takes backup when i keep my phone in charge, (note: my internet is unlimited- so its ok for me)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! I will try GooglePhotos. I hope I can set it up to only do backups when I'm connected to WIFI.

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