Can someone list the partitions necessary for a full save? Is system/boot/data sufficient?
So it seems that the current version of TWRP fails when backing up /system due to the vendor folders. The solution is to backup boot, system image and vendor image, which also preserve dm-verity (whatever tf that is).
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For whatever reason last time my battery died my phone's not properly booting anymore.
I flashed stock rom and kernel, wiped dalvik cache, battery stats cache partition, fixed permissions...
I remember last time I had a bootloop resulting from something I did with build.prop I was able to get a verbose realtime log of the booting over USB, but I don't remember how I did it.
logcat's not found in my sbin, it's in /system/bin, and when I run it from there it stops when trying to boot into main.
I have adb and fastboot.
In recovery (ie, CWM or TWRP), do a full backup (NANDROID) and then:
data/factory reset
format /system
format /boot
Now flash a Stock ROM for your phone again. This should sort out just about any non-hardware issue.
if i restore that backup will i have my /data back? Would restoring put it in the same state of affairs that led to the bootloop?
Is there a way to partially restore a nandroid backup? I'm trying to get app data and such back.
You can restore either the whole partition via cwm or parts of it via app extractor. You can also edit the data partition and restore the edited version.
My Mum's managed to mess up her tablet (seems to have reset it but not factory reset, as it's still encrypted, password protected, etc, just all her apps and even Apex Launcher have vanished) and the only recent backup I can find is a TWRP backup made with Online Nandroid Backup.
TWRP doesn't seem to recognise the files however, as it doesn't list any backups. I looked at the log and see that when pointed to the internal storage (which it can't mount as it's encrypted), it looks in /data/media/TWRP/ and I've recreated that structure on the microSD (where the backups are), giving me /data/media/TWRP/BACKUPS/0000000000000000/2015-04-05--07-14-50/
In that folder I have:
boot.emmc.win
cache.ext4.win
data.ext4.win
recovery.emmc.win
system.ext4.win
and .md5 files for each of those.
The .win files I can open with 7-zip, to show the files without that extension (e.g. data.ext4).
If anyone could help me restore this backup I (and more importantly my Mum) would be very grateful!
I tried installing Nandroid Manager and ES File Explorer and both failed, so something's clearly messed up. SU 2.46 is installed and I checked root with Root Checker and updated Busybox.
OK, I found a good tip to make a new backup (I just ticked boot to make it quick) and check where TWRP puts it. It turned out to be /micro_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/Lenovo_A5500-HV/
So I moved my existing backup folder there, formatted /data to remove the encryption and then I was able to restore the backup. Now the tablet's stuck in a boot loop though and I can't even boot into recovery, so I'll have to start from scratch and then try and restore just /system and /data.
This is a psa about restoring backups with our version of TWRP. I would advise anybody who can help it NOT to do a full system restore I am on EVR_AL00.
I do not know the details of its implementation but I do know that trying to restore a full system backup from 3 days ago become a huge problem when TWRP failed to properly restore the system and system image partition and the device could not mount them because of corruption. No combination of formatting and restoring seemed to have an impact on the results, but after painfully re-writing my drive many times I saw that the results inconsistently affected /vendor, /data, /system, and /system_image. TWRP did eventually give me a bootable system after running e2fsck -fv on my system partition, BUT it managed to kill the performance of my phone. There was noticeable lag on boot up before I could get full control of my system, but I might not have known if I did not use more cpu intensive tasks, such as viewing videos inside a linux chroot environment. The affect was not small by any means, it destroyed the usability of my environment. I believe that this was do to a failure to properly restore the block information, therefore killing read/write speed. Furthermore, the system was no longer able to boot with the stock boot.img, only through magisk. When I formatted the system_root partition, not realizing it was not included in the backup, it was no longer able to do that....
This become more of a pain in the ass when after restoring the stock erecovery it failed to restore the device, and the inconsistent performance of the huawei bootloader made it at times impossible to access either recovery or the system partition as I went about trying to get a stable system back on my device without erecovery or emui flasher. After messing around flashing different recovery images, eventually erecovery was able to restore the stock rom and I was able to re root my device and restore my TWRP /data backup.
I'm not complaining, as I do appreciate these tools for what they are, but I wanted to put this out there so that somebody could be saved from this experience. Due to my previous experience with TWRP I was happy to do a full system restore, even when I didn't need to, if only just to make sure I could. Turns out that was ill-advised.
I would highly advise that you only restore the /data partition through TWRP unless you absolutely must restore other partitions to recover a device. Through all of this I probably put near a full write cycle on my disk
AllanRSS said:
This is a psa about restoring backups with our version of TWRP. I would advise anybody who can help it NOT to do a full system restore I am on EVR_AL00.
I do not know the details of its implementation but I do know that trying to restore a full system backup from 3 days ago become a huge problem when TWRP failed to properly restore the system and system image partition and the device could not mount them because of corruption. No combination of formatting and restoring seemed to have an impact on the results, but after painfully re-writing my drive many times I saw that the results inconsistently affected /vendor, /data, /system, and /system_image. TWRP did eventually give me a bootable system after running e2fsck -fv on my system partition, BUT it managed to kill the performance of my phone. There was noticeable lag on boot up before I could get full control of my system, but I might not have known if I did not use more cpu intensive tasks, such as viewing videos inside a linux chroot environment. The affect was not small by any means, it destroyed the usability of my environment. I believe that this was do to a failure to properly restore the block information, therefore killing read/write speed. Furthermore, the system was no longer able to boot with the stock boot.img, only through magisk. When I formatted the system_root partition, not realizing it was not included in the backup, it was no longer able to do that....
This become more of a pain in the ass when after restoring the stock erecovery it failed to restore the device, and the inconsistent performance of the huawei bootloader made it at times impossible to access either recovery or the system partition as I went about trying to get a stable system back on my device without erecovery or emui flasher. After messing around flashing different recovery images, eventually erecovery was able to restore the stock rom and I was able to re root my device and restore my TWRP /data backup.
I'm not complaining, as I do appreciate these tools for what they are, but I wanted to put this out there so that somebody could be saved from this experience. Due to my previous experience with TWRP I was happy to do a full system restore, even when I didn't need to, if only just to make sure I could. Turns out that was ill-advised.
I would highly advise that you only restore the /data partition through TWRP unless you absolutely must restore other partitions to recover a device. Through all of this I probably put near a full write cycle on my disk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You only need to backup data and system image in TWRP. Don't mess with vendor, cust etc as they don't backup or restore properly on Huawei devices with TWRP. I've backed up and restored data and system plenty of times now.
Of course which partitions you need to backup or restore would depend entirely on the use case of the utility . I tend to 'mess with' alot of things for various purposes and it is good knowing that anything can be recovered quickly and easily if need be. I have been doing nandroid backups for a long time and it has always 'just worked' as long as you use it sensibly. Unfortunately, whatever the difference is with this device, that seems not to be the case. I'm sure if someone took a look at it it would be clear as a dd backup isn't exactly rocket science, but unfortunately I am far too preoccupied with my business and there isn't exactly a flourishing development scene for this phone
I'm bricking my device same way that you describe.... Restoring all partition that is possible to backup with TWRP. There is a way to put some files in the memory - "base folder" and something "no check ....." And seen a bunch of commands from "ADB shell" and it's restored. Will put a video of the process soon to be useful for anyone with not enough skills to bring back the device to live!
Thanks for checking in Ronin. Seeing as this is affecting multiple users it's good to get the word out so that new users don't end up messing up their device.
1. format of the "system" and "vendor" sections
2.restore only the "system" and "vendor"
3.restore only the "system image and vendor image"
4. restore the OEM
*otherwise it is a bootloop without OEM.
---------- Post added at 02:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:52 PM ----------
i have used this order for restoring my phone succesfully.
do i have to unencrypt my device in order to restore/backup and maybe even flash from on it? I've seen in twrp it tells me backups and restores may not work fully due to being encrypted
No, I guess.
The only partition encrypted is your internal storage and twrp can't take a backup of that.
So, you can try by yourself, just remember to take your cautious.
in old devices I always made a backup of this partitions:
Boot
System
Data
Vendor
And restored without problems, just make a factory reset before and maybe flash magisk after restoration
Hello
I wanted to install Syberia A12 from stock A11 and I got stuck somewhere in the process.
So I'm stuck with the internal storage on the phone (not backed up) that is inaccessible since it's encrypted and the rest of the partitions backed up on the pc using adb backup (a single .ab file).
In theory I should restore the partitions to the phone and I should be able to access everything and boot as it was before, right? However now I have the syberia ROM installed and I'm not rooted anymore (and won't boot).
Can I restore /system like this?
What I care about is access the internal storage, what can I do?
I tried restoring the entire .ab file, however it gets stuck at "restoring efs2" and I should only try to restore /data and /system but I can't select specific partitions being a adb backup with twrp.
All tools I tried to extract the content fails.